Walking in Christ’s Commands: A Holy Week Journey With JesusSample

Day 1: Choose Christ over Ourselves

As we start the journey toward the cross, Palm Sunday seems like a fitting time to evaluate Christ’s command to take up our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23). Luke tells us that Jesus made this statement while he was alone with his disciples in prayer, investing in helping them understand both who he was and why he’d come. He’d already broached that subject by asking who the crowds thought he was and, more importantly, who they thought he was as well. Peter responded that Jesus was “the Christ of God” (Luke 9:20).

Jesus followed that statement by warning that he would soon be killed by the religious leaders and raised from the dead, then told his disciples, “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” (Luke 9:23–24).

The way Christ framed this command reveals an important truth we need to understand this Holy Week.

Jesus described a binary choice and assumed that we would do one or the other. Either we will live for ourselves or we will live for him. After all, the cross was an instrument of death above everything else, and there was no such thing as a partial crucifixion. While the cross today is often a decoration in our churches or worn on a piece of jewelry, there were few images in first-century Judea that provoked the same level of fear and hatred as the cross. So, when Jesus called his disciples to take up their cross daily and follow him, they understood the gravity of the commitment he asked them to make.

The simple truth is that if we do not actively choose to live for Christ, we will passively choose to live for ourselves. The level of devotion Jesus demanded in this passage offers no middle ground. And understanding that reality is crucial to avoid making the same mistakes made by those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on this day two millennia ago.

While Palm Sunday is typically a celebration of Christ’s triumphal entry, the tragedy of that moment is looking back on it knowing that many of those who hailed Jesus as the Messiah would cry out for his death less than a week later. And the reason is simple. They were so caught up with themselves that they missed Christ, even as they praised him. They wanted to follow a messiah made in their image rather than the Savior they truly needed.

It’s easy to criticize them for that mistake, but how often do we do the same thing? How often do we choose to follow the messiah we want rather than the Messiah we need?

Christ’s call in Luke 9 to take up our cross and follow him is a call to choose God’s plan over ours and to embrace Jesus for who he truly is rather than who we wish he would be. As Easter draws closer, now is the perfect time to make sure that we have not dedicated our lives to something other than the biblical Christ. And that starts with beginning each day by choosing his cross and all that it represents.

Who are you following today?