Are You Formed by Disciplines?

BY MARTIN CAREY

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

No other man could have spoken words like these. They are gentle and majestic words, and they are deadly serious.¹ Here is a sweet, simple invitation with extraordinary power, spoken directly into our souls. Thousands of books and sermons have been written on this passage, and after two millennia, Jesus’ weighty offer still stands. Our response to His words is a matter of life and death. What is this “rest” that the Master speaks of, and how is resting possible while under the “yoke” that He commands?

When we hear Jesus’ words for the spiritually weary, we want to ask Him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (Jn. 6:28). When we search the Scriptures for the answer, we hope to find the deeper life; we want to experience God’s power to heal our souls. We also seek victory over sin. Still guilty and needy, we wonder what thing we haven’t tried that will open up God’s storehouse of blessings. We wonder, “Am I fully surrendered and trusting, and if I am, how would I know it?” Others appear to be happy and victorious, so why not me?

Images of Victory

We have all been taught that Jesus is our prime example of the victorious life. When victory and rest elude us, we wonder what part of His life we are not imitating. We want to know what our part is, so that God can do His part. We know God has promised to make us like Jesus (Rom. 8:29), but when we struggle with sin and doubt, we are tempted to question His presence with us, and the truth of His words. We realize that for God to be real in our lives, we must hear His voice. So we search for victory secrets from other sources, sometimes from voices outside of Scripture.

We all have an image in our minds of what spiritual success looks like. There is that universal icon of health and success that we see in our everyday media. He is that fit-looking young man (or beautiful young woman), standing alone out in nature with arms raised in triumph, welcoming the rising sun. He is Victorious Man, that shining, anonymous ideal of strength that we strive to be. Many spiritual growth books also present an ideal of the victorious life and tout this basic message: God is waiting to have an amazing relationship with us, and if we develop our wills and skills in certain ways, miracles become possible. However, each new flurry of spiritual activity eventually becomes a struggle before we give up in discouragement, and then we repeat the cycle.

I don’t write this as a sparkling example of the victorious life, for I have also struggled and failed, but I have also seen that God’s mercy never fails. The words of Jesus have never changed, and they are just as true now: “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9). We must know the answer to our question, how can we lay hold of this Sabbath-rest? Let’s return to the Scriptures together for His answers to our spiritual spin cycle. In this study we will examine two radically different views of Matthew 11:28-30. First, we will look at how two leading Christian authors have used this passage to build a system of inner transformation through spiritual disciplines. These authors have been passionate about living a life of obedience and intimacy with God. Then we will look closely at the fuller context of this passage and what it reveals about the liberating truth of Jesus’ yoke.

Spiritual Formation’s Critique

Dallas Willard and Richard Foster have led the evangelical spiritual formation movement over the past 35 years. Willard taught philosophy at the University of California from 1965 until his death this year at the age of 77, and he was widely admired for his uncommon intellect and grandfatherly demeanor. Willard authored many books on Christian living, including Spirit of the Disciplines (1988), and The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God (2010). Foster is a Quaker pastor and successful author who founded the Renovaré Institute in 1988. Renovaré describes itself as “a community of Christians seeking continual spiritual renewal in Christ.”² Foster first introduced his particular hybrid of spiritual formation theology to evangelicalism in 1978 with his book, Celebration of Discipline, selling over one million copies. Christianity Today has called it one of the ten best books of the twentieth century.

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Together as a closely coordinated team, Willard and Foster have transformed the thinking of mainstream Christianity in important ways, and their teachings have entered nearly every Christian institution.

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Together as a closely coordinated team, Willard and Foster have transformed the thinking of mainstream Christianity in important ways, and their teachings have entered nearly every Christian institution. They have diagnosed the evangelical church with the disease of nominalism, that creeping superficiality that has banished real holiness from our churches. They contend that nominalism infects churches that hold exciting worship services and emphasize “getting saved,” but fail to lead their members towards deep, transforming relationships with God. Nominalism has a liberal form also, where Christians have more passion for social justice than for renovating their own hearts. If the modern church does not get to its root problems,³ Willard warned, it will perish.

Many of us are disturbed by what we see on Christian television programs and on stage in some churches, so we share concerns. However, Willard and Foster’s critique goes far beyond just method or style. They question what has been at the very core of the original evangelical gospel: the cross of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. Spiritual formation writers generally deny that the earliest Christians were focused on the cross, or any “theories of atonement” that were built around the cross and the forgiveness of sins.⁴

Willard has defined the gospel as “the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through reliance on Jesus the Anointed.”⁵ Instead of embracing a cross-centered gospel, the earliest Christians, Willard said, were like the Desert Fathers, those fourth-century mystics who practiced “experiential Christianity,” and who lived out the life of Christ with spiritual disciplines. Original Christianity lived the real gospel, said Willard, while modern Christians have drifted far from their stellar example. Nowadays, conservative churches are studying the Bible for doctrinal correctness, resulting in an “over-commitment to the Bible.”⁶

In a previous article, “Contemplating Prayer,”⁷ I described the Desert Fathers who founded the mystical traditions of the Christian church and gave a brief history of their philosophy and methods. In the third and fourth centuries, thousands of Christian men and women withdrew to the Egyptian desert to live alone or in small communities to practice rigorous disciplines. They would deny themselves food and sleep, practiced celibacy, and sought God’s personal words to them through deep meditation. Their ascetic lifestyle was intended to purge themselves of fleshly corruption so they could experience God’s direct presence, and over time, become fit for heaven.

Multiplying Authorities

In “Contemplating Prayer,” we explored the modern spiritual formation movement’s wide-spread roots in Greek philosophy, the Desert Fathers, the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century, and in 20th century psychological theories.⁸ These various streams of religion and philosophy, both Christian and pagan, have converged in the current mystical movement and are embraced by most popular spiritual formation authors today. This syncretistic influence raises troubling questions. Across the spiritual formation literature, we find a serious lack of Biblical support for the disciplines that these authors consider essential to spiritual growth. Richard Foster has acknowledged that Paul and the apostles did not teach the essential spiritual disciplines—because it was not necessary. Richard Foster explains:

“In the first century and earlier, it was not necessary to give instruction on how to ‘do’ the Disciplines of the spiritual life…Those disciplines were so frequently practiced and such a part of the general culture that the ‘how to’ was common knowledge.”⁹

That common knowledge is “a wisdom gleaned from millennia of collective human experience,” says Foster, and the Biblical writers took that for granted. They expected their readers to combine Scripture with other religious traditions. So, as we search God’s word today for the secrets of life and godliness, we are being told that His word is not sufficient. For a deep Christian experience, we need to go outside God’s word for the “wisdom gleaned from millennia of collective human experience.” Talbot Seminary professor J. P. Moreland agrees and told the Evangelical Theological Society that our churches have an “over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” and is practiced as a “mean-spirited…grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship.”¹⁰

That criticism is the way faithful adherence to sola scriptura is now being portrayed by prominent evangelical leaders. As in the Reformation era, the church faces a crisis of authority. No one wants to be mean-spirited and ignorant, but if Scripture is not our sufficient, authoritative guide to spiritual truth, then we will continue to be scattered by a multitude of authorities, and others will discern for us what is light and darkness.

A Gospel of Human Ability

Spiritual formation’s collection of human wisdom also includes the philosophies of modern psychology. Mental health is a major concern for this movement, making spiritual growth nearly identical to the process of psychotherapy—especially Jungian analysis. Spiritual formation writers found a kindred soul in the analyst and mystic Carl Jung, as we see in the cases of Trappist monk Thomas Merton¹¹ and Fr. Thomas Keating.¹² Christianity needs to be “intelligent and powerful,” wrote Willard, also a respecter of Jung; it needs enough spiritual depth to address our broken souls and our “mental and emotional health.” From his perspective, true Christian spirituality is blended with psychological insight and founded in “the nature of human personality and in God’s redemptive interactions therewith.”¹³ We are broken, says Willard, and our hearts, wills, and bodies are not working in harmony as God made them. The good news, he tells us, is that the human soul has great spiritual potential that is largely untapped.¹⁴ This conclusion means that as we develop an intimate knowledge of our deep selves, we treat our various pains accordingly.

What is spirit? For Willard, spirit is ultimately God who is Spirit, and it is also “unembodied personal power” that is “a common heritage of the human race.” Spirit, then, is an “ordered realm” of personal power that is possessed by all.¹⁵ Here we see an example of the panentheistic roots of Willard’s mystical thinking; everyone possesses a “divine spark.” Thomas Merton, another devotee of Jung, called this spark “a point of pure truth…which belongs entirely to God.”¹⁶ This “unembodied personal power” is awakened and harnessed for good by living the “Christ-life”—practicing spiritual disciplines. Spiritual formation, then, is the process of learning about one’s deep self and applying regular disciplines to heal the various parts of the personality. As our natural spiritual powers grow with exercise, the total personality heals and unifies, and the person realizes his or her natural spiritual potential.

The alternative to spiritual formation is dysfunction, says Willard, and he quotes Romans 7:19 to illustrate the miserable, dysfunctional soul:

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

The man of Romans 7, Willard asserts, has a battle between his flesh and spirit because he is a spiritually dysfunctional man who is not transformed.¹⁷ He may have been quickened by the Spirit of God, but the struggle with sin in his life expresses the disorder in his soul. In contrast, said Willard, the battle in Romans 7:19 does not apply to a transformed soul living out Christ’s life.¹⁸ That soul can say that he does the good that he wants, and the evil he doesn’t want, he no longer keeps doing. Through the proper application of spiritual disciplines, his nature is changed. A formerly broken man finds it increasingly more natural to do good.¹⁹

Here we come to the core of spiritual formation philosophy: original sin, that condition from which we need to be saved, describes a misdirected, broken soul that needs to cooperate with God’s power to restore and heal. From this perspective we don’t need salvation because we are dead in trespasses and sins, or because we are by nature children of God’s wrath (Eph. 2:1, 3). No, the words “dead in your sins” and “God’s wrath” are relics of a failed “theory of atonement.”

In Romans 7, Paul identifies his true spiritual state several times in the chapter. It is true that complete victory from sin often escapes him, yet he is a man divided by two internal “laws” warring against each other. His “mind” wants to do what is right, but he lacks ability to do it. He is committing sins he doesn’t want to do because of sin that dwells within him. However, sin is no longer controlling his mind, for he delights in the law of God in his “inner being”—that part of him led by the Spirit. Only someone led by the Spirit, belonging to Christ, has an inner being that delights in God’s law. Those whose minds are set on the flesh are hostile to God and cannot submit to His law (Rom. 8:7). Paul’s man in Romans 7 is the real Paul speaking, a man who serves the law of God with his mind, but sins because of the “law of sin” in his flesh (Rom. 7:25).

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The gospel’s language will be transformed from the moral to the therapeutic—to managing our natural, internal resources. Spiritual formation is a spiritual rehabilitation program custom-made to energize and rebuild our natural abilities.

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In contrast, the gospel of spiritual formation does not recognize the depth of sinful human nature. If our problem is “dysfunction,” we won’t feel the need for Jesus’ blood atonement saving us from God’s wrath and eternal damnation. We will want divine soul therapy. Our focus will change from God’s actions completed through Christ in history, to our actions with God right now. The gospel’s language will be transformed from the moral to the therapeutic—to managing our natural, internal resources. Spiritual formation is a spiritual rehabilitation program custom-made to energize and rebuild our natural abilities. According to Willard, man has great potential for change in all his physical, mental, and spiritual parts.²⁰ Our capacity to cooperate with God’s grace enables us to reform ourselves through good choices and habits.

Mental and spiritual changes always involve the body, so they will have measurable, physical effects. This connection between mind, spirit, and body proves the great value of spiritual disciplines, says psychiatrist Curt Thompson, author of Anatomy of the Soul. New behaviors always change the brain, creating new neural pathways and demonstrating neuroplasticity, says Dr. Thompson.²¹ People who practice disciplines such as fasting, confession, and prayer, for example, increase their awareness of what their own minds are doing, and by exercising their brains in those ways, they are stimulating growth of their neurons, both in physical size and in density of connections. Therefore, for Dr. Thompson, spiritual formation is “almost interchangeable with neuroplasticity.”²² In plain language, he is saying that spiritual growth will produce measurable physical changes in our brains; if it does not, it is not genuine spiritual formation.

This idea that spiritual growth produces physical changes supports the strong theme of restoration of the true self in spiritual formation literature. As Willard has stated, spiritual disciplines serve to restore our whole selves back into the harmony of man’s original creation. By taking new and healthy pathways, we are obeying God’s commands to become our deepest, truest selves. Thus, living the sanctified life is a therapeutic process of healing and restoring the core of one’s true self. Sin, says Pete Scazzero, is the accretion of many layers of the “false self” that must be scraped away, layer by layer, like an archeological dig. It is through self-disciplines that the necessary self-discovery can renew one’s true identity.²³ Thomas Merton, a founder of the current spiritual formation movement, summarized this thinking well:

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”²⁴

Another voice in this school of thought is John Ortberg, an author and friend of Willard, who adapted Merton’s self-discovery philosophy into a sanctification program he trademarked as “Monvee.” His book, The Me I Want to Be, translates Willard’s and Foster’s philosophy into a personalized sanctification application. In this model, through personality assessment and self-analysis, one can build his own individualized sanctification plan. This pursuit fulfills God’s plan for each of us, Ortberg said, since, “He wants to help you be the real you, the best version of you. He wants to help you be you-ier.”²⁵

In contrast, Romans 8:29 does describe God’s plans for the “best version” of us, but it says nothing about finding our true selves or becoming “you-ier.” The transformation planned for those He foreknew is outside of the natural order, and vastly more ambitious:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Laboring for Grace

How do we receive the gracious gift of inner righteousness? We cannot earn it, says Foster, since it is a grace that is given. Then how does it come to us?

Happily there is something we can do…God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving His grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.²⁶

Living the life of grace is living the disciplines, says Foster, and that is what changes us. To live the life, however, Jesus must be our “ever-present Teacher and Guide.” The disciplines will help us to hear his living voice, and that mystical, personal intimacy is the central experience of spiritual formation. The first discipline in Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline is meditation, a practice which builds the skill of hearing God’s inner, guiding voice day by day. The other 11 disciplines in his book, including fasting, simplicity, solitude, and guidance, are practiced to shape the soul. Meditation, however, is the discipline that can “create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary of the heart.”²⁷

The “spiritual space” created by meditation is entered by mystical techniques that take us deeper into ourselves. Inner space, Foster says, is where we find God, and we must be

…willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In their writings, all of the masters of meditation strive to awaken us to the fact that the universe is much larger than we know, that there are vast unexplored inner regions that are just as real as the physical world we know so well.²⁸

According to Willard and Foster, Christians who depend on reading the Bible and praying in the conventional manner will never have that intimate connection, and their efforts to change will fail. In his book Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God, Willard is very clear on this point. An authentic walk with God requires personal words from God.²⁹ The voice of God in the Bible is a good general guide for life, but it is not sufficient for God to change us, according to these teachings. If you are not hearing His personal words to you on a regular basis, you are not growing spiritually. Many Christians who accept this premise and do not receive regular messages from God will feel inadequate. For those Christians who delve into their “vast, unexplored inner regions” to hear God’s voice, how will they know it is He who is speaking? Should they stake their lives on those words?

By Which We Draw Near

How has God told us to draw near to Him? We will search the Bible in vain for instructions on how to explore the “vast unexplored regions” of our inner space, for that wisdom is not from the Bible but from the desert ascetics, Catholic mystics, and from other religious traditions. To answer Jesus’ wonderful invitation in Matthew 11, we must come to Him on His terms, and receive all the blessings He has promised. Do we draw near with the rituals of spiritual disciplines, or is there a more direct way?

The early Jerusalem Christians were tempted to return to the Old Covenant laws, a system with impressive rituals, tangible sights, sounds, and smells. These things could make men and women feel very religious. In the letter to the Hebrews, the writer made an impassioned, scholarly appeal to rely on Christ and His sacrifice alone. He may be invisible and afar off, now at the right hand of God, but through Him, “a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God” (Heb. 7:19). So what are the terms of our approach to God? We have “such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). Because of His sacrifice for our sins, once for all, we have immediate access to the throne of grace.

There is no other way of access to God than Christ and His blood. Through His broken body, the way into the Most Holy has been prepared. There is no divine spark in any of us, and without the gospel of His bloody cross, we are dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1). Our Lord put it rather bluntly: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn. 6:53).

Revealed to Babies

In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus’ sweet invitation must be understood in the context of the verses before it. Jesus had just declared terrible pronouncements on three Israelite cities who had rejected Him, when He suddenly said,

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (Mt. 11:25).

The rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the leaders of those cities may have seemed like a failure, but here, Jesus thanks His Father for hiding things from them. In fact, it is His Father’s gracious will that the truth be only revealed to the nepios, the small, helpless, ignorant people. These are people who are not confident in their spiritual potential. Yet it is the Father’s gracious will to reveal things to them that even prophets and righteous people couldn’t know (Mt. 13:17).

By its very nature, the gospel does not appeal to the wise and confident. The pure definition of the gospel is found in 1 Corin­thians 15:3-4:

…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…

There is nothing in that stark sentence to validate any confidence in our abilities or potential. Our sinful condition required the death and burial of the Son of God, and those who do not put their trust in that message remain condemned (Col. 1:20-22). When the humble, unimpressive Jesus went about Judea proclaiming Himself the only way to God, the wise and confident were offended, just as they are today. This offense is because our universal condition of sin, our arrogant rebellion against God, makes us universally stupid. None of us can perceive the things of God through wisdom or skills, for He has made foolish the wisdom of the world:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe (1 Cor. 1:21).

The message of the cross has always been foolishness to the wisdom of man. When Christian writers attempt to supplement an “insufficient” Bible with the collective wisdom of the ages, they are repeating the folly of the false teachers of Paul’s day. The preaching of the cross may appear to be only a “theory of the atonement,” and it may feel like a stumbling block and foolishness, but without that preaching, there will be no power and no wisdom from God:

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23, 24).

In verse 27, Jesus reveals His exclusive authority over all creation and His unique oneness with the Father. That authority includes his sovereign choices over those to whom He reveals the Father:

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

It is Jesus, our merciful high priest, who rules all knowledge of, and access to, God. No one comes to the Father but by Him (Jn. 14:6). Jesus’ exclusive authority allows no confidence in mystical methods of access to God. He is not the Way-shower, for He is Himself the Way. Faith in His already-finished priestly sacrifice and resurrection for us is the only basis for hope for God’s presence (Heb. 4:14-16).

Therefore, Come to Me

Now that Jesus has established His sovereign credentials and authority, He gives His invitation to the weak and weary: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (vs. 28). Just as He had done in the three cities, again Jesus targets His message to those who will feel the need for what He offers. At that time in Israel, ordinary people felt over-burdened with hard labor as they scratched out a living, as they fulfilled the many Jewish laws, and as they endured Roman oppression. This message was for them, and when Jesus spoke, they knew who they were. Like Solomon, every man found all his hard work to be futility, and “Even in the night his heart does not rest” (Eccl. 2:23).

Jesus was especially speaking of toiling under heavy religious burdens. The law was commonly called a “yoke,” the heavy collar that a farmer placed on his working animals to pull a load. A yoke was also a symbol of bondage to a foreign oppressor, as we see in Nahum 1:13. Jesus’ audience felt the religious yoke of many duties as well as the Roman yoke. Then He offered another yoke of His own making:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Mt. 11:28).

His yoke is easy because He is the One who creates it and places it on us. Because He is gentle and lowly in heart, His yoke design is never oppressive, and His rest is available nowhere else. In contrast, no man-made religious wisdom can ever bring rest. Religious systems have always constructed yokes to place on their followers, and by dulling the senses, they may create states of mind that feel restful. False religions share the same premise, that by doing certain religious works we can become skilled in entering the spirits’ realm to manipulate them into making us powerful. In contrast, Jesus calls the weary and broken to believe in Him as their all-sufficient Lord and to live for Him as adopted sons and daughters.

Spiritual formation’s leaders claim that we can create rest by selecting from among a large number of human traditions and custom-designing our own spiritual growth program. Out of that continual experiment, the life-style of Jesus will be imitated, and somehow God will show up to bring rest to the faithful practitioner. Yet Jesus has not asked us to imitate His lifestyle in the form of disciplines, especially ones that He never commanded anywhere in Scripture. He has not commanded us to live as the Desert Fathers, but He has commanded us to come to Him and take what He offers, without labor. His rest is not about a “life-style” at all, but something far more costly—and dangerous.

Unlike the ancient mystics, Willard and Foster recommend a nicer, cushier set of disciplines for today’s busy professional, yet their program is no less a human invention. Nowhere does Jesus tell us that communion with God must happen in “solitude,” or that we put ourselves under a “spiritual director,” or that we seek mystical spiritual encounters in “centering prayer.” Those are religious requirements invented by men, and they not only become burdensome, but they will also displace our trust in Jesus and His simpler yoke. No man can serve two masters.

The apostle Paul wrote about spiritual teachers who insisted that without spiritual disciplines and mystical experiences, the Colossians would be disqualified from Christ’s kingdom. Paul warns them:

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ (Col. 2:8).

The Colossians were being seduced by clever teachers of human traditions, according to the “elemental spirits” of the world (Greek—stoicheia). They were not satisfied with the blessings that Christ and His gospel had brought them; they wanted additional spiritual blessings. Putting their trust in their works placed them in bondage to other spiritual powers (2:20; Gal. 4:8-10), a dangerous place to be. Paul reminded them, however, that Christ is the head of all powers in the universe. We have been buried and raised with Him, and we are complete in Him (Col. 2:10-12). Ascetic disciplines and mystical encounters do not bring extra spiritual blessings.

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind (Col. 2:18).

Christians have died to the physical and spiritual forces of the universe, so they no longer submit their minds and bodies to human regulations and teachings. These teachings appear wise in “promoting self-made religion and asceticism,” but they are useless against the sinful nature. It takes something far more drastic to curb sin.

Jesus’ Impossible Yoke

Jesus gave out another invitation, a disturbing one that has driven away many potential followers:

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Mt. 10:39).

This is not a comforting message of healing and rehabilitation for broken hearts. Jesus asks us to deny ourselves—our wants, our rights, and our dreams, and join Him daily on the road of execution. If we serve Him for the purpose of self-fulfillment, we are not serving Him at all, and will face final death. His followers cannot push the cross into the forgettable distant past so they can live the victorious life. On the contrary, the cross is our present, daily reality of death to our sinful natures:

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin (Rom. 6:6).

The “body of sin” is still very much alive in us, and it must be killed regularly. We cannot live the victorious life of the resurrection if we cannot die the daily execution to self. The ugly, humiliating cross stays in the present to remind us of the real cost of living. Our typical quest for spiritual health includes a calculation of benefit, of gains and losses, but at the cross, our losses are total. The cross tells the truth of our bleak condition, and that in the body of the Son of God, we had to die and must keep on dying. There is no victorious living anywhere but at the cross.

Reversal of Fortune

The last few steps of the long road were now coming to an end. The big wooden gates of the city were open to the crowds coming in. The tired pilgrim felt a surge of joy as he walked into God’s own city, Jerusalem. He had walked nearly 1000 miles to get there, even passing safely through Egypt, so God’s blessing was surely on him. Simon of Cyrene was a very devout Israelite, and he longed to find the true keeping of Passover. Today, he would fulfill his vows.

He was forced to stop when he heard angry shouting coming his way. The crowd pushed him near the center of the street, and that is when he saw them. A group of Roman soldiers were dragging three prisoners in his direction, all carrying crosses. A big, fierce-looking centurion led the way on a horse, bellowing orders, while screaming onlookers scurried all around. The procession suddenly stopped in front of him; one of the condemned men had fallen under the weight of his cross. Simon decided he had seen enough when a soldier grabbed him. “You! Carry his cross!”

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The cross tells the truth of our bleak condition, and that in the body of the Son of God, we had to die and must keep on dying. There is no victorious living anywhere but at the cross.

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Simon could not refuse, so he stepped near the fallen convict and started to reach for the heavy lumber. He hesitated. The wood was splintered and dark with blood, both old and new. Simon now realized, if he touched this man’s blood, he would be unclean for seven days and could not partake of the Passover Seder. His journey was now for nothing, and worse, he was among the enemy. A rough shove sent him sprawling to his knees, and two soldiers laid the heavy beam on his shoulder. Simon felt his rage boiling over as he stood up under the weight. Being a strong man, he could carry the dirty cross, but his heart rebelled.

“Filthy goyim,” Simon muttered. “Isn’t it enough that they pollute our land?”

Simon heard things from the crowd about this man whose cross he carried. This Jesus was a prophet and had performed miracles. Some even said He was Messiah. Simon looked at him again. If ever we needed a Messiah, it was now. But this man?

The procession now spilled outside the city, with the three convicts and Simon following close behind them. He felt even more unclean as he turned his back on the city gates. He began to notice how the condemned men had nothing to lose, so they cursed everyone. It seemed that everyone was cursing and shouting—all except one. Simon now realized that Jesus had said nothing, although judging from the appearance of his back, he had obviously been beaten the most. Dragging the cross behind him, Simon wondered about Jesus, but he could not see his face.

Jesus did not turn around but kept quietly trudging along, now falling, now getting up again. A group of holy men in robes were following close and taunting, just like the soldiers. Behind them were many women weeping for him. He was getting weaker and stumbling more. Simon thought to himself, “The real Messiah would never let this happen!” He wondered why so many people hated this man, and the whole scene became more confusing. He saw how Jesus kept taking the insults and realized how no criminal would act this way. With this man, there was no anger, no hatred, only determination to go to his death. He wondered, and then he remembered these words:

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter…so he opened not his mouth (Is. 53:7).

They were nearing the place of execution, and an exhausted Simon let the cross slip from his splinter-filled hands. The soldiers nearby began to taunt him. “Careful, little man, want to join them?” Simon dragged the cross the last few paces and was finally relieved as the soldiers lifted it from him. He saw them pin Jesus down to the thick beams while a soldier held out the nails. Simon looked away and remembered words from the same prophet:

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted (Is. 53:4).

Confusion spread in his mind as he realized that no one could explain who the prophet was speaking of when he said:

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities…(Is. 53:5).

This man was innocent, thought Simon, and he shut his eyes as they nailed the convicts to their crosses and lifted them into position. He sat down in the dirt nearby, knowing this was the worst day of his life. This was his Passover, and here he sat among criminals and Gentiles, too unclean to return to the temple or to his people. Then he heard someone speaking from the cross above him, words that broke him:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

At last overcome, Simon bowed his head and wept.

Let Us Go To Him

In the gospel of Mark, Simon is identified as the father of Rufus and Alexander (15:21), and the family of Simon was evidently well-known in the church. Paul says, “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well (Rom. 16:13).”

Simon of Cyrene was sent from the city, but he was present for the real Passover meal, and history suggests that his presence at that ultimate Passover forever changed him as well as his family. He was there as the Messiah was sacrificed for him, and never a holier feast was offered up. He had been with Jesus the Lamb of God, and outside the city he endured the taunts and abuse with Him. While religious rituals were being kept in the temple, Jesus was deemed unfit for decent, law-abiding society and was slaughtered outside the gates—just as the bodies of the dead animals used for sin offerings were thrown outside the gates.

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured (Heb. 13:12).

Jesus says, “Come,” and it is from outside the camp that His voice commands us to draw near. To be made holy by Him, we leave behind all our religious urges and entitlements, from doing holiness our way, and leaving our very selves we join Him to bear His reproach. Following Jesus is not a safe venture, so He told us to count the cost. We don’t belong to the prosperous city any more. In taking His yoke, we also take up His cross to follow Him outside the gates. There, forgiven and sanctified forever by His blood, we find rest from our own works. “There remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9). True rest is found by faith in the historical certainty of the gospel. To live the victorious life is to live, day by day, as people who count themselves dead, buried, and raised with Him.

He is our life, for He is our Victorious Man. †

 

Endnotes

1. MacLaren, Alexander, “The Rest Giver,” Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/maclaren/matt2.ii.xviii.html
2. Renovaré, http://www.renovare.org/
3. Willard, Dallas, “The Gospel of the Kingdom,” http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=150
4. Willard, with Amy Peck, “Kingdom Living,” http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=92
5. Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 1997, Harper Collins, New York, p.49.
6. Moreland, J.P., “Postcard from San Diego: Fighting ‘Bibliolatry’ at the Evangelical Theological Society,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2007/november/postcard-from-san-diego-fight-ing-bibliolatry-at.html
7. Carey, Martin, “Contemplating Prayer: Should We Seek Wisdom From Other Faith Traditions?” Proclamation!, Spring, 2013.
8. Carey, Ibid.
9. Foster, Richard, Celebration of Discipline, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Il., p. 3.
10. Moreland, Ibid.
11. Henderson, David, “Carl Jung and Thomas Merton: Apophatic and Kataphatic Traditions in the 20th Century,” Studies in Spirituality, 2003, http://finitegeometry.org/sc/noindex/JungMerton.pdf
12. Keating, Thomas, “What is My Shadow Self,” http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/article/what-my-shadow-self
13. Willard, Dallas, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation and the Restoration of the Soul, http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=57
14. Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Harper San Francisco, CA, p. 62.
15. Ibid., p. 65.
16. Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Quoted at “Streams of Consciousness,” http://blog. gaiam.com/quotes/authors/thomas-merton
17. Willardl, Dallas, “Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation and the Restoration of the Soul,” Journal of Psychology and Theology, Spring 1998, Vol. 26, #1, pp. 101-109.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 66.
21. Thompson, “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Disciplines”, online video, Biola University Center for Christian Thought, http://cct.biola.edu/resources/neuroplasticity-and-spiritual-disciplines/)
22. Ibid.
23. Scazzero, Pete, “The False Self,” http://www.petescazzero.com/contemplative-spirituality/the-false-self/
24. Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation, Quoted at Abbey of the Arts, http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2013/11/03/community-lectio-divina-thomas-merton/
25. Ortberg, John, The Me I Want to Be, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI., p. 94.
26. Foster, p. 7.
27. Ibid., p. 20.
28. Ibid., p. 15.
29. Willard, Dallas, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Il., 1984, p. 26