#138 He who takes not his cross, and follows after me, is not worthy of me.

Before his crucifixion, our Lord has a foresight of it, and does not hesitate to realize himself as bearing his cross.

With equal prescience he foresees each true disciple receiving and taking up his own personal cross. He sees none exempted.

Picture to the mind’s eye a procession led by the cross-bearing Jesus, and made up of his cross-bearing train. This is not a pageant, but a real march of suffering. It reaches through all time.

The chief requirement of a disciple is to follow Jesus in all things, in cross-bearing as in all else.

Cross-bearing is trying, laborious, sorrowful, humiliating.

Cross-bearing is inevitable to the follower of Jesus. We are bound to take up our cross or give up all idea of being Christians.

Let us obediently inquire—

I. WHAT IS MY PECULIAR CROSS? “He who takes not his cross.”

It may be the giving up of certain pleasures or indulgences.
It may be the endurance of reproach and unkindness, or remaining in poverty and obscurity for the good of others.
It may be the suffering of losses and persecutions, for Christ’s sake.
It certainly means the consecrating of all to Jesus: the bowing of my whole self beneath the blessed burden of service with which he honors me.
It also includes the endurance of my heavenly Father’s will with patience, acquiescence, and thanksgiving.
- My cross is well, wisely, kindly, and surely chosen for me by my Lord.
- It is only meet that I should be made like my Lord in bearing it.

II. WHAT AM I TO DO WITH IT? “Takes … follows after me.”

I am deliberately to take it up.
- Not to choose a cross, or pine after another form of trial.
- Not to make a cross, by petulance and obstinacy.
- Not to murmur at the cross appointed me.
- Not to despise it, by callous stoicism, or willful neglect of duty.
- Not to faint under it, fall beneath it, or run from it.
I am boldly to face it. It is only a wooden cross after all.
I am patiently to endure it, for I have only to carry it a little way.
I am cheerfully to resign myself to it, for my Lord appoints it.
I am obediently to follow Christ with it. What an honor and a comfort to be treading in his steps! This is the essential point.
- It is not enough to bear a cross, we must bear it after Jesus.
- I ought to be thankful that I have only to bear it, and that it does not bear me. It is a royal burden, a sanctified burden, a sanctifying burden, a burden which gives communion with Christ.

III. WHAT SHOULD ENCOURAGE ME?

Necessity: I cannot be a disciple without cross-bearing.
Society: better men than I have carried it.
Love: Jesus bore a far heavier cross than mine.
Faith: grace will be given equal to the weight of the cross.
Hope: good to myself will result from my bearing this load.
Zeal: Jesus will be honored by my patient endurance.
Experience: I shall yet find pleasure in it, for it will produce in me much blessing. The cross is a fruitful tree.
Expectation: glory will be the reward of it. No cross, no crown.
- Let not the ungodly fancy that theirs is a better lot: the Psalmist says, “many sorrows shall be to the wicked.”
- Let not the righteous dread the cross, for it will not crush them: it may be painted with iron colors by our fears, but it is not made of that heavy metal; we can bear it, and we will bear it right joyously.

Nails

When Alexander the Great marched through Persia, his way was stopped with ice and snow, insomuch that his soldiers, being tired out with hard marches, were discouraged, and would have gone no further, which he perceiving, dismounted his horse, and went on foot through the midst of them all, making himself a way with a pickaxe; whereat they all being ashamed, first his friends, then the captains of his army, and, last of all, the common soldiers, followed him. So should all men follow Christ their Savior, by that rough and unpleasant way of the cross that he has traversed before them. He having drunk unto them in the cup of his passion, they are to pledge him when occasion is offered; he having left them an example of his suffering, they are to follow him in the selfsame steps of sorrow.—John Spencer.

The cross is easier to him who takes it up than to him who drags it along.—J. E. Vaux.

We are bid to take, not to make our cross. God in his providence will provide one for us. And we are bid to take it up; we hear nothing of laying it down. Our troubles and our lives live and die together.

—W. Gurnall.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone,

And all the church go free?

No, there’s a cross for every one,

And there’s a cross for me.

“No man,” said Flavel, “has a velvet cross.”

As an old Yorkshire working-man, a friend of mine, said, “Ah! it is blessed work cross-bearing when it’s tied on with love.”—Newman Hall.

Welcome the cross of Christ, and bear it triumphantly; but see that it be indeed Christ’s cross, and not your own.—Wilcox.

Christ’s cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.—Samuel Rutherford.

Whatever the path is, Christ is there, and to be with him is joy enough for any creature, whether man or angel. He does not send us to walk in a dreary, desolate road. He does not say, “Go you,” pointing to a lonely way in which he is not to be found; he says, “Come after me,” so that we need not take a single step where his footprints cannot be seen, and where his presence may not still be found. If the sharp flints cut our feet, they have wounded his before. If the darkness gathers thickly here and there, it was a denser gloom that surrounded him. If often we must stand and fight, it was through fiercer conflicts that he passed. If the cross is heavy to our shoulder, it is light when compared with the one he bore. “Christ leads me,” said Baxter, “through no darker room than he went through before.” If the road were a thousand times rougher than it is, it would be well worth while to walk in it for the sake of walking with Christ there. Following Jesus means fellowship with Jesus, and the joy of that fellowship cannot be told.—P.