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Way of the Cross – Full Submission to God’s Will

(Overcomer Wu)

“For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” -- 2 Corinthians 4:11

Most Christians have the faulty notion that to live a happy, healthy and successful (in their career or their fanciful life of worldly riches, power, prestige and pleasure) life is the sign of blessings from God. Whereas in reality, we are told abundantly throughout the Word of God that we are called to a life of suffering and trails, both for our perfection and for that of others (2 Cor 4:12). In 1563, the first edition of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs was published. It described in great detail (2,300 pages, two large volumes) the accounts of the martyrdom and persecution of English Protestants by the established (Roman Catholic) church in England. Most Christian martyrs in history have known their fate long before the day they died. They had time to consider their choices: affirm their faith and perish by fire or the sword, or deny the God Who loves them and their faith in order to live physically, but dead spiritually. To be a martyr means to choose to humbly and willingly submit to terrible pain and suffering. No one takes the life of a martyr; martyrs lay down their lives in submission to their King. It was the King himself who was the first to lay down His life for the sake of the kingdom of God. Jesus told His disciples long before they even understood what it meant that He was going to die.

Most likely, you will not be in a situation where God may not be calling you to die for our Christian faith, but He will likely call you to do something that will require dying to yourself by submission to His will, which requires the denial of your own will. This was exactly what the Lord Jesus did on His way to the cross: He prayed to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father... not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). This is practical carrying our cross daily and denial of our self – our full and unconditional submission to the will of God.

When the Lord Jesus was actually carrying His physical cross to Calvary, we are told of a Simon, the Cyrenian, who was asked to assist the Lord Jesus in His blood-sweating, the natural-life-draining task. “Now as they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus” (Luke 23:26). We see in Simon’s carrying the cross a picture of the work of the Church throughout all generations; she is the cross-bearer after our Lord Jesus. Thus we see that Jesus did not suffered so as to exclude us from suffering. He bore God's judgment for our sins on the cross (1 Cor 15:3b), but we have to bear our own cross to die to our sinful nature daily. Yes, Christ also dealt with our sinful nature on the cross as 2 Corinthians 5:21 affirmed, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He bears the cross, not that we may escape it (yes, we cannot bear the part of the cross that the Lord Jesus alone could bear for the sins and the redemption of all man), rather that we may endure it. For this reason, verse fourteen of the same chapter in 2 Corinthians 5 tells us in no uncertain terms that “... He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” The practical living for and by Christ is the carrying of our cross and die to our self daily -- “those who live should live no longer.” Galatians 2:20 declares the same message: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me....” Therefore, we can say that Christ delivers and exempts us from sin, but not from sorrow. Thus, we should arm ourselves with a mind to suffer. First Pet 4:12-13 says, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.”

However let us comfort ourselves with this thought, that in our case, as in Simon’s, it is not our cross, but Christ’s cross which we carry. As we bear the cross of Christ to die to our self, we will then truly experience the more abundant life in Christ, because when we die to our self, we will then allow the life of Christ to be manifested through us (2 Cor 4:10-11). When we suffer ailments and are hard-pressed on every side for our living a life of faith (2 Cor 5:7) in Christ; when our living testimony brings the trial of cruel mocking and persecution upon us, remember it is not your cross, but the cross of Christ; therefore our cross may put an end to our soul-life or at times even our physical life, yet that is not the end. Rather it is only the beginning of our new life in Christ – a life in the “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17) in Christ. For when we die to our self, the resurrection life of Christ will be activated in and through us. Thus, the apostle Paul declared, “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9). The reason why we are “not crushed;... not in despair;... not forsaken; ... not destroyed.” is due to the resurrection life of Christ manifested through us.

Thus, we eagerly carry our cross after the Captain of our salvation Who has paved the way into glory and are bring us the many sons of God into glory (Heb 2:10). We are in blessed company; our path is marked with the footprints of your Lord. As we walk on the foot steps of our Lord on the way of the cross, we have the promise of His resurrection life to uphold us and uplift us into the life of the New Creation in Christ. Thank the Lord that on the way of the cross, we have Christ Who goes before us as a shepherd goes before his sheep. Gladly then we would take up our cross daily, and follow Him.

And like Simon, we may bear the cross for a very little while, yet it shall gained for us a glory that shall not pass away. Indeed the present lightness of our affliction is but for a moment, yet it is “working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17). Therefore, we should be encouraged that the cross we carry is only for a little while at most, and then we shall receive the crown of righteousness and of glory. There is simply no comparison between the two! For this reason, it would be sheer folly for us to escape the cross today and lose the eternal weight of glory we shall have in Christ for all eternity. Thus, instead of shrinking from the cross of dying to our self in complete submission to the will of God, we embrace it and “count it all joy” (Jam 1:2), for it works out for us a spiritual compensation that far outweighs anything this world and the god of this age (2 Cor 4:4) has to offer.