34 And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Jesus, following Peter’s confession of faith, calls the crowds and his other groups of disciples to him to further explain the suffering he must endure and how they must imitate it. If anyone is to follow in Jesus’ way they must deny themselves meaning their will and desires. They are also to take up their “cross” as they follow him.
Although after two millenia of Christendom the cross has become a symbol of salvation and life, pre-resurrection it was the most shameful and horrific sign of death for a variety of cultures because it was the perfected instrument of crucifixion. The origins of the crucifixion trace back to the Assyrians and Babylonians in the 9th and 6th centuries before Christ. The Greeks adopted it in the 4th century BC as a terror tactic against their enemies but Greek culture at large rejected its use as being excessively cruel and dishonourable. It would be be perfected and systematised under the Romans in the 2nd century BC. It was used to punish the lowest of criminals like slaves and rebels. The Romans perfected crucifixion into a slow, torturous and publicly humiliating form of execution. The victims were also forced to publicly carry the crossbeam (patibulum) to the location of their execution and were then nailed or tied to it after being scourged.The Jew’s saw this form of execution as the worst possible way to die because in Deuteronomy it says who ever dies hanging from tree is cursed. The victim is stripped naked, whipped to near death, forced to carry the crossbeam, nailed or tied to the beam and then left to be humiliated as they slowly suffocate to death.
The sign for all of this horror was “the cross” that Jesus is telling his followers that they must carry and follow him with. This statement of Jesus would have been absolutely shocking and stomach churning to those who heard it.
35 For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Jesus does not stop at the horror of the cross, he now goes further. Anyone who tries to save his own life for the sake of himself will lose it, that being they would lose eternal life, the life beyond this one we experience this side of the veil but whoever loses his life for the sake of Jesus and the Good News, will save it. Meaning they will receive eternal life.
36 For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?
37 For what can a man give in return for his life?
Jesus proposes two rhetorical questions to make his audience focus on eternal things. The life of a man is more important than him gaining all the material of the whole world. A life is never meant to be an commercial exchange, possibly referring the Psalms of David, Jesus is saying that your life is not able to purchase anything from God the source of all life.
38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Whoever is ashamed of Jesus, Jesus will be ashamed of him when he comes at the final judgement, his Second Coming, with the glory of God the Father and the angelic host. Jesus also refers to those that do this as an adulterous and sinful generation, this language is reminiscent of the language used against the sinful generation that grumbled against Moses in the Exodus.
1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”
Here Jesus states that some of those in attendance will not die before the Kingdom of God has come with power. Although many see this as proof of a moment where Jesus is wrong, they are in fact massively mistaken. Jesus is not saying that there are some here that will see the second coming, he is saying that some will be alive during his judgement of the Holy City in 70 AD. This is when the Old Covenant cultic practices are officially and literally destroyed. The Romans completely conquer the city and raze the Temple to the ground, something that Jesus predicted. Just as God used Nebuchanezzer to punish his people in the Old Testament, God will use the Romans to punish his people now because they refused Jesus as the Messiah. The Church is the earthly satellite state of the Kingdom of God and although the New Covenant was established officially at the last supper, it would not be until those old wineskins are thrown out that the fresh skins are filled. The Old must be destroyed to make way for the New.
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