The Joy of Dying with Christ
“To take up your cross means you are going to die.” When I read this sentence from Rosaria Butterfield’s essay in Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (edited by Joshua D. Chatraw and Karen Swallow Prior), it jarred me.
The Bible says the same thing, of course. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
I know these verses. But when I read Butterfield’s blunt phrasing, I had to face my own discomfort with this truth. Denying myself, losing my life, being crucified with Christ — I never liked the sound of it. That was because I didn’t understand how much I needed it.
Blind to our Brokenness
As Christians, we know we are sinful — the Bible tells us so, for one — but I think many of us underestimate the magnitude of our sins and their effects. Sometimes God allows you to really glimpse just how dark your sin is, and when that happens, it’s life-shattering.
“Our old, sinful self is already dead. It died when we decided to trust Jesus Christ as our savior and join our lives with his. ”
That’s how I came to better understand the joy of taking up my cross and dying with Christ. When you finally see your own sin for the monster it is, you want to kill it. But you can’t — not on your own.
Already Dead
It is only then — when we’re struggling with the beast of our sin, wishing we could defeat it once and for all — that we can better comprehend the beauty of this truth: our old, sinful self is already dead. No, we didn’t kill it. We couldn’t. It died when we decided to trust Jesus Christ as our savior and join our lives with his.
And because of that, when God looks at me, he doesn’t see my old, sinful self. He sees a new being with new life — Christ’s life.
Dying and Living With Christ
Dying with Christ isn’t something to dread. It’s the best thing in the world, especially when we remember that death was our fate anyway. Sin can only lead to death — not to happiness or contentment or independence, or anything else we imagine.
But in dying with Christ, we can live with him, too. And it’s a life better than our old selves could have ever hoped to achieve.
“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 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. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:5-11
