Matthew 16:24 ESV
See also Matthew 10:38; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’.”
In the Luke passage it says, “take up his cross daily (or
every day).”
This is the essence of the message of the gospel of our
salvation, that since Jesus Christ denied himself and took up his cross, and he
put our sins to death with him on that cross so that we could die with him to
sin and live to him and to his righteousness, we are to deny ourselves and
daily die to sin and live for our Lord in obedience to his commands. For Jesus
died that we might no longer live for ourselves but for him who gave his life
up for us.
Now, daily dying to sin doesn’t mean sinning daily and then
admitting to God that we sinned. That is not putting sin to death. If daily we
are dying to sin, then daily we are resisting the devil and we are fleeing
temptation to sin and we are drawing near to God in full assurance of faith and
we are not giving in to sin. Sin is to no longer have mastery over our lives to
where we are obeying its sinful desires. Now we are to walk in righteousness
and holiness.
For if we have truly repented of our sins, and we have had a
change of mind and heart resulting in a change of behaviors, and we have been turned
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, and so we have received
forgiveness of sins, and we’ve been sanctified and made holy by the blood of
Christ, although we may still be tempted to sin, at times, sin should no longer
be our desire. It should no longer be what we crave.
Now our longing should be for our Lord to please him in
every way. Our desire should be to walk in obedience to his commands and to daily
say “No!” to ungodliness and fleshly lusts and to live self-controlled,
upright, and godly lives while we wait for his return. His desires should now
be our desires. And I am not saying we will be absolutely perfect, but lack of
perfection is never to be used as an excuse for deliberate and habitual sin.
Matthew 16:25-26 ESV
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
If we save our own lives it means we hold on to our old
lives of living in sin and for self and we do not surrender our lives over to
our Lord to be lived for him and for his righteousness. And if we do that, and
we do not deny self and daily die to sin and follow (obey) Jesus, then we are
going to lose our lives for eternity. We will not inherit eternal life with
God. For if we live in deliberate and habitual sin we will die in our sins.
But if we lose our lives, meaning that we do deny self and
we daily die with Christ to sin and live to him and to his righteousness, for
the sake of Jesus Christ, then we will have life in Christ eternal. And what
this says to us is that our salvation is not something that happens one time in
our lives and then we are good to go and we can then live however we want and
one day when we die we will get to go to heaven.
Our salvation is a process of a lifetime. It is the process
of sanctification in our lives. We are saved (past), we are being saved (present),
and we will be saved (future) when Jesus Christ returns for his bride, which is
when our salvation will be completed provided that we remained steadfast in our
walks of faith until the very end in obedience to our Lord and that we did not
continue to walk in deliberate and habitual sin against our Lord.
[Jn 8:31-32,51; Jn
14:15-24; Jn 15:1-12; Rom 2:6-8; Gal 6:7-8; Rom
6:1-23; Rom
8:1-14,24; Rom 11:17-24; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; Col 1:21-23;
2 Tim 2:10-13; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb
5:9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:1-5; 2 Pet 1:5-11; 2 Pet 2:20-22; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Matt 7:21-23; 1 Jn
2:3-6,15-17,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10,24; 1 Jn 5:2-3; 2 Jn 1:6; Jas 1:21-25; Eph
4:17-24]
Matthew 16:27 ESV
“For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”
This is critical that we understand and that we believe what
this is saying. For we are not saved from our sins and guaranteed eternal life
with God based on a one-time profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith,
which comes from God, and which is gifted to us by God, and which is authored
and perfected by Jesus Christ, is a holy faith which dies with Christ to sin
and which lives to him and to his righteousness daily.
We also need to know and believe that, even if we profess
faith in Jesus Christ, that we must not continue in deliberate and habitual sin
against our Lord or we will not have the hope of eternal life with God. For we
are all going to be judged by God according to what we do in this life. For not
everyone saying, “Lord, Lord,” will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but only
the ones DOING the will of God the Father who is in heaven.
For
Our Nation
An
Original Work / September 11, 2012
Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Trust Him with your life today.
Make Him your Lord and your Savior.
Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.
He will forgive you of your sin;
Cleanse your heart, made new within.
Men betraying: Our trust fraying.
On our knees to God we’re praying,
Seeking God to give us answers
That are only found in Him.
God is sovereign over all things.
Nothing from His mind escaping.
He has all things under His command,
And will work all for good.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Men deceiving: we’re believing
In our Lord, and interceding
For our nation and its people
To obey their God today.
He is our hope for our future.
For our wounds He offers suture.
He is all we need for this life.
Trust Him with your life today.
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