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[graber_89]

Matthew 16:24-26 "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Comments

[aarons_uncle]

Just for another perspective, although the "cartoon" is good. But the reference that Preachers and "Chritians make of this passage about "the cross we must bear" being our trials and tribulations may be cute, as long as we apply it in this way we completely miss the impact it was meant to have when Jesus gave it. I hope you will hear more of it when Dr. O takes up the foundational Prairie Message of the Crucified Life

[graber_89]

That's interesting, especially because I'm taking Biblical Interpretation this semester and we were just talking about reading into a text something that isn't there.

I know what you mean about Jesus' hearers knowing the cross meant death. I've heard before that the cross is portrayed so beautifully but maybe people should wear electric chairs or something around their necks, because it wasn't just a symbol, it actually was a means of torture and death.

Just out of curiosity, though...how, in your opinion, should that verse be correctly interpreted? I'm sure it doesn't mean that in order to go after Jesus we must all die as martyrs for him. How do we 'take up our cross' and be a 'living sacrifice' at the same time, if in fact the cross refers specifically to physical death?

Born crucified

[aarons_uncle]

I am hoping that Dr. Ohlhauser will address this subject in chapel on Wed. but he may not have time to get into it. Mr. Maxwell basically built Prairie Bible Institute on this concept, and Galatians 2;20 says it all. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Mr. Maxwell's book "Born Crucified" expands this. But because we are "crucified with Christ" then we are "dead to the world and dead to sin" or "reckoned dead to the world, and the flesh". Therefore I am not at liberty to give in to any "fleshly" desires and appetites, or ambitions or anything of the "self", but rather, the life I now live I live by Christ living in me. It is not works of me trying to be better, but surrender to His Spirit, setting me free to obey. We had some Prairie-ites, who misunderstood Mr. Maxwell's teachings and they became legalists. Mr. Maxwell abhorred that idea and one particular "testimony"