Discipleship as Following the Crucified King
This post is part of a Fall 2020 Training Series done with Community Group and ministry leaders at Holy Trinity Church Downtown. The purpose of this training was to dig deeper into our core values and cultivate a common theological vision across our ministries.
by Joel Miles
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Have you ever heard that question before? The chances are high that you have. It is one of the most consistent questions asked to kids. We even have our own grown-up version of it: “What do you want to do with your life?” Admittedly, it is a query that seems simple. Most of us likely think of it as harmless. But I believe this is a question that haunts so many of us.
Underneath this question is the assumption that not only should we be able to choose what we do with our lives, but that the direction of our lives is up to us. We have a cultural assumption that life is about discovering who we are and living out that identity or potential to its fullest. The result is often anxiety and depression. We are anxious that we could make (or already have made) the wrong decision and miss out on what we were meant to do. We are anxious that we could fail to realize our potential. We are anxious that we are not working hard enough to truly realize our potential. And we are depressed. Depressed that when we do accomplish something, it is not nearly as satisfying as it is supposed to be. Depressed that whenever someone asks us what we want to do with our lives, we don’t know the answer.
But what if this is not what life is meant to be about? What if the nagging feeling you have inside that you aren’t doing enough, aren’t good enough, aren’t enjoying things enough, is not because you have missed what you were meant to do, but actually because you have the wrong vision of the purpose of life?
While the world wants us to believe that our purpose is about becoming who we always wanted to be, realizing our potential, or fulfilling our dreams, the vision of the good life that the Bible gives us is the way of the cross. I want to show that according to the Scriptures, our purpose in life in the here and now—as we await the return of our Lord—is about taking up our cross and following our crucified King.
“You will be like God”
We are created by God with a telos—with a purpose—to image God. Humanity was created to have dominion over the world, to subdue the earth, and to be fruitful and multiply, all in a way that imitates our good God (Gen. 1:26–28). We were made to work, to build, to create, to procreate, to organize, to delegate, and to cultivate the world all in a way that reflects God—that glorifies God—so that we could all stand back and look at what we had done and see that it was very good. And we were not meant to do this alone. No, from the “very good beginning,” we were made to work in community before the Lord in a way that represented God’s rule in the world and mediated His presence to the world.
However, as we all know, we failed to do this. Humanity did not fulfill our God-given task of imaging Him, or of ruling and mediating on His behalf. But I want to show you that this fall into sin happened in a much more complex way than by simply eating a piece of fruit. And to show this, I want to pose the question: what would it have taken for the man and the woman to have not fallen into sin?
Interestingly, in order to resist the temptation of the serpent, and act in accordance with our created purpose, the man and the woman would have been required to deny themselves of what they desired. Self-denial, from the very beginning, was necessary. Genesis 3:6 says,
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
It was their personal desire that led humanity into rebellion against God. And, in fulfilling their desires in a way that God had explicitly said not to, they unleashed sin and death into the world.
This may be shocking to grasp, but the call for Adam and Eve to resist temptation in the garden of Eden can only be rightly understood as the call to submit to the will of God at the expense of what they desired and longed for. This is the call in our own lives as well. It shows us that allowing God and His word to define what is good and right, while we may not feel the same, is the good life.
In fact, it is fascinating to note the way the interaction between the serpent and the woman is worded, as I believe it shows that our rebellion is meant to be understood as us establishing a counter-narrative of the good life. Notice that the serpent’s temptation is ironic. What the serpent says is that if you eat of this fruit you will “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). This is a strange thing to tempt the man and the woman with, since we know they were made in the image of God. Man and woman already are “like God.” Yet in Genesis 3:22, after our fall into sin, God admits, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” How can this be true? How can our rebellion have made us more “like God” than God’s creation of us in his image?
Well, notice that the exact wording in the beginning of Genesis 3:6 explains that the woman’s response to the serpent’s temptation was to look at the tree and see “that the tree was good for food.” Does this sentence remind you of anything? We’ve seen a similar sentence multiple times in Genesis, but each time it is God that is seeing that His creation is good. Upon completion of each day of creation, God sees—God evaluates—that what He has made is good. But now the woman, meant to be God’s image bearer, has looked at something that God has called on her not to eat and has evaluated it as “good for food.” This is how, I believe, man and woman have become “like God in knowing good and evil.” It is not because they have now become actually aware of the categories of good and evil, it is because they have now begun to define it for themselves. They have become “like God” through becoming liberated, sovereign individuals, able to make their own decisions and pursue their own desires unencumbered by the will of the Lord. They can now answer the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” They have, therefore, in one sense become “like God.” But it is not through imaging God, but rather through rivaling him.
Living out what it means to be God’s image bearer certainly involves doing the things that God does, but it also necessitates submitting to God’s ways—especially when our desires or our evaluations work against it. And we should see this in Scripture right from the very beginning. God’s ways are different than our so-called “natural” ways. We will have desires that are contrary to His, and we will naturally evaluate something as good that God would say is not. Yet as we see in the garden, to follow our desires and our evaluations over God’s—to give into a rival vision of the good life—leads to sin, shame, and death. This is where the serpent was wrong. Rejecting God’s definition of good, in favor of our own, leads to death. However, denying ourselves leads to life. To be willing to suffer the loss of fulfilling our desires, as difficult and painful as it is and foolish as it seems, is the good life.
This is why it is not surprising that believing that the purpose of life is up to each individual to decide and accomplish is not liberating but horribly paralyzing and enslaving. It licenses us to define our own narrative, which we were never meant to do. It places us under the whims of our desires, which are fickle, confused, and contrary to the Lord. It sentences us to death, even though it looks like life. To choose your own path is not what it means to be human.
To Be Fully Human
Jesus is both God and man. He is, in fact, fully God and fully man. While there are numerous implications of that truth, it means, at least in part, that Jesus is what humanity was always meant to be. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15); He is the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45); He is the one who has received “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). He is the fulfillment, the true picture, of what it means for us to be who we are meant to be. Yet, he did this not in the good garden, but within the contested arena of our sinful world. Jesus was truly human amidst a world that opposed Him. But how? How did Jesus fulfill what it means to be fully human? How did he rule over this world in a way that imaged God? By way of the cross.
Lesslie Newbigin says,
The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king—conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.*
Newbigin is explaining that Jesus’ death is not a momentary victory for Satan, but then “Surprise! Jesus is back!” The shocking truth is that in the moment of Jesus hanging on the cross, He was truly and most fully revealing the glory of God. When Jesus was lifted up for our salvation on the cross, He was being enthroned as the true ruler and true image bearer of God. When Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; when upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we were healed (Is. 53:4–6); in that moment Jesus was living out most fully what it meant to be God’s Son. Even though it was not Jesus’s desire to go through the suffering of the cross (Lk. 22:42), it was God’s will for Him to do so. Denying Himself, and suffering for our sake, and in obedience to God, was what Jesus was meant to do.
But what does it mean for us today? Jesus fulfilled what Adam and Eve (and Israel for that matter) were meant to be amidst a broken world. And through this act, He has restored us to be fully human in the world now as His image bearers, while we await his return when the brokenness will be undone. Then how are we to live today? What is the good life for us? Following our crucified King to the cross.
To take up your cross and follow Jesus—to lose your life for the sake of the gospel—is to find life. It is paradoxical, but Jesus’ call is not about denying the good life in order to follow him. The call to the cross is about denying the lie that you can find the good life outside of Jesus. The call is about following him on the path of obedience to the Father and love of others because you know in Christ you have received everything you could ever need! To take up your cross is to admit that what Christ gives us is more than enough, where the Spirit leads us is where we should be, and what the Father brings our way is what we are meant to do. To take up your cross is to believe that what Christ gives us is so complete that we don’t need to worry about ourselves but can live for the sake of others.
This does not necessarily mean that we can’t pursue our dreams. But it does mean that we should not buy into the lie that if we accomplish those dreams, only then will the purpose of our lives be fulfilled. It will not. Whether you are in your dream job, or hate the work you do; whether you are a stay at home parent, or frustrated that you can’t find employment; whether you feel you are failing to live up to your potential, or feel your gifts are being properly exercised, these situations do not complete or alter the purpose of your life. Only Jesus can do that. And he calls on us to take up our cross and follow him. That is what we were meant to do. Here and now. In order to truly believe this, and to walk this road for a lifetime, we must be immersed in deep discipleship through a community that walks with us and helps conform us to the image of our crucified King.
*Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, (London: SPCK, 1990), 127.
Joel Miles is an Associate Pastor of Holy Trinity Church, where he has served for 6 years. He lives on the West Side of Chicago with his wife, Anna, and four children.