Luke 9.12-27

Feeding the 5,000…Peter’s confession…Jesus’ call to discipleship. We turn a corner in Luke’s Gospel as Jesus begins to prepare the disciples for His departure and the awesome task of carrying forward the message of the kingdom in His absence.

“Who do you say that I am?” The most important question that any of us will ever answer. Who is Jesus to you? The world has lots of different answers. C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, wrote, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” There is only one answer that’s true…only one that has the power to give life. Jesus is the Christ of God.

If we want to live and love like Jesus, we must walk the path that He walked. The cross that He calls us to bear is not simply a trial or hardship…it’s not your boss whose a jerk or an unfair teacher or coach or an impossible mother-in-law. It’s not an illness or any other physical challenge. That’s part of living in a broken world.

The cross Jesus calls us to bear is a direct result of walking in His steps, embracing His way of life. It comes from bearing “the jeers of the crowd” because we are following the narrow way of Jesus, “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). It comes from living and loving like Jesus in the marketplace, in the schoolyard, on the ball field, at home, in the community, in the world. It comes from persevering in the midst of life’s storms for the sake of the gospel.

The crosses that we bear are proportionate to our dedication to Jesus. Storms in our lives do not indicate cross-bearing, but the storms we endure for Jesus’ sake do.

Every day, the first question that we should ask ourselves, in the quiet morning hours, “Who is Jesus to me?” He is either King or He’s not. If He’s King, how will that impact the way I live my life today? How will it impact my decisions and my interactions? How will it change my relationships?

Until next time…stay salty.

“May we choose the path that leads to life with Jesus this week.”

This post is based on a sermon from our Luke series, Live & Love Like Jesus. Download the podcast at: Central Christian Church Main Service, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @ccclancaster