Passion Defined

My pastor had a wonderful message this morning from Mark 8, and I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to challenge you all with something that really challenged and convicted me! Mark 8:34-38 says, “And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Wow, pretty powerful, huh? Jesus tells us that if we are to follow, then we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross. Now we have to admit, denying ourselves of anything isn’t pleasant! If you’re like me, trying to figure out how I can deny myself of anything that I want or like is the last thing that I’m going to do! So why does Jesus tell us to deny ourselves as part of following Him? It’s because the more we are filled with “us,” the less we are filled with Christ, and the less we are filled with Christ, the less we are willing to give up our own desires and be used for His glory. If we are to follow Christ, we must deny ourselves and live a life of self-sacrifice, which leads into the next aspect of following Christ: taking up our crosses. This is really neat and powerful, and I’ve never really thought about this before. What is the significance of Christ saying “…take up [your] cross and follow me…?” I think it’s interesting to realize that when Jesus told the crowd and the disciples that part of following Him meant taking up the cross, Jesus hadn’t even died on the cross yet! The cross, however, was widely known throughout the land in those times as one of the most cruel, horrendous instruments of torture and death imaginable. So did Christ basically say that to follow Him, one must essentially suffer an excruciating death? What does He mean? Well, it all goes back to living a life of self-sacrifice and denying one’s self. What is the ultimate thing that you could give up of yourself? It’s your life! When you think about it, it’s really a gruesome analogy to think that the kind of sacrifice that Christ wants is an unimaginably painful one, one that strips us of everything we have, ultimately life itself! But in verse 35 it says, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” I love how the Christian life is one of opposites! You lose to gain, you die to live. Jesus wants us to be willing to give up everything, even our very lives for His sake. What does that say about us as Christians if we aren’t willing to give up everything for the One Who laid down His life for us? It says we are ashamed of Him and His Gospel. Think about this: Jesus obeyed the will of the Father to give up everything to die the worst death possible so that we might have a way of salvation. He was God!!! But, He came humbly, obediently to the cross. As mere humans, the least we can do is give up our worthless lives for the Name of Christ. Verse 38 tells us that if we are ashamed of Christ, then He will be ashamed of us. If someone pointed a gun at your head and asked you if you believe in Jesus, what would you say? Would you be ashamed of the One Who took on your sins, even though He was perfect, so that you could have life, and have it more abundantly? We need to be willing to give up our all, even if it means our very lives, for the cause of Christ. God help me if I am ever in that situation, because my own strength would never be enough. My prayer is that if someone ever asked me if I believed in Jesus, and my answer meant life or death, that I would not be ashamed of my Savior. I’ll leave you with this simple question: What would you do?