“And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:27
The salvation offered by God is not cheap nor it comes from cheap grace. A lot of people preach salvation as it came from a cheap grace. However, we have to understand that our salvation is not cheap and it doesn’t come from cheap grace. It costs us Jesus Christ– the innocent Christ, who has not committed any sin nor has done anything wrong. Our salvation costs us the treasure of heaven, so let us not take it lightly and let us be thankful that God has blessed us with His grace and mercy through Christ.
Now, since we know that our salvation is not cheap, and it costs so much, we must also know that to have it is only through one step that people might find it difficult and people who don’t know the essence of being a Christian find it easy. Our way to salvation is easy: it is through Christ alone and whoever receives Him will be saved. However, it is not as easy as it seems. Believing and accepting Christ is so hard for us to do because of the fact that Christ is the complete opposite of us. He is righteous, He is holy, He is good, He is sinless, and He obeys the Father. However, we, on the other hand, are bad, unholy, sinful, and disobedient.
So, as people who are bound to sin and death, it is very hard for us to obey God, and to follow Christ. Thus, it may seem to be so easy, but it is indeed hard because our hearts tend to walk away from God. That is why our verse today reminds us that being saved by grace through faith means following Christ and following Christ means becoming His disciples. However, Christ said in our verse today that whoever does not carry his own cross will never become His disciples. So, meaning we have to carry our own crosses. We have to confess our sins and acknowledge that we are really sinful. We have to submit everything to Christ and let Him rule over our lives.
Therefore, for us to fully understand the salvation of Christ, we have to accept Him and believe in Him. Yet, we can never fully accept Him and believe in Him if we still don’t want to give the keys of our lives to Him. Thus, accepting Him and believing in His mighty work must first come from inside of us. We must first be willing to carry our crosses, acknowledge that we need a Savior and after that, we will become His disciples. We will be able to follow Him and mirror His love and grace towards other people so that we will be able to become better witnesses of His love and mercy too.
