Pick Up Your Cross

During the reign of Emperor Tiberius, crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment. It was a particularly brutal form, meted out to the enemies of Rome, and there were plenty of those in Palestine as the Jews, in the main, hated the Romans.

Jesus would have been all too familiar with Rome’s form of justice, as it sought to impose peace. (It is ironic that Roman Peace – Pax Romana – was obtained by such violence.) Growing up it is likely Jesus saw the cruel torture of his people crucified.

When he spoke of picking up your cross, he wasn’t starry-eyed about the implications. He was saying the way of the Kingdom is by a life of dying to yourself: your ambitions, your reactions, your preferences, your relationships. Although Matthew, Mark, and Luke use this saying in different contexts the same message is loud and clear. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Mark 8.34

And it was on a cross that Jesus secured our salvation, absorbing the sin of the world unto death. He saw this from afar and was inviting his disciples to share in his upcoming death – not as penance to secure their salvation, but as imitators of their Lord. Hold that thought.

The cross has bought for us and brought to us the gift of righteousness, forgiveness of sins - past, present, and future, the promise of the resurrection and participation in the new age, and the gift of the Holy Spirit (something barely imagined by the people of God and rarely alluded to by their prophets). We no longer need to face guilt and condemnation, but rather we are motivated by love, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit. The benefits of the cross are life-changing, and out of this world. This is why Jesus died, why Peter and Paul preached the good news, why the early church preached, some dying for their faith, as was the case with Peter and Paul, both facing ignoble deaths at the hands of the same oppressors as Jesus. (Power hates to be told it is weak, and ineffectual.)

However, the cross of Jesus must be seen as both remedy and example.  We have often left it as only the procurement of salvation, the guarantee of fulfilment, now, and the promise of eternal life, then. Aside from these categories being misconstrued we are missing the dynamic, the necessity, of being imitators of Jesus - the people who live out the Sermon on the Mount in love of enemies, non-retaliation, and as peacemakers. Pick up your cross didn’t stop when Jesus picked up his.

Some Christian traditions lose themselves in daily dying, in a penchant for morbidity, and others in celebration and Kingdom now fulfilment.  

Both are right, both are wrong.

We can only live like Jesus in cruciformity – a cross-shaped life - if we have been empowered by the post-resurrection gift of the Spirit. The Spirit is a benefit of the cross that assists us to live in conformity with the cross.

This is not a popular message in the world of over-realized eschatology, but it is in keeping with the gospels and epistles, and it is exemplified in Jesus, Paul, and the early church, who lived a life of picking up their crosses as they loved, served, and were often persecuted.

It is not a case of either or: we are to pick up our cross daily in imitation of the crucified one, and we live by the power and benefits of the cross of Jesus Christ.