By Steven Norris
Dallas Willard has been one of the spiritual giants in my life and faith development. I still maintain that his book, The Divine Conspiracy, is one of the best articulations of the gospel message I have heard. This week, I discovered a quote from Willard (who died in 2013) that stopped me in my tracks. In a lecture on discipleship, he said, “Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we don’t have to. He died on the cross so that we would join him there.”
In no way was Willard trying to suggest that the gospel message is about anything but grace — God doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Rather, he was taking seriously Jesus’ call to “take up your cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). We do a disservice to the true heart of the gospel when we reduce it to “Jesus is your ticket to heaven after you die.” While such a statement may contain some truth, it falls short of the story that revolutionized the world.
When we look at the early disciples of Jesus, we see a group of people who took seriously the idea of taking up one’s cross, seeing it as more than simply metaphor. According to early church historians, all but one of Jesus’ disciples died a violent death as a result of religious persecution. Countless numbers of faithful men and women lost their lives because they refused to capitulate to the ways of the world. Instead, they opted for the “narrow way” (see Matthew 7:13-14) that led them to a cross of their own.
The cross of Christ is not like Monopoly’s “get out of jail free” card. Rather, it places profound demands on my life. I cannot claim to be a follower of Jesus and continue to walk in the way of intentional sin. I cannot claim to be a follower of Jesus and spread lies on social media that I know are false (even if they do align with my personal convictions). I cannot be a true follower of Jesus and use my voice to tear down others or call my neighbors names because they think or believe differently than I do. I cannot be a true follower of Jesus and ignore violence that kills innocent men, women, and children (regardless of their ethnicity or sect), and I cannot harbor hatred for another in my heart. I cannot be a true follower of Jesus and fail to do good to my neighbor who is in need, ignore a sick neighbor, or allow greed to control my checkbook.
The cross of Christ does not call me to sit on the sidelines as a spectator, but calls me to participate by joining Jesus as I die to myself and follow his sacrificial way. The biggest threat to the church today does not come from outside forces that threaten to discredit our faith. It comes from the kind of cross-less Christianity that leads to external morality without whole-life transformation. May God save us from such cheap grace.