It’s been over a year now since I put a thought on Facebook that generated a surprising debate. While I won’t share the thought just yet, I will say that I still believe I’m right. Over the last several months, I have been convinced that I am not just arguing semantics but arguing for a very central and essential part of the Gospel. And the more rightly we think about the Good News of Jesus Christ, the more we will behold God’s glory and shine like lights in the midst of this crooked and twisted generation that needs forgiveness.
But first, let’s make sure that we are on the same page. What exactly is the death that we are being saved from? The death I am referring to is the final and ultimate death that Jesus describes in Matthew 25:31-46. This death is irreversible. And Jesus makes it clear that this death awaits all who have violated God’s commands and remained unrepentant. It is the same death referred to in Revelation 20:11-15 of which it is said, “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
If the thought of this death is scary, that’s good. It’s meant to be. And when we consider ourselves accurately, we come to realize that we have violated God’s commands and deserve this judgment. We are by nature creatures of wrath because we have rebelled against our righteous Creator and exchanged the truth about Him for a lie. We have worshipped created things rather than God and have exalted ourselves into positions of absolute authority and autonomy.
But knowing this, God predetermined that He would send His Son, Jesus, in the likeness of sinful flesh so that all who call on His name while turning from the sin that we once embraced would be saved from death and transferred to the kingdom of God. This is the essence of the Gospel. Christ died for our sins and by putting our faith in that objective reality, we are saved from death and, by His Spirit, made to walk in newness of life.
This new life sounds like a good deal! In fact, I believe that many well-intentioned Christians would say that, apart from dying for our sins, the greatest thing Jesus ever did for us was teaching us how to live. He taught us to love our neighbor. He taught us to serve. He taught us to forgive and forbear. He taught us to speak the truth in love. He taught us to pray.
These are all fantastic things. I truly praise God for teaching me these things through His Son. Without teaching us how to live and being our perfect example, we would be lost to try and do these things well. However, there is a greater lesson that Jesus taught us. It is a lesson that is closer to the Cross than I dare say all of us desire to tread. It is a lesson that, if left out, overlooked, or tiptoed around, threatens to distort the Gospel. It is an essential part that goes far beyond a difference of semantics.
The greatest lesson that Jesus Christ ever taught was how to die.
I never use superlatives unless I really mean it! And I really mean that Scripture clearly confirms this statement.
Now, while Jesus died on the Cross, this is not the death that I am most interested in discussing for the remainder of this writing. The death that I am describing is the death that Jesus died every day of His thirty-three years on this earth. In this way, Christ was dead long before He hung on the Cross and gave up His Spirit. Every single day of His life, Jesus chose to die to His own desires and live in submission to the will of His Heavenly Father.
Consider for a moment how far He took this.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.
John 13:3-5
…who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:6-8
…even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:28
Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
John 12:27
The only way that Jesus was able to come to the day of His crucifixion was by living an obedient life. And the only way that Jesus was able to live an obedient life was by dying to His own desires. He died to the desire to be saved from brutal death. He died to the desire to call down legions of angels to save Him from Satan’s temptations. He died to the desire to reign ultimate judgment on Israel. He died to the desires of bitterness, frustration, entitlement (who has more than the Son of God?!), exercising supernatural power, and countless other real desires.
There was only one desire that Jesus lived to: His desire to glorify His Father’s name. He counted all other desires as loss, often forsaking His own personal welfare. He did it with joy, perfect humility, and without the slightest hesitation.
This is the greatest lesson that Jesus Christ has taught a world full of people hell-bent on exalting themselves and getting what’s due them and squashing the little guy to get a bigger piece of the pie. Jesus, a man who was full of these same desires, came and humbled Himself to the point of death to wake us up out of our stupor and call us to the fullness of life through repentance.
What Jesus really calls us to is death. There is no way around it if you want to be His disciple. You must die. It will be difficult. You will suffer immensely because flesh dies hard. It doesn’t resign to defeat. It fights tooth and nail, dirtier than a hair-pulling, ball-kicking bar fighter would. But it must die, because, if it lives, on the Day of Christ’s return, we come to find that we have no part in Him. And that death is far worse, because we face it alone.
The death that Jesus calls us to is painful, yet our Lord promises to never leave us nor forsake us. He has gone ahead as a forerunner. He can sympathize with our weaknesses because He Himself has been tempted in every way that we have been, yet without sin. He calls all would-be disciples to drink of this cup.
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
Luke 9:24-25
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27, 33
So this is the zenith of Christian discipleship. We look upon the Cross at Calvary and see Jesus hanging there, the innocent condemned for the guilty, the righteous for the ungodly. We think of His perfect life, perfect because He was obedient, obedient to the point of death, obedient even to the point of death on a cross. We think of our part in this grand display of justice and mercy. We brought the sin that held Him there until it was accomplished.
All who have seen the risen Lord know that mercy triumphs over judgment. And all who have looked upon the crucified Jesus know that no matter what we posses, it is an offering far to small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands our souls, our lives, our all.
May those of us who have been saved from death boldly profess the words of the Apostle Paul until Jesus calls us home and true life begins.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
But first, let’s make sure that we are on the same page. What exactly is the death that we are being saved from? The death I am referring to is the final and ultimate death that Jesus describes in Matthew 25:31-46. This death is irreversible. And Jesus makes it clear that this death awaits all who have violated God’s commands and remained unrepentant. It is the same death referred to in Revelation 20:11-15 of which it is said, “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
If the thought of this death is scary, that’s good. It’s meant to be. And when we consider ourselves accurately, we come to realize that we have violated God’s commands and deserve this judgment. We are by nature creatures of wrath because we have rebelled against our righteous Creator and exchanged the truth about Him for a lie. We have worshipped created things rather than God and have exalted ourselves into positions of absolute authority and autonomy.
But knowing this, God predetermined that He would send His Son, Jesus, in the likeness of sinful flesh so that all who call on His name while turning from the sin that we once embraced would be saved from death and transferred to the kingdom of God. This is the essence of the Gospel. Christ died for our sins and by putting our faith in that objective reality, we are saved from death and, by His Spirit, made to walk in newness of life.
This new life sounds like a good deal! In fact, I believe that many well-intentioned Christians would say that, apart from dying for our sins, the greatest thing Jesus ever did for us was teaching us how to live. He taught us to love our neighbor. He taught us to serve. He taught us to forgive and forbear. He taught us to speak the truth in love. He taught us to pray.
These are all fantastic things. I truly praise God for teaching me these things through His Son. Without teaching us how to live and being our perfect example, we would be lost to try and do these things well. However, there is a greater lesson that Jesus taught us. It is a lesson that is closer to the Cross than I dare say all of us desire to tread. It is a lesson that, if left out, overlooked, or tiptoed around, threatens to distort the Gospel. It is an essential part that goes far beyond a difference of semantics.
The greatest lesson that Jesus Christ ever taught was how to die.
I never use superlatives unless I really mean it! And I really mean that Scripture clearly confirms this statement.
Now, while Jesus died on the Cross, this is not the death that I am most interested in discussing for the remainder of this writing. The death that I am describing is the death that Jesus died every day of His thirty-three years on this earth. In this way, Christ was dead long before He hung on the Cross and gave up His Spirit. Every single day of His life, Jesus chose to die to His own desires and live in submission to the will of His Heavenly Father.
Consider for a moment how far He took this.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.
John 13:3-5
…who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:6-8
…even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:28
Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
John 12:27
The only way that Jesus was able to come to the day of His crucifixion was by living an obedient life. And the only way that Jesus was able to live an obedient life was by dying to His own desires. He died to the desire to be saved from brutal death. He died to the desire to call down legions of angels to save Him from Satan’s temptations. He died to the desire to reign ultimate judgment on Israel. He died to the desires of bitterness, frustration, entitlement (who has more than the Son of God?!), exercising supernatural power, and countless other real desires.
There was only one desire that Jesus lived to: His desire to glorify His Father’s name. He counted all other desires as loss, often forsaking His own personal welfare. He did it with joy, perfect humility, and without the slightest hesitation.
This is the greatest lesson that Jesus Christ has taught a world full of people hell-bent on exalting themselves and getting what’s due them and squashing the little guy to get a bigger piece of the pie. Jesus, a man who was full of these same desires, came and humbled Himself to the point of death to wake us up out of our stupor and call us to the fullness of life through repentance.
What Jesus really calls us to is death. There is no way around it if you want to be His disciple. You must die. It will be difficult. You will suffer immensely because flesh dies hard. It doesn’t resign to defeat. It fights tooth and nail, dirtier than a hair-pulling, ball-kicking bar fighter would. But it must die, because, if it lives, on the Day of Christ’s return, we come to find that we have no part in Him. And that death is far worse, because we face it alone.
The death that Jesus calls us to is painful, yet our Lord promises to never leave us nor forsake us. He has gone ahead as a forerunner. He can sympathize with our weaknesses because He Himself has been tempted in every way that we have been, yet without sin. He calls all would-be disciples to drink of this cup.
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
Luke 9:24-25
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27, 33
So this is the zenith of Christian discipleship. We look upon the Cross at Calvary and see Jesus hanging there, the innocent condemned for the guilty, the righteous for the ungodly. We think of His perfect life, perfect because He was obedient, obedient to the point of death, obedient even to the point of death on a cross. We think of our part in this grand display of justice and mercy. We brought the sin that held Him there until it was accomplished.
All who have seen the risen Lord know that mercy triumphs over judgment. And all who have looked upon the crucified Jesus know that no matter what we posses, it is an offering far to small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands our souls, our lives, our all.
May those of us who have been saved from death boldly profess the words of the Apostle Paul until Jesus calls us home and true life begins.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
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