Discipleship: Come and Die (Part 3)
This is part three of a three part series on what it means to be a Christian.
In part one, we looked at the requirements of following Jesus: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ. In part two, we looked at the reasons Christ gave, to compel us to follow Him. In this post, we’ll look at the rewards of discipleship.
III. The Rewards of Discipleship
In Mark 9:1, Jesus said,
“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
In this verse, the reward for discipleship is the kingdom.
There are many benefits of being a disciple of Christ: forgiveness for all your sins, eternal salvation, everlasting hope, adoption into the family of God, courage in trials, confidence in suffering, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the love of the church, etc. etc. But in this post, I want to focus in on just one passage.
Romans 6:5-8
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
1. United with Jesus
Notice how in this passage Paul ties believers together with Christ.
Because He died, we too have died. We have died to our old selves. In other words, we have denied ourselves—discipleship requirement #1. Because He was crucified, we too have been crucified. Our old sinful selves were crucified with Him. We have taken up our crosses—requirement #2. Because He was raised in resurrection life, we, too, will be resurrected physically to be with Him forever. That happens at the end of our life, the end of our journey following Him—requirement #3.
Do you see it? Jesus is the One who denied Himself. Jesus is the One who took up His cross. Jesus is the One who followed the will of God—suffering, rejection, crucifixion—and then was raised from the dead. As disciples, all we are doing is copying Him, our Master.
But it’s better than that. Look at Romans 6:5
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
We don’t follow Jesus only to become like Him; we actually become united with Him in an everlasting relationship of love. He is the One who makes the demands of discipleship—and He is the One who makes it worth it.
Jesus is not just a door to walk through to get to heaven. He is Door and the Way and the Reward. The Church of Jesus Christ through all ages is called the Bride of Christ, which means that Jesus is our Groom. He is the one who loved us and gave Himself up for us in the greatest manifestation of love that humanity has ever seen.
He is the Lord of love, full of lovingkindness and truth. He is grace incarnate, salvation’s sweetest flower, the helper and Savior of our weary souls. Who comforts like He does? Who saves like He does? Who forgives, restores, transforms, helps, heals, empowers like He does? He has become our righteousness from God, our sanctification, our redemption, our treasure, our wisdom, our help, our hope of glory. To follow Him, you must give up everything. But in the end, you don’t really lose anything, because you gain Him.
Paul exemplifies this attitude in Phil 3:8
…I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for [Him] I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,
Paul says he lost everything—and considered them trash—in order to gain Christ. And it was worth it. Jesus is the greatest treasure you could ever have. Living as His disciple means you receive Him.
2. Freed from the Slavery of Sin
Because we were crucified with Jesus, we have died, and having died, we were set free from the slavery of sin. Now, if you are reading this, you haven’t been crucified or killed physically! But if you are a Christian, your old self was crucified. The old self is who you were before becoming a Christian, the old self that loved sin and hated God. That old you bowed down to Lord Self and Lord Sin, not the Lord Jesus. You couldn’t stop sinning, didn’t want to stop sinning, and suffered all of the horrific consequences for it.
But if you are a Christian, that old self died, in fact was crucified with Christ. And because that old self is dead, you’re free! You don’t have to sin any more. You don’t have to be addicted to pornography. You don’t have to be a slave to the world’s agenda. You don’t have to fear other’s opinions of you. You don’t have to listen to the voices of depression and anxiety and suicide.
You are free in Christ, and by His strength can live no longer for the old self, but as a brand new person in Jesus Christ. Can you believe it? Free from the guilt and shame because of Christ!
3. Freed Unto God
We are freed from sin in order to be united with God. That’s why ultimately denying ourself, while hard, is fundamentally good. It is saying to yourself, “No!” in order to say to God, “Yes!”
The new self hates sin and loves God. The new self wants what God wants, and delights in Him and His ways. It lives not for self, but for Christ. This is a tiny taste of the resurrection life that is coming, when we will be finally completely free from our old sin. We have the great hope of Heaven, and that everlasting hope spurs us on to live for Him today.
Conclusion
This account of Thomas Cranmer comes primarily from a blog post by one of my professors, Nathan Busenitz, writing on a blog called the Cripple Gate.1
Cranmer was an English Christian in the 1500s, a leader in the English Reformation, a movement restoring the true gospel to the church, as a writer, a theologian, and a pastor. But, at the end of his life, he was imprisoned by the Catholic government for almost three years, and given the choice: deny the true gospel or be burned alive.
He chose to deny. To avoid death, he signed official documents stating that he, Thomas Cranmer, had renounced everything about the Reformation, denying all the truth that he had seen in the Scriptures. Effectively, he denied the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yet, the Catholic government wanted to have him executed anyways. So on March 21, 1556, they marched him out to nearby church to give one last speech affirming his denial of biblical Christianity.
But to the Catholics’ shock, from the pulpit, he denied his previous denial. He reversed his denial of Jesus and instead gladly chose to die for the sake of Jesus Christ his Lord. Before they pulled him out of the pulpit, Cranmer swore to put his right hand which had signed the official documents into the fire first, and boldly face death by flames for the sake of his Lord.
The Catholics were furious. They promptly marched him down the street, tied him to a stake, and lit the wood. And true to his word, as one author writes, “As the flames drew around him, he… [placed] his right hand into the heart of the fire while saying "that unworthy hand". His dying words were, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ...; I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”2
Cranmer was far from perfect. But in the end, by the Lord’s power and grace, he proved true. If you are His disciple, the Lord Jesus will do that for you too, even in the midst of failure, even under the pain of death. Do not trust in yourself; trust in Him.
The cost of discipleship is high; Jesus demands everything, for He deserves everything. But God is the One who gives us new hearts to desire Him. He ultimately makes us persevere; He gives us strength to endure; He emboldens us to lay down our lives for His sake; He alone is our hope in life and in death.
Jesus says to you, “If you desire to come after Me, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me.” It’s the only way to be saved. It’s the path to eternal life. It is the hope of eternal life.
This is the call to every single person. Whether you’re smart or not, rich or not, smart or not, churched or not. It is a universal invitation; if anyone wants to come after Jesus, come!
Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Christ.
Footnotes
Heinze 1993, pp. 277–280; MacCulloch 1996, pp. 600–605. Quoted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cranmer, accessed 2021.12.29.
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Based on a sermon titled “Discipleship: Come and Die” from Mark 8:34–9:1, preached on 2021.09.17 to the junior high students of Lighthouse Community Church in Torrance, CA.