"And He said to them, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23
"Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30
I am doing two Bible studies right now. One using the passage in Luke and the other using the passage in Matthew!
Follow Jesus - take up your cross (quite obviously a burden!) daily. Or follow Jesus - His burden is light. Which is it?
What are your thoughts on this? This has really got me thinking . . .
4 comments:
The yoke passage is interesting. It is in reference to the yoke of a Rabbi. A rabbi would teach his followers all of these commands that they had to keep to be his followers. Command after command. And while Jesus commands are hardcore, they are actually shorter than the command of these rabbi's.Not to mention the fact that keeping the commands of Jesus are not necessary for salvation, because salvation is completely God's doing not ours. On the other hand we see some tension in the second passage, that seems to contradict the first passage. WE cannot be disciples of Jesus without taking up his cross. While we realize that our salvation is entirely of God we would should also realize that God empowers us to repentance and transforms us to be willing followers of Jesus, even to the point of death. Following Jesus is not easy, but of course worth every difficulty.
You raised such a smart son. :) (see his comment above)
Thank you so much, anonymous Tad! This really helps! Never had heard about the yoke of the rabbi before. His yoke is easy - because HE DID IT! And then there's this from Ephesians 2- "For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works that He has before ordained that we should walk in them." I guess He enables us to 'take up our cross and follow Him'. Sure can't do it in my own strength...
Thank you, Aliesha! However, you know us well enough now to know where the 'smart' comes from in this family! HA!
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