Discipleship and the Cross

Jesus Christ must suffer and be rejected. (Mark 8:31-38)
This “must” is inherent in the promise of God—the Scripture must be fulfilled. Here there is a distinction between suffering and rejection. Had He only suffered, Jesus might still have been applauded as the Messiah.

Jesus is a rejected Messiah. His rejection robs the passion of its halo of glory. It must be a passion without honor. Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus. To die on the cross means to die despised and rejected of men. Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as a divine necessity, and every attempt to prevent it is the work of the devil, especially when it comes from his own disciples; for it is in fact an attempt to prevent Christ from being Christ. That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was scandal to the Church. …Peter’s protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer and that means that Satan has gained entry into the Church, and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord.

Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that the “must” of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself. … Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross. (See John 15:20-21)

When Jesus begins to unfold this inescapable truth to His disciples, He once more sets them free to choose or reject Him. “If any man would come after me,” He says. For it is not a matter of course, not even among the disciples. Nobody can be forced, nobody can even be expected to come. He says rather, “If any man” is prepared to spurn all other offers which come his way in order to follow Him. Once again, everything is left for the individual to decide…. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. … All that self-denial can say is: “He leads the way, keep close to Him.” “…and take up his cross.” … Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for His sake. If in the end we know only Him, if we have ceased to notice the pain of our own cross, we are indeed looking only unto Him. If Jesus had not so graciously prepared us for this word, we should have found it unbearable.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer