There is a wonderful story of St. Francis of Assisi and one of his student monks. “One day Saint Francis and Brother Leo were walking down the road. Noticing that Leo was depressed, Francis turned and asked: ‘Leo, do you know what it means to be pure of heart?’ ‘Of course. It means to have no sins, faults or weaknesses to reproach myself for.’ ‘Ah,’ said Francis, ‘Now I understand why you’re sad. We will always have something to reproach ourselves for.’ ‘Right,’ said Leo, ‘That is why I despair at ever arriving at purity of heart.’ ‘Leo, listen carefully to me. Don’t be so preoccupied with the purity of your heart. Turn and look at Jesus. Admire him. Rejoice that he is what he is — your Brother, your Friend, your Lord and Savior. That, little brother, is what it means to be pure of heart. And once you’ve turned to Jesus, don’t turn back and look at yourself. Don’t wonder where you stand with him. ‘The sadness of not being perfect, the discovery that you really are sinful, is a feeling much too human, even borders on idolatry. Focus your vision outside yourself on the beauty, graciousness and compassion of Jesus Christ. The pure of heart praise him from sunrise to sundown. Even when they feel broken, feeble, distracted, insecure and uncertain, they are able to release it into his peace. A heart like that is stripped and filled with the fullness of God. It is enough that Jesus is Lord.’
After a long pause, Leo said, ‘Still Francis, the Lord demands our effort and fidelity.’ ‘No doubt about that,’ replied Francis, ‘But holiness is not a personal achievement. . . .it doesn’t come by your Herculean efforts and threadbare resolutions.’
‘Then how?’ asked Leo. ‘Simply hoard nothing of yourself; sweep the house clean. Sweep out even the attic, even the nagging painful consciousness of your past. Accept being shipwrecked. Renounce everything that is heavy, even the weight of your sins. See only the compassion, the infinite patience, and the tender love of Christ. Jesus is Lord. That suffices. Your guilt and reproach disappear into the nothingness of non-attention. You are no longer aware of yourself, like the sparrow aloft and free in the azure sky. Even the desire for holiness is transformed into a pure and simple desire for Jesus.’”
There is a great truth in this beautiful story. Our desire for holiness, or goodness, means nothing unless it is a desire for Jesus. A desire for Jesus results in a desire to be like him and take on his character. But even the desire to be like him cannot come before the desire for Jesus himself. When the desire for holiness comes first it turns into pride and self-righteousness. A judgmental spirit is developed. But when the desire for Jesus himself comes first, the desire to take on his character naturally follows, and day by day desire becomes reality. You begin to understand that it is not what you give up that makes you pure, it is what you become.
It is unfortunate that this kind of Christian lifestyle is seen as unattainable by so many. It is even more unfortunate that it is seen as meant only for the super spiritual. We are afraid that if we took this seriously it would make us freakish. On the other hand, there are those who may see it as attainable, but undesirable. They think, “If I gave myself completely to God he would take away all the things I love and enjoy.” People who believe this see God as the cosmic killjoy. “If I die to myself,” they say, “there will nothing left of me.” They see it as dying, but fail to see that it is the beginning of living.
The first thing I would like to point out is that in order to understand the crucified life: We must understand who God is. Your love for God is directly related to your understanding of who he is. If you think he is mean and vengeful, then you will not give him a very large place in your heart. If you think he delights in taking your joy away, you will not get very close. If you are not sure you can trust him, you will not open your heart up very far. If you think he pays more attention to what you do wrong than what you do right, then you will want to stay away from him. But if you understand who God really is, you will run to him leaving everything else behind.
He is the God of all compassion and goodness. He is faithful and loving. He is our Father and cares for us more than we can ever know. But we must never forget that he is our Creator and that we are dependent upon him for our next breath and heartbeat. He is God and we are not. The prophet Isaiah said, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).
It is interesting that Brian David Mitchell, the man who kidnaped Elizabeth Smart, declared that he was not only a prophet, but called himself Emmanuel and claimed to be God. Is there anyone who would disagree that his life was upside down? But anytime we fail to give God his rightful place, we are creating our own dysfunctional, upside down world where we take God’s place. Our God is not only worthy of our worship, he is worth giving our entire lives. When we give up our life to receive his life, we discover the joy of what life was designed to be. When we come face to face with God, the only appropriate response is a full surrender. We are to die to ourselves so that we might come alive to God. When you understand who God is, you realize what you owe him — everything. He is the only person to whom it is worth giving our lives. It is worth giving up our life in order to gain his life. Paul said, “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).
Why are we willing to give up what we want in life? We do it in order to gain the life God has for us! The Bible says, “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:3-5). We give up the petty plans we have for our lives in order to receive his great plan for our lives. And we do it because of the mercy he has shown us as our Savior and our God. He “has saved us and called us to a holy life — not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9). Or as the apostle John says, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19 KJV).
But, secondly, in order to understand the crucified life: We must understand who we are. Once we understand that God is worth our worship, and the devotion of all we have and are, we understand who we are. We are sinners who have been saved by God’s wonderful grace. But we are more than that. We were created to be heirs of God’s kingdom. We are the children of God, created in his image. The divine stamp is on our souls. The divine inheritance awaits us as sons and daughters of God. God has called us his “treasured possession” (Exodus 19:5). It is hard to behave like trash when you understand that you are treasured by God. When you understand that God sees you as a prince or princess, you can’t be satisfied with living in the gutter. Suddenly you hold your head high, and you want to live up to that which God says you are capable. Someone has seen the potential in you and you want to live out that potential.
Let’s imagine a situation where a homeless man is begging on the streets of New York. A well dressed man in a long limousine pulls up next to him and offers him a job as vice-president of his company. You might say that is ridiculous; nothing like that would ever happen. But that is exactly what God has done for us. He rescued us from the gutter. We were homeless and he gave us a new home. We were the rejects of the world, but he gave us self respect. We had nothing, but he gave us everything. He asks us to be a part of his kingdom and work for it.
But, now, let’s say that the homeless man sneers at him and rejects the offer for several reasons. First, he will have to give up what is familiar to him. Obviously, it is a terrible life, but it is the only life he knows how to live. Secondly, he has a few possessions which he pushes around in a cart, and the few clothes he owns are on his back. And one of the conditions the man in the limousine makes is that the man must leave everything and get into the limousine. The third reason is that the man will actually have to work and accept responsibility. Life on the street was bad, but at least no one expected anything from him. No one expected him to be any different. So he turns from the man in the expensive suit and shuffles down the street hoping for a warm grate that he can sleep on for the night.
Does the man in the story understand what he has given up? He would have had a home, a job, a purpose, a great bank account, and a high position in an important business. But he passed it up to keep what he had. How foolish. This is why Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). Dallas Willard reminds us that if we are going to talk about the cost of discipleship, we ought to balance it by talking about the cost of non-discipleship.
Are you like the homeless man? When Christ comes to ask you to die to yourself and give up your old life, you refuse. You think about all the stuff in your cart that you will have to give up. You may be miserable, but at least you are used to it, and you know how to get by. You are not sure you would know what to do if you really died to your old life. Besides, you don’t want to put forth the effort to change. You don’t want the responsibility of living the Christian life fully. But what if you understood that you were in line to inherit the business? You were not just a partner, you were an heir. And the reason you were selected was that the man in the limousine, unknown to you, was really your father who had searched until he found you. He knew your potential. He understood what you were capable of. He wanted to call you more than vice-president; he wanted to call you son. The Bible says, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:16-17).
The final point is this: We must decide whose life we will live. What it all comes down to is a decision. Will you live your life, or will you live God’s life? Will you live out your own petty plans, or will your life take on an eternal dimension, as you live out God’s plans for you? Will you be comfortable, or will you let Christ make you new? Will you trust him to take you into the future, or will you remain in control? Will you love him, or love yourself? Will you die to yourself?
The cartoon showed a woman talking to her pastor in his study. Evidently the pastor had asked her about her spiritual life. The cartoon has her saying, “Well, I haven’t actually DIED to sin, but I did feel kind of faint once.” You have to do more than just feel faint. You have to make the decision to die completely to your old life, your plans and desires. The purpose of this is to take up the life God wants you to live, his plans and his desires. This doesn’t mean that you sell your house and become a missionary in the jungles of South America. It does not mean that you quit your job or sell your SUV. It does not mean that nothing you have done in your life so far has been right. To the casual observer, it may appear that you are doing all the same things you have done before. But your heart is different. It has been changed. Your goal is not to please yourself, but to please God. Your attitude and motives have turned around. You don’t have to wear a robe and eat locusts. You don’t have to try to make great sacrifices. Real life will present you with plenty of opportunities to die to yourself and choose God’s will over your own.
Sixteenth-century spiritual director François Fenelon, in his book The Seeking Heart explains: “Self-denial has its place in a Christian’s life, but God doesn’t ask you to choose what is most painful to you. If you followed this path you would soon ruin your health, reputation, business, and friendship. Self-denial consists of bearing patiently all those things that God allows to pass into your life. If you don’t refuse anything that comes in God’s order, you are tasting of the cross of Jesus Christ.”
In one mans’s life, God asked him to do the most difficult thing imaginable. Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless. God had promised them both that they would be the parents of a multitude. “Your offspring will be as vast as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore,” is how God put it. They would be the parents of a whole new race of people. But time was passing and they did not even have one child. They wanted to believe God, but they had given up in their hearts. It was very late in their lives. Sarah was full of wrinkles and Abraham could hardly get around, when they had a son. His name was Isaac. It meant laughter, because they thought it was hilarious that God would grant two such old people a child. Their hopes came alive, and now they believed God was able to do anything — even make them parents of a new nation of people.
But then one day, God asked Abraham to do something which he could not imagine. God asked Abraham to take his son — his only son — and offer him as a sacrifice on an altar of fire, as the pagans who lived around him did for their gods. It was completely unlike God and went against everything Abraham knew about him. His mind reeled and he staggered with the thought of what God was asking him to do. But Abraham had learned one thing over his long years: to trust God no matter what. So off he went, with unsuspecting Isaac carrying the wood on his back on which he would be laid. Isaac knew they were going to worship the Lord and offer a sacrifice, but he had no idea it was to be him. When they came to the place, Abraham bound his son, laid him on the altar and raised the knife. All his dreams were about to die with Isaac. Every hope that had burned in his breast would go up in smoke. He would again be childless and there was little hope of being the father of a multitude now. But he was willing to do what God asked him to do, even when he could not understand it. But as Abraham brought the knife down, God stopped him. God’s intention was never to have Abraham kill his son, but to see if he was willing to sacrifice the thing that was closest to his heart. Was he willing to die to his dreams and cling to God alone. Abraham passed that test.
I have to wonder if I would pass the test. Sometimes I have a hard time handing over the minor loves of my life, let alone the things that are central and strike at my heart. God is not as interested in having me hand over these things as he is in my willingness to hand them over. These do not have to be bad things. They may be good things, but if they begin to take God’s place, or distract me from loving him, then I must be willing to place them on the altar and lift the knife. It is a part of taking up my cross daily and living the crucified life.
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”
Rodney J. Buchanan
March 16, 2003
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
The Crucified Life
Questions for March 16, 2003
1. Read Luke 9:23. What is the meaning of Jesus’ words, and how are we to live them out?
2. How different would most Christians’ lives be if they took these words seriously?
3. What misconceptions do many people have when it comes to “dying to self”?
4. What is the cost of not dying to ourselves?
5. Why is understanding who God is important if we are going to live a crucified life?
6. Why is understanding who we are important in this process?
7. What struggles have you had in deciding who is going to sit on the throne of your life? What have been the things that have helped you to decide to allow God to rule?
8. Many feel this kind of life is only for those who are the most spiritual. Why is it important to understand that this is a part of the normal Christian experience?
9. Read Luke 9:24. What does it mean to “lose” our lives? How does this make it possible to find our lives?
10. Read Luke 9:25. What does it mean to be an “alien and stranger” in this world? What would it be like to reach the end of life and discover that you have sought all the wrong things?
