A Nugget from New Life Network
(by Chris Musgrove of Future Now)
Scripture for the Day (September 13, 2017)
Then he said to them all: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)
Jesus was speaking in Luke 9:23 and He was not talking about a cross to hang around your neck so people might think you’re a Christian. No, He was talking about the cross that he took up and was crucified on. The cross Jesus was referring to was how death sentences were carried out in the time of Jesus. The cross is an instrument of death. In more modern times He may have said take up your hangman’s noose, or take up your electric chair, or take up your lethal injection and follow me. In other words, he was saying follow me in death. He wasn’t talking about physical death. He was talking about spiritual death.
Romans 6:8 says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,”
Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We had to die (to the old sinful nature) with Christ in order to be born again (in Christ where all things are made new).
Romans 6:5-11 says, “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When you are dead to sin nothing should affect you. It would be like cursing at or spitting in the face of a corpse. It wouldn’t say or do anything to you. It would just lay there and be dead. That’s how we as the Body of Christ need to be with sin, dead to it, with our lives hidden in Christ Jesus.
Don’t just act like a Christian on the outside by wearing a cross on a necklace. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wearing a cross necklace. But if you really want to represent Jesus Christ, stay dead to sin, and alive unto God.
Don’t just play dead!
