If Christ called us to deny ourselves, it is because he denied himself for us. What does it mean to deny yourself and carry your cross? We can get some idea of what it might include by looking at the life of our Lord.
Isaiah prophesied in (Isaiah 53:3) that Jesus was going to be a man of sorrows. However, the suffering of Jesus did not begin in Gethsemane but a long time before that. Jesus embraced the cross the minute he was born, and he continued to embrace it with love until he was crucified, until the very end. Even though we do not know much about the first thirty years that Christ lived on this earth, we can still catch a few glimpses of how he carried his cross long before he was crucified.
First, we see the cross at his birth as Mary and Joseph found no place in the inn (Luke 2:7). We also see it in the massacre of the children of Bethlehem by King Herod (Matthew 2:16-17) and in the family's flight to Egypt until Herod's death.
Peter summarizes the pain Jesus experienced, "When he was insulted, he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but placed his hopes in God, the righteous Judge." (1 Peter 2:23). Jesus embraced the cross when he was cursed, but he never cursed anyone back.
Jesus, who was entirely without sin, denied himself when he asked John to baptize him (Matthew 3:13-15). It was an act of self-denial when Jesus submitted himself to the temptations of Satan (Matthew 4:1-10).
Jesus also embraced the cross when the religious leaders accused him of being a Samaritan and of being demon possessed (John 8:48) and of driving out demons only because he was in league with Satan (Matthew 12:24). He also had to bear his cross when he was maliciously misunderstood and people claimed that he wasn't sent of God because he didn't keep the Sabbath (John 9:16).
In these and other events in Jesus' life, we see that he was insulted, endangered, misunderstood, and had to stoop to do things far below who he was. In all these things he humbled himself.
If Jesus denied himself and carried his cross, should we not follow him?
- 22 APRIL -