The Non-Metaphor of the Cross

23And He was saying to [them] all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. 24"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. 25"For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? 26"For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and [the glory] of the Father and of the holy angels. 27"But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God" (Luke 9: 23--27, NASB).

This familiar passage from Luke 9 records an interchange between Jesus and his followers in which Jesus instructs that one must "take up his cross daily" in order to follow him. This is a difficult passage to understand. After all, how can one daily take up a cross when one cannot die a physical death every day? I suspect that the word daily might provide the foundation for the most common interpretation of this passage, which is that in order to understand the fundamental precepts of Christ, we must recognize that we are, in fact, spiritual beings, not physical beings, and that denial of our fleshly instincts is necessary in order to enter the Kingdom of God.

This interpretation is supported in Paul's writings when he reports to the Galatians that he has already "been Crucified with Christ," yet is still living "in the flesh" not as himself but as Christ. Paul argues that the crucifixion of the flesh of Jesus represents the judgment of our own sins that have been revealed under the law, and that by faith in Jesus Christ, we become free from the judgment of that sin, having shared in Christ's sufferings, but having also been glorified in his resurrection.

This provides a foundation for the standard application to daily living of this passage from Luke, and it is neither a poor interpretation of Jesus' words nor an inaccurate description of the Christian ethic. Indeed, the general attitude of denying one's own will and seeking instead the will of the Father in Heaven is fundamental to Christian living.

However, when Jesus makes this statement to his would-be followers in Luke 9, we read the passage incorrectly when we interpret it solely through the lens of Pauline orthodoxy. In doing so, we miss the most obvious problem: Jesus had not yet been crucified when he made this statement.

Christ makes many references to his own method of death as he approaches the final Passover in Jerusalem. Indeed, in Luke 9:22, immediately preceding the passage in question, Jesus says:

22"The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day."

Still, it is obvious from various texts that even though Jesus was providing specific and non-metaphorical predictions about his death and resurrection, that the disciples did not understand what he meant. John writes:

32"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." 33But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die (John 12:32-33).

And Mark writes:

31For He was teaching His disciples and telling them, "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed,He will rise three days later." 32But they did not understand [this] statement, and they were afraid to ask Him (Mark 9:31-32).

So it seems that when Jesus tells his followers that they must "take up their crosses," they were not completely certain what Jesus had meant by that, and they certainly could not have, at this point at least, believed that Jesus was referring to a symbolic representation of denial of the fleshly lusts in favor of good, spiritual life that can be lived "in the flesh," as Paul writes. No, the followers of Jesus must have wrestled with a more literal and more specific message, and it is this message that Jesus offers to his followers--a message they must have understood--that modern Christians and theologians are as reluctant to accept as any Law-fearing first century Jew.

Crucifixion, according to Roman law at the time of Jesus, could only be applied to specific groups of people. And most notably, the sentence could not be passed upon citizens of Rome. According to Kohler and Hirsch:

Originally only slaves were crucified; hence "death on the cross" and "supplicium servile" were used indiscriminately (Tacitus, "Historia," iv. 3, 11). Later, provincial freedmen of obscure station ("humiles") were added to the class liable to this sentence. Roman citizens were exempt under all circumstances (Cicero, "Verr." i. 7; iii. 2, 24, 26; iv. 10 et seq.). The following crimes entailed this penalty: piracy, highway robbery, assassination, forgery, false testimony, mutiny, high treason, rebellion (see Pauly-Wissowa, "Real-Encyc." s.v. "Crux"; Josephus, "B. J." v. 11, § 1). Soldiers that deserted to the enemy and slaves who denounced their masters ("delatio domini") were also punished by death on the cross.

In fact, crucifixion was so horrible a punishment, that the Roman politician Cicero noted:

Wretched is the loss of one's good name in the public courts, wretched, too, a monetary fine exacted from one's property, and wretched is exile, but, still, in each calamity there is retained some trace of liberty. Even if death is set before us, we may die in freedom. But the executioner, the veiling of heads, and the very word “cross,” let them all be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears. The results and suffering from these doings as well as the situation, even anticipation, of their enablement, and, in the end, the mere mention of them are unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man. Or is that, while the kindness of their masters frees our slaves from the fear of all these punishments with one stroke of the staff of manumission, neither our exploits nor the lives we have lived nor honors you have bestowed will liberate us from scourging, from the hook, and, finally, from the terror of the cross?

It is obvious, then, that Jesus' audience clearly should have understood Jesus' most obvious message, and indeed, the very unambiguous, literal, non-metaphorical command to follow Jesus to death, and to anticipate the punishment of the state for doing so. Jesus commands that his followers primarily fear God, not national law. They must follow God's commands with the cross on their backs, ready to suffer the penalty of execution by the state daily, that is, at any moment. The message of Jesus is quite clear, but perhaps we are so blinded by the crossbeam in our own eyes that we fail to see it. We refuse to believe that Jesus could possibly mean that we must refuse to submit ourselves to the state when it interferes with our submission to our heavenly king. But there can be no other way to understand Jesus' clear message to his followers: Follow me, and expect punishment from the state in doing so.

Sadly, two thousand years later, Christians are as blind to the Gospel as were the Jews of the first century. We still look to salvation through the state, but such thinking is antichrist. Jesus clearly teaches that his kingdom is "not of this world" (John 18:36), and he refuses Satan's offer to give Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world" when Christ was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4:8-9). Jesus responded to this final temptation:

10Then Jesus said to him, "Go, Satan! For it is written, YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'"

If any would seek to follow Jesus, then, not only must we deny our fleshly desires, nailing our sins to the cross in the Body of Christ, but they also must expect to be persecuted--even to death--by the state. Make no mistake, our sins must be nailed to the cross, but we must be prepared, also, to allow our bodies to be nailed with them.