If any man shall come after Me: A Meditation on Matthew 16

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, 

If any man will come after me, 

let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: 

and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

For what is a man profited, 

if he shall gain the whole world, 

and lose his own soul? 

or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

For the Son of man shall come 

in the glory of his Father with his angels; 

and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Jesus’ hard words at the end of Matthew’s 16th chapter come after His strong encouragement to Peter and the disciples regarding their good confession just a few verses earlier.  Unsatisfied with Jesus’ path to the cross, where He would make satisfaction for the sins of the world by laying down His own life for theirs, the disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from the whole purpose for which He came.  In rebuke, Jesus identified the satanic influence motivating Peter and the others, and took the opportunity to teach them something they desperately needed to understand:  a life focussed only on this fallen world, is a life doomed to eternal perdition. 

Had Jesus come to live in this world and be honored like the pagan gods of Rome and Greece, He certainly could have done so.  He could have used His power as the Only Begotten Son of God to gather for Himself riches, prestige, and secular power.  He could have taken for Himself all those temptations the devil had earlier offered to Him when He was hungry in the desert, lived for His own glory, and been far greater than any mythical Hercules or Apollo.  Healing the sick, creating food, casting out demons, raising the dead, turning water into wine— and all His other manifest demonstrations of His divinity could have been used to make Him the earthly king so many men have tried and failed to become.  But instead, Jesus used all His divine power for the eternal good of mankind, rather than for himself.  He did not take the devil’s bait to serve Himself, or the people’s desire to have Him satisfy only their fleshly cravings.  Looking far deeper into the souls of all mankind, Jesus perceived the true desperation of all creation—chained in death and destined for the eternal fires of hell together with their demonic masters—then in love and selfless compassion, laid down His life, His dignity, His power, to save us all.  The only true God, second Person of the Holy Trinity, creator and king of the universe, condescended to be incarnate in human flesh, born of the Blessed Virgin, live, teach, be rejected, scorned, and die at the hands of evil men— all so that mankind might be freed from their hellish prison of death, and have eternal life in His fellowship restored by His grace.

And of course, Jesus’ words cut His disciples to the quick, just as they do people of every age.  Who among us is so willing to lay down our honor, our prestige, our wealth, or our comforts for the sake of others?  Who lives so selflessly that they give no regard to the present life’s baubles and accolades, but instead peers beyond them to see the true eternal realities in which every person struggles, and lays down his own life and resources to care for them?  Which of us wakes up each morning with more concern for others, than they do for themselves?  And to us, as to the disciples when Jesus taught them, His word burns with convicting fire:  If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

In truth, none of us fallen and sinful creatures have the power to deny ourselves as Jesus denied Himself; to take up and bear the same means of our own sacrifice as Jesus took up His Cross; or to follow Jesus on the path of perfection, holiness, and righteousness that He flawlessly walked.  Jesus is indeed the greatest example of love, truth, justice, and holiness which we could ever seek to emulate, but if He were just our example, He would only be a mirror which showed our own failure to be like Him, revealing in every way how far short we fall with every selfish breath we take.  Jesus as our model or our coach saves no one, as we are unable our ourselves to break the chains which bind us, or avoid the just fate of all selfish, prideful, callous, lustful, vindictive, lazy, and wicked souls.  But thanks be to God that Jesus didn’t just come to show us the way to life, presenting us the most perfectly polished mirror of the divine Law, but to actually do the work of saving us from the consequences of that Law, and offering to us the immeasurable grace of His saving Gospel.  Thus Jesus comes to be more than our call to righteousness, but in deed and truth becomes our righteousness; more than our example of the good life marked by selfless love and compassion, but becomes our very life, our love, our compassion; more than our encouragement to walk the narrow path which leads to eternal life and reconciliation with the Father, He is Himself our Way, our Truth, and our Life.  His Word comes to us not only as the condemning command of the Law, but as the free gift of His saving grace.

And how are we to respond to such a Word as our Lord Jesus Christ has brought it to us?  With faith— a faith which He gives to everyone through His Word by His Holy Spirit, which is able to perceive the justice of His Law, and the wonders of His grace.  Leaving not even the work of faith to be done by sinful hearts, Jesus gives this gift to any and all who will hear Him.  His Word, unlike the words of muses and poets, mythical gods and false prophets, is alive and able to accomplish the ends for which it comes:  the salvation of each and every soul.  Into our darkness, our chains, our prison, our despair— our world which we have twisted into the demonic image of selfishness and evil— Jesus comes by His Eternal Word, calling all people to repentance and living, saving faith in Him.  No one is excluded from His call, just as no one was excluded from His sacrifice, nor excluded from His selfless love and compassion.  It was your chains, your prison, your death He saw as He walked resolutely to Calvary, to be humiliated, despised, rejected, condemned, and die.  It was for you that He descended to the dead, and on the third day rose again triumphantly over every power of wickedness and evil in the world.  It was for you that He crashed the gates of hell, that it would no longer be your prison nor your eternal fate.  It was for you that he died, that death might no longer be your master.  It is for you that He lives, that you might forever live with Him.

Hearing Him, what else can we do, but live in Him?  Knowing Him, what else can we do but follow Him?  To the one who has heard Him, known Him, and believed Him, what else can one do but turn from the selfish ways of death and hell, and reflect the selfless love of Jesus to everyone around us?  We who have received the forgiveness of our sins, life, and salvation in His Name, how can we not deny ourselves the passing trifles of the world, so that others around us might receive the same eternal gifts we have been given?  Having our eyes opened to the distinction between the temporal and the eternal, to the wages of sin and the gift of God’s grace, how can we speak anything other than the fullness of God’s saving Word of Law and Gospel into our lost and dying world?  Knowing the sacrificial, saving love of God for us in Jesus, enlivened in Him through His Holy Spirit and reconciled to the Father for all eternity, how can we see our neighbor with anything less than the love God has shown for both them and us?

And so it is true that the Lord shall come again as He has promised, in the glory of His Father together with all the Holy Angels, and judge every person on the Last Day, giving to every soul that which accords with the life they have lived.  For those who have lived for themselves, disregarding the sacrificial love of God, despising His grace, rejecting His gift of faith, and preferring the chains of their dark prison, theirs will be the fires of hell, bound together with their demonic masters forever.  But for those who have heard the Word of the Lord and kept it, who have embraced the faith and grace they were given and striven to turn from a life of evil, theirs will be the blessed fellowship of the Holy Trinity and the communion of the saints and angels forever— not by the merit of their own works, but by the righteous works of Christ who saved them, and continued to work through them for the good of the whole world.  While the selfish and wicked shall be judged by the severity of the Law apart from the Gospel grace they rejected, the righteous will be judged in the Cross of Christ’s Gospel, who’s blood has saved them from the just consequences of the Law, and whose works in them become their works which follow them into eternity.

To you this saving Word comes today, with all its warning and all its hope, just as it has echoed though the halls of history for thousands of years, and into the ears everyone who would listen.  Hear Him, turn, believe, and live.  Amen.