Following Jesus -Matthew 16:24

"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." -Mark 1:17

Jesus has called us to follow him, just as over 2,000 years ago he called to the disciples and they left everything. Perhaps we cannot follow the same way his disciples did, but Jesus talks of another kind of following:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. -Matthew 16:24

Following Jesus then, begins at our own personal experience of the cross; not only Christ's cross, but our own as well. How does that picture look? The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, gives us a beautiful picture of a Christian's experience at the cross:

Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was which to go was fenced on either side by a wall, and that wall was called salvation. [Isaiah 26:11] Up this way therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty because of the laod on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending. And upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lithesome, and said with a merry heart, "He has given me rest by his sorrow, and life by His death."

At the cross Christ has taken our sin and our shame, he has taken our burden and laid it away in the grave, thrown it into the sepulchre. And we have replaced this burden with a new burden, Christ's yoke. But it is not heavy as our burden of sin was. Christ bids us:

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. -Matthew 11:29-30

We take up the cross, dieing daily upon it to ourselves, and follow Jesus Christ. And just as Jesus returned to heaven after he came up from the grave, we are also not like this world when we have taken up his burden from the cross.



1In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. -Isaiah 26:1 -King James Version