Home Pastors Preaching & Teaching Does Your Preaching Connect the Dots Between the Cross and Discipleship?

Does Your Preaching Connect the Dots Between the Cross and Discipleship?

Culture promotes loving only those who will love us in return. Jesus, however, extends the parameters of love by including those who will not love in return. His response reveals the radical nature of his love; a love that takes the shape of a cross; a love that includes the least deserving; a love that may not be returned.

Jesus revolutionized what real love is and completely transformed its meaning by loving his enemies. And his followers are called to imitate this kind of love. In fact, enemy love will be THE sign that identifies those who follow him.

The Second Dot: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

I read this quote from Brian Zahnd a short time ago and it deeply resonated with me.

If we fail to see the connection between the Sermon on the Mount and how Jesus dies on calvary, we’ll end up with a distorted Christianity.

Jesus’ keynote address, the Sermon on the Mount, is deeply connected with Jesus’ death on the cross. It spells out what following Jesus will look like and what it will require from those who follow him (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6).

Early in his sermon, Jesus began with these words, “love your enemies.” He then elaborated on what this looks like by using three real-life scenarios. All three scenarios demonstrate that followers of Jesus are to center their lives on the Jesus script, instead of the script they were given.

Jesus’ story is based in love, and while it includes those who love in return, it also includes those who will not. To quote a Chris Tomlin song, a love like this, the world has never known.

Jesus not only spoke about this kind of radical love, but showcased it throughout his public ministry, culminating in his death upon the cross—which proved to be the most powerful demonstration of his love.

The essence of his teaching, in both life and death, was this—we do not give in the same manner as we have received.

We live by a different story. A story that runs counter to the story we’ve grown so accustomed to. A story that presents us with God’s alternative story; a story the world will forever be called to embrace and replicate. A story most powerfully displayed on the cross when Jesus forgave the people in front of him, those most responsible for putting him there, which includes you and me.

The Third Dot: Jesus’ Cross as the Pattern for Discipleship

The cross presents us with not only the means of forgiveness and reconciliation, but the pattern for life as well; a pattern born out of God’s own life—demonstrated throughout Jesus’ public ministry, revealed most powerfully as he hung on the cross, and showcased through his words, “Father, forgive them.”

Those who embrace Jesus’ cross are also called to continue in Christ’s love by embracing the pattern of life he demonstrated through it—a life of enemy love.

We are called to embrace the Jesus story and to allow it to define us as Jesus’ followers. And, as it defines us, we learn to let go of the our former story and embrace a new way of living; a way born out of our own experience of being forgiven—when we deserved it least. We then allow this underserved forgiveness, displayed by Christ’s cross, to find expression in us, so that we fulfill Christ’s own words, “you will be known by your love.

God is love. And God’s love looks like Jesus hanging on a Roman cross, forgiving those who put him there, demonstrating how the world should live.

However, the world will see it first in Christ’s followers. And only through them and through their enemy love will the world catch a glimpse of what true love really looks like.

“Take up your cross and follow me.”

“Love one another.”

“Love your enemies.”

These three dots need to be connected if we are to better understand and live according to the alternative story of Jesus. A Story that provides forgiveness of sins but also demonstrates a posture of forgiveness and enemy love we all are called to embrace and imitate.