From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be rejected and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
So Peter (interrupted and) took him aside and began to rebuke him: “God forbid, Lord! This must not happen to you!”But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Adversary (Satan)! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.”
Then Jesus called the crowd, along with his disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
For whoever wants to save his psuche (life)[1] will lose it, but whoever loses his psuche (life) for my sake and for the gospel will save it. For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his psuche (soul)? What can a person give in exchange for his psuche (soul)?
Interesting. Last week, Peter’s confession of faith meant he was the kind of person on which the church would be built (“You are petros, and upon this petra I will build my church”). Jesus followed this immediately with a teaching on how this kind of person would have permission to ‘bind and loose.’ The idea was that his followers had the ability to make decisions that would clarify godly restraints and freedoms - if they were done in line with the order God had already established in heaven.
Well, Peter seems to have misunderstood the scope of this new authority. He does something unthinkable in Judaism: he, the disciple, flexes that ‘binding’ power by stepping in and not only stopping but correcting the rabbi he is following. Worse than that, he stopped and corrected the person he had just described as The Christ, the son of the living God. It’s not his finest moment.
It must have been cool when Jesus made a pun with his name when he declared him to be the Rock. Now, there is another pun on his name: he’s a “stumbling block,” skandalon, “the native rock rising up through the earth, which trips up the traveler.”[2] Peter did not ‘bind on earth’ what had been bound in heaven. As Jesus notes, “You are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.”
I’m sure it seemed wise in the moment, but if Peter had gotten his way he would have stopped God’s plan of salvation. By offering the King a kingdom that bypassed the road to the cross, Peter unwittingly echoed the path of ease laid out by Satan when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (see Matthew 4). In Peter’s intervening words, Jesus recognizes the plan of the Adversary at work.
Then Jesus turns Peter’s attempt to save Jesus’ physical life into a teachable moment concerning priorities in life that will have an impact on our physical and spiritual life. Here, I paraphrase from what Paul wrote to the Philippians:
“If you are going to follow me - if you want to experience the power of my resurrection - you have to follow me into the fellowship of my suffering on the cross.”[3]
* * * * *
The call to discipleship is a call to “deny ourselves”, which broadly speaking means giving up self-rule. It’s not as simple as passing up that third donut or doomscrolling for one hour instead of two. It’s bigger than that. We have a King now. We are called to align ourselves with the plans of the King and the commitments of the Kingdom. This means, among other things, we will take up a cross and follow Jesus into a kind of death before we emerge into newness of psuche (life of the soul). Only God’s will matters for life and for eternity.[4]
We are going to end up talking about the call to spiritual death and resurrection, but I’d like to start by talking about physical death in order to make some comparisons. I think there are some connections between the two. What we can learn about the clash between what we believe and what we feel in relation to physical death may be instructive as we consider the call in the Bible to be crucified with Christ, to die so we may live.
If you are a follower of Christ and study Scripture, there are two things you know/believe about death:
· Life as we know it is going to end.
· There is life on the other side, better and different than this one.
I think the hurdle of believing this in our head is often not as daunting as really feeling the truth of this in our soul. I noticed this contrast recently when I was re-reading a journal I kept after my father’s death from cancer. At one point I began a poem this way:
My fountainhead shriveled, dried up in his bed.
With my tears I watered the grave of the dead
then staggered back home,
a few miles too far from a father who loved me,
and who is not anymore.
At the time the thought that would not leave me was that my father was dead. It was so hard to say those words out loud: “My father is dead.” It was so final. The finality of it was overwhelming to me. There seemed no way for me to say, “Death, where is your victory?” when there was a body in a grave. In spite of what I knew in my head to be true about Dad’s life to come – I mean, I’ve been soaked in Scripture all my life - letting that to soak into me was a different story entirely.
I found help in an unexpected area – movies. I think my imagination needed to be captured to remind my emotions about the “hope that lies within me.”
There is a scene in Lord Of The Rings in which Pippen says to Gandalf, in the midst of battle,
“PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.”
Indeed. I remember singing a hymn growing up that described the life that awaits followers of Jesus as “joy unspeakable, and full of glory.”
So in my journal, I had written a poem about my father who loved me, but who was not anymore.But later I wrote something different. I was making a list of things that I wanted God to help me remember in the midst of my grief, and one of those was:
“Help me remember that my father did not stop living; he just stopped living here.”
We fear death because it looks like existence is over. It certainly appears that way. But as I was so powerfully reminded in those months and years following Dad’s death, both in Scripture and in good stories, death is not the end. And if I only knew what kind of new life waited on the other side, I would be a different man. This is seeing the living that is found in dying. But…
If I want a new life, I must first have a death.
So, let’s apply the physical principles to the spiritual part of our lives.
#1 Life as we know it is going to end.
I suspect we process the challenge of spiritual death in much the same way we process physical death. The Bible is not confusing on this issue. If you plan to be a follower of Jesus, you must commit to dying.
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with…”(Romans 6:6)
"I affirm by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily." (I Corinthians 15:31)
Life as we knew it before following Jesus is going to end. It’s going to feel like a death, because it is. And it’s going to be hard, because dying is hard.
I have to stop judging people when it makes me feel so good about myself?
I have to overcome my addictive behaviors when they numb me so well, or entertain me so much, or make me feel so good?
I have to stop gossiping, even though my friendships have a lot of “shared prayer concerns” and adrenaline-inducing scandals of our neighbors and friends?
I have to go home and work things out with my spouse when holding a grudge is so much easier?
I have to choose my words wisely and carefully and think about how what I am about to say is going to land on other people?
Yes. We have to die. Life as we know it – with us at the center of our own little world - is supposed to end.
The funny thing is, before we died to the sinfulness in us - the habits and behaviors and mindsets - life was already hard. Sin takes a toll on us. What we reap, we sow. And yet we are really reluctant to leave it at times.
" When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable." - Dean Koontz
This idea of dying suggest pain, which is true, but until we believe that the result of death will be better than the result of the life we now have, we won’t change.[5]
It’s hard to stop judging people, because if that’s the only way I have to feel good about myself, then apparently I will be miserable if I stop.
It’s hard to overcome addictive behaviors: what will numb me now? What will entertain me now? What will make me feel good now?
It’s hard to stop gossiping, because then I will realize how few things of substance I actually say, and how talking about others has allowed me to avoid talking about myself, and that’s a can of worms that I don’t want to open.
It’s hard to go home and work things out with my spouse: I would much rather savor the idea that I am right and she is wrong, rather than allow her to hold up a mirror and show me a little more clearly who I am.
It’s hard to take the time to analyze the power and impact of my words, because now I can’t just blurt things out, and I have to get to know other people so I can better understand how they might experience what I have to say, and I might be wrong in what I was just about to say (and I might have been wrong before, now that I think about it…)
#2 We believe there is new life on the other side of resurrection – but it is so hard to see.
"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." C.S. Lewis
If if I am correct that we process spiritual and physical death the same way, then I suspect that we have a hard time matching what we believe to be the truth about life on the other side of spiritual death vs. what it feels like in the moment as we think about getting there. But notice what the Bible says awaits us on the other side of spiritual death.
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:6-7)
Most assuredly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain. (John 12:24)
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus…Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6:8-14)
“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish (garbage thrown to the dogs). (Philippians 3:8-9)
"If, then, you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory." (Colossians 3:1-4)
So from just these verses, I know that if I die a spiritual death, and God raises me up,
A) I am brought from death to life (transformed)
B) I am no longer enslaved to sin (free)
C) I will produce much grain (impactful)
D) I will be an instrument of righteousness (effective)
E) I will know Christ Jesus my Lord (connected with God)
F) I will share in God’s glory (identified with God)[6]
But new life is not just about us. It’s about my wife, my kids, my friends, my neighbors. They need me to die, so that I can really learn how to live.
When I, as a husband, die to self-justification and defensiveness, I am raised into a life of self-awareness and growth, and I am relieved of the obligation of making my wife the scapegoat for our problems, and that is a marriage with new life.
When we die to addictive behaviors, we are raised to a new life in which we are free of the control of sin; instead of numbing our pain we meet it and conquer it; instead of being constantly distracted from life we engage it; instead of relying on the occasional rush of drugs or adrenaline to make us happy, we rely on the presence of God to find peace. And now the community has yet one more person who is engaged, and conquering (or at least working on it), and a little more steady, and a little more peaceful…
When we die to gossip, we are raised into compassion for others. Now instead of everybody wrestling with shame as they wonder how many people are talking about them behind their backs because they, in a moment of weakness, talked to you, they are looking forward to meeting with you again because they know that you are safe, and that you care. And now our conversations with others can take on some depth. “No, we can’t talk about Bob today.” “Now what?” How about your kids, your marriage, your walk with God…”
When we die to unthoughtful speech, we free the people around us from living in fear about what we might say next, how we might callously offend, how we might belittle or undermine or dig. We replace thoughtlessness with thoughtfulness; we replace our right to say what we want with the responsibility of saying that which “fills people with good things.” (Proverbs 12:14)
I like how C.S. Lewis summarizes this idea:
"The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life... Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (Mere Christianity)
And for all of us who want to celebrate spiritual resurrection, let’s practice a rhythm of dying and living this week. Die to yourself and then live with a friend over coffee; die to yourself and then live with your spouse over supper; die on your own, in prayer before God, and then stand and walk in newness of life.
Take up your cross this week and let Resurrection reveal its power.
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[1] Jesus seems to use both definitions of this word to make a point. From HELPS Word Studies:
“5590 psyxḗ (from psyxō, "to breathe, blow" which is the root of the English words "psyche," "psychology") – soul (psyche); a person's distinct identity(unique personhood), i.e. individual personality.” This is translated as “life” in the first half of the paragraph.
“5590 (psyxē) corresponds exactly to the OT 5315 /phágō ("soul"). The soul is the direct aftermath of God breathing (blowing) His gift of life into a person, making them an ensouled being.” This is translated “soul” in the second half of the paragraph.
[2] One of the definitions according to HELPS word studies.
[3] What Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10
[4] “To follow Him means to live as He lived with all that involves of humility, poverty, compassion, love, grace, and every other godly virtue…Jesus warned that those who hug their lives for selfish purposes would never find fulfillment; those who recklessly abandon their lives to Him, not counting the cost, would find the reason for their existence.”(Believer’s Bible Commentary)
[5] “You find that the things you let go of while following Jesus were the things that were going to destroy you in the end.” Francis Chan
[6] “I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?” Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat