The Cross-Shaped Life

The 40-day season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts until the Saturday before Easter Sunday. The last week of Lent is called Holy Week, which includes Maundy Thursday (the institution of the Lord’s Supper and Jesus’s new commandment to love one another) and Good Friday (the crucifixion of our Lord). 

For many centuries, the people of God have used Lent as a time to ask God to confront our own mortality, to grow in repentance, and to reflect on the amazing grace of Christ’s death that has brought us life. But another way to reflect on this season is to consider the implications of Jesus’s life of suffering and his death for what it means to follow him and participate in his mission in the world.

Jesus told us that his mission in coming into the world was “to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28). Jesus’s suffering and death were not a surprise to him; he actually chose and pursued the cross (Heb 12:2). We see this at the beginning of his ministry, which began in a wilderness of fasting and temptation. He carried out his ministry constantly under the threat of violence by the hands of the Pharisees. And his life ended in his enemies’ hands at the cross.

Jesus’s mission involved suffering and death. And so, for the people of God who have been united to him in his crucifixion (Gal 2:20), the life we now live in the world must also involve the expectation of suffering. Following Jesus means not only that we trust in what Christ accomplished on the cross for our salvation, but also that we bear the cross in the world. As Ross Hastings, one of my professors at Regent College, wrote in his book Missional God, Missional Church, “By his cross they would not merely be saved from sin and its consequences—they would be set apart to God, consecrated to God’s service. And that would involve for them a cross also.” Being in union with Christ means entering into the pain and suffering of the world as he did.

But when it comes to our life in the world, we struggle with embracing this call to follow Jesus in his suffering. We don’t want to suffer and we don’t want our children to suffer. So when we come to interact with our culture or our neighbours we may expect a measure of disagreement, and maybe even disregard, but we don’t really expect suffering. In fact, we often seek to avoid suffering. Rather than being willing to pour out our life for our neighbours, we seek to protect our life and our comfort.

But Jesus’s own life shows us that this is backwards. Jesus revealed his life through his suffering and death and he will reveal himself to the world as his people suffer on behalf of the world. Our calling as God’s people is not fundamentally to defend ourselves but to give ourselves that God might be known.

So if we’re going to follow Jesus in our time and place for God’s glory and the good of our neighbours, we need to cultivate a life that seeks not to preserve our life but to follow Jesus in suffering for the life of others.