Matthew 16:21-28
Jesus Predicts His Death and His Resurrection
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Following Jesus is not easy...As Jesus told His Disciples, whoever wants to follow Him and be a disciple of His must deny themselves...Truly following Him means to believe that you cannot save your life but will lose it....There is an uncomfortable paradox in following Him...Jesus says His followers will lose their lives for Him, but then they will find life’s reality and live their life for Him...And then they will live a life more abundantly...It is not good to have led and lived a life only to have lost your soul...For what can be exchanged for one’s soul?...The answer is not one thing on earth is worth the value of one’s soul...
But following this path of Jesus is an uncomfortable one...Lying down one’s life for one’s friends is not a natural way to be thinking and to live...But Jesus was ready to do just that in His life and lived His life knowing that His death was coming and that He would die on the cross...And that is the way He lived His life and He lived His life for mankind...Jesus' personal path to the cross was His path and it was His path to death...Taking up His cross means will to forfeit one's life on earth for Him...That path is completely denying oneself and loving one’s neighbor and all neighbors, loving Jesus, and loving God in all the things we do...This was the Way He lived His life as we look back on it...He is our example, our model on how to live life...It is an example and model based on LOVE...