The Terrible, Glorious Terms of Discipleship Text: Luke 9:23-27
Introduction: The Non-Negotiable Contract
We live in an age of soft-focus, consumer-grade Christianity. The modern evangelical enterprise is largely geared toward making the faith palatable, accessible, and, above all, non-threatening. We market Jesus like a self-help guru, a life coach who can give you your best life now. We offer a crown without a cross, a resurrection without a death, and a kingdom without a cost. But when we do this, we are not offering Christianity at all. We are peddling a cheap counterfeit, a religious placebo that can soothe but never save. It is a gospel made in the image of man, and it is a lie.
Into this shallow marketplace of religious goods, the words of Jesus in our text land with the force of a battering ram. Here, the Lord lays out the terms of discipleship, and He does so without any fine print or escape clauses. This is the contract, presented in stark, absolute, and frankly terrifying terms. He is not trying to entice the undecided voter. He is not trying to close a sale with a hesitant buyer. He is calling for unconditional surrender. He is demanding everything.
What Jesus says here is the fundamental grammar of the Christian life. It is not an elective for advanced students, or a special calling for the spiritual elite. This is Christianity 101. This is the price of admission. To follow Christ is to sign your own death warrant. It is to enlist in an army where the foundational strategy is to die. This is a hard saying, and it is meant to be. It is meant to sift the crowd, to separate the curious onlookers from the true disciples. It is meant to force a crisis. Will you have Christ on His terms, or will you have your own life, on your own terms? You cannot have both.
These verses are a declaration of war against the autonomous self, the little god that sits on the throne of every unregenerate heart. They are a frontal assault on the gospel of self-preservation, self-esteem, and self-fulfillment. Jesus presents us with a great paradox: the only way to live is to die. The only way to find yourself is to lose yourself. The only way up is down. This is the logic of the kingdom, and it is the inverse of the logic of the world. And we must choose which logic will govern our lives.
The Text
And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
(Luke 9:23-27 LSB)
The Threefold Requirement (v. 23)
Jesus begins with a universal call that contains three inseparable conditions.
"And He was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.'" (Luke 9:23)
First, notice the scope: "He was saying to them all." This is not just for the twelve. This is for the whole crowd, for you, for me. The call to discipleship is a public call, and its terms are the same for everyone. "If anyone wishes" lays the desire at our own feet. God does not drag anyone into His kingdom against their will. He changes their will. He makes them willing. So, if you desire to follow Christ, here is what that desire must entail.
The first condition is to "deny himself." This is not a call to deny yourself certain pleasures, like giving up chocolate for Lent. This is the denial of the self as the center of your existence. It is to abdicate the throne. It is to say to your ambitions, your rights, your reputation, and your desires, "You are no longer in charge." It is a radical Copernican revolution of the soul. You are not the sun around which everything else orbits. God is. To deny yourself is to agree with God's verdict on your old man: guilty, condemned, and crucified with Christ. It is the repudiation of all autonomy.
The second condition is to "take up his cross daily." We have domesticated the cross. We have turned it into jewelry, a sentimental symbol. But in the first century, the cross had only one meaning: it was an instrument of excruciating, shameful, public execution. To take up your cross was to begin the death march. It meant you were a dead man walking. Jesus is saying, "Every day, you must consent to your own execution. Every morning, you must wake up and willingly embrace the death of your own agenda for the sake of Mine." This is mortification. This is putting sin to death, daily. It is not a one-time decision, but a constant, grinding, daily discipline. It is the application of your co-crucifixion with Christ to your Tuesday morning temptations, to your pride, your lust, your envy. It means being willing to wreck your career, your reputation, or your social standing for the cause of Christ.
The third condition is to "follow Me." This is the positive side of the first two. We don't just deny ourselves and die to ourselves in a vacuum. We do it in order to follow Him. Discipleship is not a grim, stoic asceticism. It is a joyful transference of allegiance. We stop following our own appetites and start following Jesus. We walk where He walks, we love what He loves, and we obey what He commands. The first two commands make the third one possible. You cannot follow Christ if you are still carrying the baggage of your old self and running your own life. You must die to that life in order to live His.
The Great Reversal (v. 24)
Jesus then explains the foundational paradox that undergirds His commands.
"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it." (Luke 9:24 LSB)
This is the spiritual law of gravity. It is an inescapable reality. Every human being is trying to "save his life." We are all trying to secure our own meaning, our own security, our own happiness. The world tells you to do this by grabbing, accumulating, and protecting. Look out for number one. Build your kingdom. Make your name great. Jesus says that this very project, this desperate attempt at self-preservation, is the guaranteed path to damnation. To live for yourself is to lose yourself. The life you are trying so frantically to save is a life that is already under a death sentence. By clinging to it, you ensure you go down with the ship.
But the reverse is also true. "Whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it." The life that is surrendered to Christ is the only life that is truly secure. When you hand over the title deed of your life to Him, you are placing it in the only hands in the universe that cannot be shaken. This is not a transaction where you give up a miserable life on earth for a good one in heaven. It is a transaction where you give up death for life, both now and forever. To lose your life for His sake is to find the very life you were created to live. It is to discover who you truly are in Him. You give Him your rags, and He gives you His righteousness. You give Him your sin, and He gives you His life. It is the best deal ever offered.
The Ultimate Bad Bargain (v. 25)
To illustrate the folly of rejecting His terms, Jesus asks a devastatingly logical question.
"For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?" (Genesis 9:25 LSB)
This is the ultimate cost-benefit analysis. Imagine the man who succeeds beyond all his wildest dreams. He gets all the money, all the power, all the fame, all the pleasure. He possesses the entire world. He has everything. But in the process of gaining it all, he has lost his own soul. He has forfeited his essential self. What is his net profit? It is less than zero. He has made the worst bargain in the history of the cosmos.
This is a direct shot at the heart of materialism and worldly ambition. The world screams at us that our value is determined by what we possess. Jesus tells us that if we possess everything but Him, we are eternally bankrupt. The man who lives for this world invests in a currency that will be worthless on the day of judgment. He spends his entire existence polishing the brass on the Titanic. It is the height of insanity. To trade your eternal soul for a few decades of fleeting, earthly trinkets is a fool's exchange.
The Unavoidable Shame (v. 26)
The consequences of this bad bargain are not just personal loss, but public judgment.
"For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." (Luke 9:26 LSB)
Here the issue is shame. To be ashamed of Christ is to value the approval of men more than the approval of God. It is to be embarrassed by His radical claims, His moral demands, and His bloody cross. It is to keep your faith private, quiet, and inoffensive so that you do not lose face in a hostile world. It is the fear of man, which is a snare.
Jesus warns that there is a direct and terrifying reciprocity at work. If you are ashamed of Him now, in this brief moment of testing, He will be ashamed of you then, on the day that matters for all eternity. Imagine that scene. The Son of Man comes in the effulgent, terrifying glory of the Trinity, surrounded by legions of holy angels. All of history is gathered before Him. And on that day, if you have spent your life trying to avoid being publicly identified with Him, He will publicly disown you. He will look at you before the Father and the angels and say, "I never knew you." To be ashamed of Christ is to place yourself on the wrong side of the final verdict.
A Glimpse of the Kingdom (v. 27)
"But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:27 LSB)
After these stark warnings, Jesus offers a stunning promise. This verse has been a puzzle to many, but its meaning becomes clear in the immediate context. What happens just a few days later in Luke's narrative? The Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John are taken up the mountain and they see Jesus in His glorified state, talking with Moses and Elijah. They see the kingdom of God in its unveiled, majestic power, embodied in the person of the King.
This was a down payment. It was a foretaste of the glory He just spoke of. It was a confirmation that the kingdom He proclaimed was not some distant, ethereal reality, but a power that was breaking into history right then and there. For those first disciples, it was a powerful assurance that the life of cross-bearing they had just been called to was not a leap into the dark. The one who calls them to die is the glorious Lord of heaven and earth. The path of the cross leads directly to that kind of glory. It was a glimpse of the destination that made the arduous journey worthwhile.
Conclusion: Your Life for His
The call of Christ has not changed. The terms are the same today as they were then. He still demands your absolute, unconditional surrender. He demands that you deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Him.
This is not a call to misery, but a call to true life. The world offers a life that is really a living death, a frantic attempt to save what is already lost. Christ offers a death that leads to glorious, unending life. The path of self-denial is the path of true self-discovery. The path of cross-bearing is the path to the crown. The path of following Him is the path home.
So the question comes to each of us. Have you signed the contract? Have you willingly handed over the keys to your life? Are you losing your life daily for His sake? Or are you still trying to make that fatal bargain, trying to gain the world while forfeiting your soul? Are you ashamed of Him? Do not be deceived. There is no middle ground. It is Christ or chaos. It is the cross or the world. Choose this day whom you will serve. Choose death, that you might truly live.