What Cost Christ? Part 4

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish.” (Philippians 3:7-8)

Jesus had said to His disciples that the conditional requirement of being His disciple was that a person must bear the cross.  He laid out some rather harsh conditions of what that meant.  Paul is a great illustration of what it meant.  He viewed all that he had in the past or the present as simply rubbish to be thrown away for the joy of walking in close fellowship with Christ and being used by Him in powerful ways.  Later in Philippians he would say that he knew both how to have much and how to have little, but that in whichever condition he found himself to be content and rejoice in Christ. 

Many Christians today find that the cross makes a fine ornament.  We wear them as jewelry, and there is nothing wrong with that by itself.  But, when we wear it as jewelry do we testify to that same cross as being the defining moment and aspect of our lives?  We put the cross on the doors of our homes or the bumpers of our cars.  The same question must be asked wherever we display the cross.  Is it fully displayed in our lives? 

Paul made another great statement about the cross and his relationship to it.  He said in Galatians 2:20 that he died daily.  That is what the cross is all about.  It is a place to die.  It is the place for each believer to die to self and to come alive in Christ to new life and then new purpose in Him.  In baptism we are to see ourselves dying to who we were as lost creatures of wrath and as we pass through the water to see how we are resurrected to new life with Christ.  Each day we are to hold that confession and renew our baptismal vow of dying with Christ and then living with and for Him.

Thomas Shepherd wrote a hymn over 300 years ago that is timeless in its expression of our call and hope in Jesus Christ.  “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?”

Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.

The consecrated cross I’ll bear till death shall set me free;
And then go home my crown to wear, for there’s a crown for me.

O precious cross! O glorious crown! O resurrection day!
When Christ the Lord from Heav’n comes down and bears my soul away.