Tag: Cost of Discipleship

Bacon and Eggs

Every couple of weeks I get to meet with two high school seniors. They wanted to deepen their faith and trust in Jesus and invited me to join them in their journey. We decided to work through the gospel of Mark together. As the shortest gospel, we hoped to possibly finish it before their graduation from high school. We just finished chapter nine, so maybe our new goal needs to be by summer’s end.

If you are familiar with Mark’s gospel, you are aware that at about midpoint everything began to change. In fact, I had the guys draw a line after verse thirty of chapter eight. I told them to pay close attention to how Jesus’ teachings would begin to ramp up…

In Mark 8:29, Peter declared Jesus to be the Messiah (which Jesus affirmed). The Messiah! The one sent by God to rescue Israel and put everything right. I can’t imagine the emotions of his disciples knowing that they were on the ground-level of a revolt against the Romans. What kinds of thoughts might have been running through their minds?

Jesus immediately (one of Mark’s favorite words) began to teach them about what was really going to happen. He began by declaring that the Son of Man (code for Messiah) must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this… (Mark 8:31-32). Denial set in. No way, not possible. You are the Messiah. You must be mistaken. Peter went as far as to rebuke the Son of the living God. That didn’t go well for Peter.

Denial – the action of declaring something to be untrue

Thus the rebuke. Jesus must have been mistaken. He must have misheard his instructions. Nope! Jesus then called the crowd (lit. throng) to join in on the conversation to which he said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (Mark 8:33). A different kind of denial, here.

I suspect Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he turned the disciples denial of his declaration into the pronouncement of a different kind of denial – denial of self. And he declared it as central to follower-ship. Notice the order of things. To be my disciple you must…

Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.

What does denial of self look like? In our culture, self-denial tends to be connected to self-improvement or, religiously, to things like fasting and lent. True, they may be types of self-denial, but in context Jesus seems to have been suggesting they deny their worldview of what Messiahship might look like. It certainly wasn’t just giving up sweets.

Not only did Jesus suggest the denial of self as a prerequisite to becoming a disciple, but he also included the necessity of taking up one’s cross. We often hear statements like “it’s their cross to bear,” referring to difficult life situations or inconveniences. That is not what Jesus is intimating here. As Jesus and his disciples walked from village to village in first-century Palestine, they likely saw many crucifixions along the roadsides. The Romans didn’t carry out crucifixions in the confinement of prisons the way we conduct executions in America. Crucifixions were a very public style of execution, along byways, serving as deterrents.

So taking up one’s cross brought connotations of cruelty, pain, dehumanization, shame, and ultimately death. More than a mere inconvenience. Jesus was laying out the cost of discipleship. I have referred previously to Dallas Willard’s charge that culturally we have made discipleship optional. I guess in some ways Jesus also made it optional. He was describing the cost. The cost was all or none.

I think of the conversation between the pig and the chicken regarding their supplying of bacon and eggs to the farmer for his breakfast. The pig reminded the chicken that breakfast would cost her a couple eggs and a sore butt. For him, it was total commitment.

Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

In honor and memory of the life of Timothy Keller, I publish some of my favorite quotes from his prolific writings (see Tim Keller, Author). Since the last post focused on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (A New Year’s Hymn) and he was referenced in the advent post, Mary’s Poem, I thought it fitting to create a list of some well-known and valuable quotes from his writings.

As was the case with the Tim Keller post, this exercise is intended for my own edification as much as for those reading this. So here they are, along with their sources. Enjoy!

“Jesus calls us not to a new religion but to life.”  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bethge)

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.”  (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community)

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession… Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”  (The Cost of Discipleship)

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  (Though this is often attributed to Bonhoeffer, the exact source is disputed as it doesn’t appear in any of his writings)

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”  (Letters and Papers from Prison)

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.”  (Life Together)

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  (The Cost of Discipleship)

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”  (The Cost of Discipleship)

“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”  (Letters and Papers from Prison)

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”  (Life Together)

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” (Ethics)

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”  (Letters and Papers from Prison)

“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.” (The Cost of Discipleship)

“God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises, leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself.”  (God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas)

“Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.”  (The Cost of Discipleship)

“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.”  (Life Together)

“Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer.”  (Letters and Papers from Prison)

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”  (Letters and Papers from Prison)

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.”  (The Cost of Discipleship)

“Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”  (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas)