Chapter Nine--Welcome to Your Death
Chapter Nine
Welcome to Your Death
dis·ci·ple: one who adheres to the teaching of another and imitates his example
The bottom line: in calling us to die, Christ is actually rescuing us from death and giving us real life.
We had avoided going into that room as long as we could. We knew it would not be comfortable, natural, or easy. We were sure none of us would leave the room with any joy. It would have been nice to have been able to talk about life, about tomorrow, about the future. But we went into the room that day to talk about death. Mom’s body simply couldn’t sustain her any longer. She was artificially kept alive by medical technology, and the doctor was there to ask us how long we wanted to keep her in that state. I remember thinking how universal the hatred of death is, how much grief was in this critical care unit, and how many people walking the halls were wishing that they could take life in their hands and give it back to a dying loved one.
In light of all this, it must have been a shock when Christ turned to his followers and announced that they must die. It was not much of a way to excite the crowd or market his kingdom! Christ was calling his listeners to something that is simply counterintuitive for us all. We all work to preserve both our physical lives and our own personal definition of life. We work hard to avoid danger, injury, suffering, difficulty, trial, and loss. This instinct to preserve and defend life is deep within all of us. Yet here the Creator of life is actually calling us to think positively about dying. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. That is, until you begin to understand the profound logic in Christ’s call.
Let’s consider his words found in Luke 9:23—26:
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
Here is one of the most practical truths you will ever consider. It has everything to do with how you are presently investing your life, where you are placing your hope, and the transcendent life that you were created to enjoy. The little kingdom promises life, but brings you death; the big kingdom requires your death, but gives you life.
But you must remember that you will be continually tempted to think that the opposite is true. Let me say it even more forcefully. The biggest danger this side of eternity is death pretending to be life. Death pretended to be life in the garden and has been doing it ever since. Proverbs 14:12 summarizes death’s trickery well: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
We sinners are very good at getting death and life confused. If you pay attention, you will see it all around you. Watch television, for example, where adultery is portrayed as life. Of course, a moment of sexual lust or even the act of illicit sex will seem invigorating at first. It may feel like life at its fullest. But adultery is a cruel investment of both the body and the soul. Scripture warns us where a relationship with an adulteress is heading: “In the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edge sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave” (Proverbs 5:4—5).
Or consider gluttony, which seems like a harmless enjoyment of the good things that the Lord created. It may feel like the good life, but it is actually robbing you of true life and destroying both your body and your soul. Material possessions are sold to us as if they have the power to give life. And because they can be seen and touched, they will seem like life. Surround yourself with fine things that indulge the senses, and you will experience very powerful sensual delights. But materialism actually robs you, because the material things that rule your heart cannot give you life. Materialism will atrophy your soul and end in death.
Again and again the Bible warns us that life consists in more than physical “bread.” You see the trickery functioning even in children. To a child, getting his own way and parenting himself will seem like real life. Disobedience will seem like a quicker path to the good life than obedience. But the Bible says just the opposite. Long life is the promise to those who honor and obey their parents.
So we need to hear the warning of Christ, because the “death pretending to be life” trick will be played on each of us again and again. I want to organize what Christ said in Luke under four headings—the call, the logic, the question, and the warning. Let’s examine Christ’s words together.
The Call: You Must Die
Jesus said, “If you want to be part of me and my kingdom, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me” (author’s emphasis). This call to a three-fold death is the only door to a life that is really life. Jesus calls each of his disciples to follow his example. He who died to give us life promises life to those who are willing to die.
Deny yourself: death to the priority of self. From the earliest age, our love of self shapes everything we do and say. We fight over toys, the last bowl of cereal, and who gets the bathroom first. We work to be thought of as right, to be viewed as attractive, to win the argument with a neighbor, to get the promotion. We strive to be first, best, the center, the most powerful, the best known, the most loved. We really do love us and have a wonderful plan for our own lives! We indulge our desires and do anything we can to meet our own “needs.” If we were really honest, many of us would say that we would be completely satisfied living our own lives for the sake of our own selves. But Christ asks us to do something unthinkable. He asks us to be willing to say “no” to the one person we have the most trouble saying no to—us!
Essentially Christ is saying, “If you want to live, if you want to experience the transcendent joys of my eternal kingdom, then you must let go of your hold on your life. You must loosen your grip and with open hands give your life back to me.” Now ask yourself: “Am I following Christ’s call where I live and work?” Perhaps you’re thinking, Frankly, Paul, I’m not sure what that would look like. Well, think of your life as an investment. Every day each of us invests our time, money, gifts, talents, energies, relationships, and resources in the pursuit of something. Is your life invested in pursuing your life? Does it have a higher goal than your personal wants and needs? Do you find it hard to say “no” to you? Do you find yourself struggling with irritation, impatience, and anger when others unwittingly get in the way of what you want? Are you still holding tightly onto your life as if it really did belong to you?
Take up your cross: death to my pursuit of my life. The cross sticks out in Scripture. It seems crazy, like the greatest aberrant moment of all of history. It seems like a big mistake, a very bad joke. Surely nothing good could come out of God taking on human life and then being publicly, viciously, and unjustly mutilated. There were no positive connotations to the cross. It was the most horrible punishment reserved for the lowliest and vilest of criminals. It was a public shame on a hill outside of the city, and it always ended in death.
Yet the cross is not a bad joke. It is history’s most beautiful paradox. The death of the Messiah was the only way he could give life to those who would believe in him. The hope of the cross is in its willing sacrifice of One for the sake of another. This is exactly what Christ’s call to daily take up your cross is about. The one who sacrificed his life so that we might have life now calls his disciples to sacrifice their lives for him. In a world that only understands the kingdom of self, living for the big kingdom of Christ will always require suffering and sacrifice.
What are you unwilling to offer? Your money? Your lifestyle? Your reputation? Your house? Prestige? Power? The esteem of others? Your car? Your friendships? Your plans for the future? Which of these pleasures would you refuse to nail to your daily cross?
Follow me: death to my pursuit of my plan. Where are you going with your life? Whose plan are you following? Whose dream shapes the decisions that you make and the actions that you take? Who sets the agenda for a given day, week, month, or year? If you could accomplish your plan, what would your life look like? Here Christ calls us to the death of self-rule. He calls us to submit all that we do to his purpose for our lives. As his children, no longer are we to live as little self-lords, exercising sovereignty over our own lives. No, we are called to something bigger than anything we would plan for ourselves. Everything we think, desire, say, and do must fit within the new identity that we have been given. We have been chosen and called to be followers. That means we no longer live with a master mentality. We have been bought and paid for by his blood, and our lives no longer belong to us. (See 1 Corinthians 6:19—20.) Which identity shapes your actions, reactions, and responses to life? Do you walk through your life like a mini-king? Do you try to squeeze the call of Christ into the contours of your self-designed master plan?
Bill had conceived his master plan when he was still in high school. He knew just what he wanted to be and exactly what he wanted his life to look like. He was determined that no obstacle would trip him up. The problem was that Bill was a committed believer, and his plan had begun to collide with God’s plan for him. His plan left little time for investment in his family and his church. His plan left few resources to serve others. His plan was his plan, and it was so tightly woven that there was no place to squeeze God into it. Bill never forsook his faith or left his church, but at a deep personal level there was little that was Christian about his living. Bill’s problem was that Bill was Bill’s master. He had never taken on a follower’s identity.
Christ calls each of his children to this three-fold death: death to the priority of self, death to our pursuit of our lives, and death to our pursuit of our own plan. Are you living as his disciple in this way? Are you following his example? Only as we die to the glory of our claim on our own lives will we begin to experience the transcendent glories of living for the Lord. Only when we are willing to do the unthinkable (preside over our own deaths) does the wonderful (the transcendence for which we were created) become our possession.
The Logic: Rescue from Spiritual Suicide
Why is the call of Christ so hard? Why will he settle for nothing less than this triple death? The answer is because Christ knows us. He knows the character and inertia of sin. Sin in its essence is self-focused. Sin pulls all of us away from the big kingdom and toward the little kingdom. Sin causes my heart to be ruled by personal desire and felt need. Sin makes me want to set my own rules for me and others. Sin will even cause me to co-opt the grace of God for the purposes of my own agenda. Sin makes me want to write my own story and to have God endorse it. Sin makes me demanding and impatient. Sin causes me to wrap both of my hands around my life and do anything I can to preserve it for my own purpose.
Christ, on the other hand, not only calls us to be willing participants in our own death, but he also lays out the logic behind his call. It is found in this one profound big kingdom principle: Try to save your life and you will lose it, but lose your life for Christ’s sake and you will find it. Once again, the little kingdom promises you life but brings you death, while the big kingdom requires your death but gives you life. To jealously hold on to my dream of what I want to accomplish, experience, and enjoy is to guarantee that I will never ever experience true life. Instead, I will experience the slow and progressive shrinking of my soul until there is no life left. You see, our life cannot be found outside of our relationship to the Lord. So, if I am seeking life outside of the One who is life, I am effectively committing spiritual suicide.
The promises of the little kingdom will always fail. They will always leave me coming up short, because the spiritual oxygen that my heart needs to breathe can only be found in the Lord. Achievement, acceptance, appearance, and possessions may give you identity, meaning, and purpose for a while. But they will enslave you in the process and disappoint you in the end. There are more of us out there with these suicidal intentions than not. We are drinking from dry wells and breathing what is not oxygen, but we don’t even know that we are dying in the process.
When you hold onto your life in order to guarantee that you will have life, you destroy any possibility of experiencing the life you were put on earth to enjoy. Those transcendent joys and pleasures for which you were created are only available to you on the other side of your death.
Let me give you one example. In Matthew 6:19—34, Christ teaches that living for my own provision and pleasure leads to worry and anxiety.
And worry never changes anything in my life. At the end of an hour of anxious fretting, none of the things that I have worried about have changed a bit. Yet worry changes me. It is a cancer on my soul. Worry eats away at my time, rest, strength, courage, hope, character, relationships, purpose, worship, joy, and satisfaction. I tell myself that worrying will protect my life, but what I am really experiencing is the death of many good things within me. Holding onto my life is a plan doomed to failure. It is a disease that is always terminal. It will never work.
Admit it, you love you and have a wonderful plan for your life. Your loving Lord knows it, too. He knows how sturdy and resilient your allegiance to your own life is. He knows the power of that personal desire to control, maintain, preserve, and rule your life. He knows this power is so strong that death is the only solution. Until you give up your life, you will always be tempted to substitute the real life of loving, obedient worship of the King for something else that is incapable of giving you life.
The Question: What If You Had It All?
I remember the scene so well. It was as if it was designed right from this passage. In the center was a gorgeous house, positioned high on a hill, with an entire wall made of glass. It was surrounded by carefully manicured grounds, with lush trees and beautiful flowers. I came to know each one of them because I was his gardener. There was the requisite swimming pool and a very large greenhouse. The garage was huge, but luxury automobiles lined the driveway. I could not think of anything this man did not have. He was fabulously wealthy. He had power and position. He had more possessions than he knew what to do with. The whole town woke up each morning under the looming shadow of his mansion. He had it all. But he was a soulless man!
Could there be anything sadder than for a man to live, work, and achieve, only to miss the one thing in life that is truly worth living for? The problem with the man on the hill was not his riches. The problem was that he lived for his riches, and so became shockingly spiritually poor. There is no investment as poor as investment in the kingdom of self! What good would it do to become the richest person on earth and yet miss the one thing that you were placed on earth to experience—that is, intimacy with God and commitment to his glory?
I know all of this, yet still a luxurious meal with my wife can seem more like life than giving that money to the work of God’s kingdom. And the acceptance of a friend can appear more life-giving than the love of the Lord. The accumulation of possessions can seem functionally more life-giving than growth in character. It is so easy to invest your life in all the wrong kinds of treasure. It is so hard to remember that the most important things in life are things unseen. My employer on the hill had not invested his life well. Jesus would say there simply wasn’t any profit in the way he had lived his life.
The Warning: The Danger of Preferring the Little Kingdom
In Luke 9:26, Jesus is basically saying, “Be ashamed of me, and I will be ashamed of you.” What does he mean? To be ashamed of Jesus is to prefer the world and what it has to offer. It means to functionally deny Christ his rightful place in your life. It means to offer the rulership of the thoughts and desires of your heart to something other than Christ. It means to reject Christ’s offer of life and seek to find life somewhere else. It means to elevate the value of the treasures of this present physical world above the surpassing value of knowing Christ.
Now understand, Christ is not talking about the theology you profess to believe, what you would write in a formal statement of faith. Rather, he is talking about what treasures or pleasures so excite and motivate you that they shape everything you desire, think, speak, and do. And here is the warning, “Deny me my rightful place in your life, and I will deny you a place with me in glory.” It is a warning that we, with our quickly wandering hearts, should not take lightly.
Do you esteem Christ on Sunday yet invest the passion and action of your life in other treasures during the week? Yes, you must work, eat, rest, invest, and relate. The issue here is about what rules your heart and sets the agenda for your decisions and actions.
A Sweet Promise
The call of Christ does seem hard. “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” But this hard call is actually the call of grace. It is actually a means of rescue. In calling you to your death, Christ is actually protecting you from death. Your Lord knows that you have suicidal tendencies, so he will not leave you to yourself. He knows that you will tend to look at life and see death and look at death and see life. He knows that you will hold with clenched fists to what is not yours and refuse to open your hands to what is a gift. What could be more horrible than to get everything I want and miss the one thing that I was made for? His death call is really an offer to a life beyond your wildest dreams—a life of joy, satisfaction, purpose, and pleasure that this sadly broken world could never deliver in its finest moment. Shrinking your life to the size of your life is not life. It is death wearing the mask of life.
Yet, because of God’s endless love and amazing grace, every one of his calls to us is wrapped in comfort. Each command is welcome, and each plea is dyed with mercy. Listen to the invitation recorded in Isaiah 55:1—2.
Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
There is a rich and satisfying life to be found. There are delights to be known that will transcend anything you could plan or achieve for yourself. If you are God’s child, your life has transcendent meaning and purpose. But these things will never be found as long as you are holding tightly to your life. Isaiah would say to each of us, “Why are you working so hard for what will never satisfy? Why are you investing so much in what can never fulfill?” This amazing life of transcendent meaning, purpose, and joy is to be found on the other side of your death. It is only when you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow your Lord that you begin to experience the transcendent humanity for which you were created.
Remember, Christ’s call to you is a rescue. In asking you to deny yourself and follow, he is giving to you what you could never earn or achieve on your own. You will not find it in your marriage, in parenting your children, in accumulating possessions, in the esteem of friends, in theological knowledge, or in the most beautiful location. Christ offers you what you cannot earn and what the physical creation can never offer: the all-surpassing glory of knowing him. This is the world’s best prize. This is the universe’s best meal. This is the only thing that will give your life meaning and fill you with lasting joy.
The final question: in your everyday situations and relationships, where are you finding it hard to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ?