The Cost No One Told You About

The Road to the Cross: A Lenten Journey of Surrender and Hope | Day 30

“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” — Mark 8:34 (NIV)

Good morning, beloved in Christ! There is a version of the Christian life that gets preached with great enthusiasm but bears very little resemblance to what Jesus actually promised. It is the version that emphasizes blessing, comfort, answered prayers, and the favor of God without spending much time on what Jesus said clearly and repeatedly to everyone who wanted to follow Him: that the path leads through a cross before it leads to a crown. Today, as we continue drawing closer to Holy Week, we want to look honestly and hopefully at the cost of following Jesus, because the cost, when we understand it rightly, is also one of the most beautiful things about the faith.

Mark 8:34–36 (NIV) records Jesus turning to the crowd, not just to His inner circle, and saying with striking directness: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” These words were spoken to people who understood what a cross was. It was not a piece of jewelry. It was an instrument of execution, a public symbol of shame and death. When Jesus said “take up your cross,” the crowd knew exactly what kind of image He was reaching for. He was not describing a minor inconvenience. He was describing the death of self.

This is where many presentations of Christianity go quiet. The cost is real. Denying ourselves means something. It means choosing God’s agenda over our own when they conflict, which is often. It means releasing control of outcomes we desperately want to manage. It means loving people who do not make it easy, serving in roles that receive no applause, staying faithful in seasons that offer no visible reward. Paul wrote with honest simplicity in 2 Timothy 3:12 (NIV): “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Not might be. Not could be in certain circumstances. Will be. Following Jesus costs something in every life that follows Him genuinely.

The Grain of Wheat

Just days before His crucifixion, Jesus reached for a simple image from the natural world to explain what His death would accomplish and what it would model for everyone who followed Him. In John 12:24–26 (NIV) He said: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” The grain of wheat must die before it can multiply. There is no harvest without burial. There is no resurrection without a death that precedes it.

This principle runs through the entire fabric of the Christian life. The marriage that produces deep love has required the death of self-centeredness. The friendship that weathers hard years has required the death of pride. The faith that stands in darkness has required the death of the demand for easy answers. Every place where genuine life and fruit are found in the Christian walk, there is a cross somewhere behind it, a moment of surrender, of loss, of dying to what we wanted so that something truer and more lasting could grow.

Why the Cost Is Worth It

None of this is cause for despair. It is cause for honest, clear-eyed hope. Because the One who calls us to take up our cross is the same One who took up His own and walked it all the way to our redemption. He is not asking us to do something He was unwilling to do Himself. He is inviting us into the same pattern of death and resurrection that defines His own story, and by extension, the story of every person who belongs to Him.

Paul captures this connection with extraordinary clarity in Romans 6:4–5 (NIV): “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” The cross we carry is not a random burden dropped on us from a distance. It is a participation in the very death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we die to self, we are united with Him in His death. And the same resurrection power that raised Him from the dead is the power at work in us.

Asaph, the psalm writer, arrived at this truth through a season of deep struggle. He had watched the comfortable prosper and the faithful suffer, and he had nearly concluded that following God was pointless. But then something shifted: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26, NIV). When Asaph finally released his grip on the life he thought he deserved and surrendered to the God who was actually enough, the cost stopped looking like loss and started looking like freedom.

This is the invitation of the cross: not to a life of grim self-denial for its own sake, but to a life so deeply rooted in Jesus Christ that the things we once clung to begin to loosen their hold naturally. The closer we walk with Him, the more we find that what we lose in following Him is far outweighed by what we gain. He is, as Asaph discovered, the strength of our hearts and our portion forever. The cost of following Jesus Christ is real. But He is more than worth it, and He has already paid the greatest price of all so that we could walk this road with Him.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sometimes wanted the benefits of following Jesus without fully embracing the cost. I have reached for the comfort of Your presence while quietly resisting the call to deny myself, to release control, to let go of what I have been holding too tightly. Forgive me for a faith that has at times been more about what I can receive than about what I can surrender. I want to follow Jesus not on my own terms but on His, and I know that I need Your Spirit to make that genuinely possible in me.

Lord, as I look toward the cross in these final days of this Lenten journey, let the example of Jesus steady my heart. He denied Himself completely, took up His cross willingly, and followed the Father’s will all the way to my redemption. I am not asked to match that sacrifice, but I am invited to reflect it in my own daily walk. Give me the grace to take up whatever cross You have placed before me today, trusting that the resurrection power that raised Jesus is the same power at work in me. In His name and for His glory, I pray, Amen.

Whatever you are being asked to release or surrender today, take heart. The grain of wheat that falls to the ground does not stay buried. It produces a harvest. The God who calls you to carry a cross is the God who raises the dead, and He has never once lost track of a single seed of faithful obedience entrusted to His care.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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