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And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:27)
Previously in Luke 14, Jesus told a parable explaining that coming into God’s kingdom was like accepting an invitation (Luke 14:16-24). That principle is true (of course), but there is more to God’s kingdom than receiving God’s invitation: there may also be a cost to bear. Bearing the cost does not earn the invitation; it is simply the consequence for accepting the invitation.
In this context, Jesus said something radical about being His disciple. His words were broad, beginning with whoever. Jesus spoke this to the great multitudes (Luke 14:25), teaching them what it meant to be His disciple – especially, that it is more than accepting an invitation.
Jesus said that anyone who would be His disciples must bear his cross and come after Me. Here Jesus said to the multitudes something similar to what He said privately to all His disciples in Luke 9:23 – that being a follower of Jesus is something like bearing a cross.
This probably horrified His listeners. As Jesus spoke these words, everybody knew what He meant. In the Roman world, before a man died on a cross, he had to carry his cross (or at least the horizontal beam of the cross) to the place of execution. When the Romans crucified a criminal, they didn’t just hang them on a cross. They first hung a cross on him.
Carrying a cross always led to death on a cross. No one carried a cross for fun. The people Jesus first spoke these words to didn’t need an explanation of the cross; they knew it was an unrelenting instrument of torture, death, and humiliation. If someone took up his cross, he never came back. It was a one-way journey.
Jesus said, his cross instead of saying, “the cross” or “a cross.” The idea is there is a cross suited to each individual, and one person’s experience of the cross may not look just like another person’s experience of the cross.
With that cross, the disciple follows Jesus: come after Me. Jesus would lead by bearing His own cross; Christ would go before and the disciple would follow after.
This is following Jesus at its simplest. He carried a cross, so His followers also carry one. He walked to His self-death, so must those who would follow Him.
Consider these words of Jesus. Those who refuse the cross cannot be His disciple. Jesus made it clear that only cross-bearers can be His disciples. Therefore, we sometimes may understate the demands of Jesus when we present the gospel. We can give them the impression that coming to Jesus is only to believe some facts instead of to yield a life.
Then and now, we understand that Jesus spoke using a word picture. Our cross is not a literal piece of wood; it is whatever way God has appoint us to die to self and yield to Christ. Those who refuse their cross are disqualified as disciples.
Click here for David’s commentary on Luke 14
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