Walking With Christ

(Part 1 of 7)

Genesis 22:8  Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”  So they went both of them together.(ESV)

There are places in Scripture where almost everyone slows down.

Genesis 22 is one of them.

Abraham is told to take Isaac—the son he loves, the son of promise—and offer him to God.  Then father and son begin walking toward the mountain together.

We know the ending.  Isaac doesn’t.

That knowledge makes the scene almost unbearable to read.

Isaac carries the wood.  Abraham carries the fire and the knife.  Then Isaac notices what’s missing.

Where is the lamb?

Abraham answers that God will provide.  Then they keep walking.

It’s difficult to move quickly through this story because we understand enough of what’s happening to feel its weight.  We imagine Abraham looking at his son.  We imagine Isaac trusting his father.  We imagine the silence between the recorded sentences.

Then Abraham binds Isaac.  He places him on the wood.  He reaches for the knife.  And we pause.

We should.

There’s terror in that moment.  There’s obedience.  There’s faith.  There’s surrender.  There’s a father being asked to place something unimaginably precious into the hands of God.

Most of us don’t need to be taught that Genesis 22 is serious.

We already know.  We feel it.  But then Jesus says something like this:

Luke 9:23  And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.(ESV)

And somehow we keep reading.

Maybe we’ve heard it too many times.  Maybe the cross has become too familiar.

We see crosses on churches.  We wear them around our necks.  We put them on walls, books, signs, and logos.

The image has become so thoroughly associated with Christianity that it’s easy to forget what Jesus’ original hearers saw when He used the word.

An execution.

Jesus didn’t tell His disciples to pick up an inconvenience.  He didn’t tell them to endure an annoying coworker, a difficult week, or some ordinary frustration and call that “their cross.”

He told them to deny themselves, take up an instrument of death, and follow Him.

Daily.

Now pause.

We were willing to stop when Isaac carried wood up the mountain.

Why do we move so quickly when Jesus tells us to carry a cross?

The stories aren’t identical.  Abraham’s test was Abraham’s test.  Jesus isn’t commanding His followers to reenact Genesis 22.

But perhaps our reactions reveal something about the way we read Scripture.

We recognize sacrifice much more easily when someone else is being asked to surrender something.

We can feel Abraham’s cost.  We can imagine Isaac’s fear.  We can sit with the knife raised over the altar.

Then Jesus turns toward us.

Deny yourself.  Take up your cross.  Follow Me.

Suddenly the passage becomes familiar language again.  That may be exactly when we need to stop reading.

Because self-denial means that I don’t remain the final authority over my life.  Following Christ means that His direction can oppose mine.

Taking up the cross means that obedience may cost something I desperately want to keep.

My pride.

My comfort.

My reputation.

My plans.

My resentment.

My right to retaliate.

My insistence on getting my way.

My carefully protected version of myself.

The cross isn’t merely about suffering.

It’s about surrender.

That’s why the word should still make us uncomfortable.

Abraham stood on a mountain holding a knife over something precious.

We read that and think, I cannot imagine what that must have cost.

Then Christ tells us to deny ourselves every day.

Perhaps the question isn’t why Genesis 22 makes us pause.

Perhaps the question is why Luke 9:23 doesn’t.

Some passages stop us because their weight is impossible to miss.

Others have become so familiar that we no longer feel the weight at all.

That doesn’t mean the weight disappeared.  Sometimes it only means we learned how to read past it.

So go back.

Read Luke 9:23 again.

Slowly.

Deny yourself.

Take up your cross.

Daily.

Follow Me.

And this time, pause.