How Many Crosses Can A Body Bear ?

Common Sense Commentary: How many crosses can a Christian carry anyway ?

Jesus challenged all who would follow Him, "Take up the cross and follow me." Mk.10:21. Notice that He said, "the cross". "The" is specific, a definite article, one of a kind. He also said, to His disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me". Mt.16:24. These two verses reveal that "the" cross is singular in meaning, but plural in that each of us has our own to bear. To better understand how this can be, consider this; There is only one Holy Bible but many Christian's have a copy. So it is with "the" cross each Christian must bear if we are to "follow" Jesus.

So what is your cross ? Is it your particular physical flaw or mental shortcoming ? No! Is it your private perversion ? No! Is it your ridiculed denomination ? No! Is it your strict, personal convictions ? No! Is it your "besetting sin" ? No! Is it your "that's just me" personality ? No! Is it your fat or skinny body ? No! Jesus bore His cross and we, as Christians must each bear the cross He has assigned us.

When Jesus carried that cross through Jerusalem and up Mount Calvary, it represented all that He stood for, preached, taught and lived for. It represented all those things about Jesus that the world hated, ridiculed and for which He was condemned and crucified.

So what is your cross ? It is all those things which you bear for our Lord Jesus Christ which is hated, feared and denied by the world and for which Christians are "crucified with Christ". Paul said, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me..."Gal.2:20
So what is your cross ? It is all those similarities of Christ in you which separate us from the world ... even the religious world, upon which they nail your reputation and testimony and lift it up for the world to see and ridicule, even as they did our Lord. It is Christ in you. It is confessing Christ in a worldly crowd. It is rough hewn and painful to our flesh. It is hard to consistently bear this "Jesus cross" in a wicked world where it is unwanted but so desperately needed. Our cross is to believe the Bible is the verbally inspired Word Of God in a world which doesn't believe a word of it. Our cross is to believe God created the world and universe, as the Bible says, in a world which worships the "false science" of evolution, worldly accomplishment, wealth, power, possessions and sophistication, but not the true God. Our cross is to believe Jesus, God's Son, died for the sins of the world, was buried dead but arose back to life.

Our cross is to believe Jesus is coming again, to this world where Satan keeps inspiring religious counterfeits to grab the public eye by setting dates for His second coming and the end of the world. Our cross is to be classified with some lying, pseudo preacher pleading for money, on television, when he already has three mansions and a five million dollar jet and he calls that "Christian". Counterfeit Christians are NOT following the humble Jesus or bearing His glorious cross. They are carrying their own load of self styled, comfort crosses and hundreds of "offering" buckets.

Being a true, Bible Believing, faithful Christian is enough of a cross to bear to occupy all of our time, all of our energy, all of our endurance and all of our credibility. How foolish and wasteful it is for a true Christian to add a bunch of plastic or lead crosses to "the" cross assigned to each of us. How destructive and unnecessarily offensive it is to heap up on top of the Fundamentals of the Faith a pile of personal convictions which cannot be clearly confirmed in the Bible. The lost world sees our inconsistent convictions, self-righteousness smoldering, and unholy tirades, and reacts with an outpouring of contempt against all that we stand for .... including the good part. We unequally yoke together Holy Writ with dubious personal convictions and spoil it all ... when lost souls are at stake.

No human being can carry both burdens. It is enough to bear our cross of Divine Calling and Holy Purpose. It is enough to consume all of you, for life, just to carry God's gospel of Jesus Christ, without adding your own gospel and trivial, plastic and dead weight causes to it.

"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Heb.12:1.

Pass it on. RB