Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
Matthew 16:24-27
OUR HUMAN CONDITION
We love to control what is righteous and hold power over what is respectable. Jesus is a constant threat to our established ways. His lifestyle conflicts with our values, and his word contradicts our life patterns. We hope he will go away; but when he keeps coming on, we reject, ridicule, and finally crucify him.
Disciple
Reading
- Jesus’ birth and childhood
- Sermon on the Mount
- Religious controversy
- Entry into Jerusalem, political conflicts
- Last Supper, betrayal, trial before Caiaphas
- Jesus before Pilate, the Crucifixion
- The Resurrection, Great Commission
Woe to you who long
Amos 5:18-24
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
MARKS OF DISCIPLESHIP
God came into the world in Christ Jesus, upsetting the world’s systems, not by force but by a voluntary, vulnerable love that lays claim upon us. In experiencing that love and that claim, the disciple abandons sham and pretense, thereby becoming vulnerable, and enters into a ministry of making disciples, teaching, baptizing, witnessing, healing, even if this lifestyle leads to conflict and tension as it did for our Lord.
Disciple
Food for Thought 