Whenever the topic of discipleship is brought up in the church, one truth is essential to the discussion: You cannot talk about discipleship without the cross. Jesus never did.

“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,” He said in Luke 14:27. Consistently, Jesus associated following Him as a disciple with taking up the cross. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The Lord mandated that life as a disciple is one of counting the daily cost of losing your own life in order to follow Him in the new life He has for you. “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39).

Often when the idea of discipleship is raised in the United States, it is done by young men with tattoos and skinny jeans (or similar fads) talking about how their ministry is going to change the world, their grand ideas for church programs, and what they are going to do for Jesus. Yet when Jesus taught on discipleship, it was about how much His followers needed to change, the death to all the high ideals they had, and what He needed to do for them. Have you really counted the cost of what it means to be a disciple of Christ?

In the last article in this series on discipleship, we heard of the Timothy Principle, where one person deliberately gives himself to training another, much like the Apostle Paul did when he chose to invest his life in Timothy at Lystra. Yet recall what was immediately required of Timothy. The first act that occurred in Timothy’s new calling as a companion with Paul, in order that he might travel and learn from the apostle, was his circumcision (Acts 16:3). Talk about cost. The old identity of Timothy as a half-Jew had to be removed so that he could accompany Paul as he traveled and ministered in Jewish areas. This willingness to suffer and sacrifice anything is essential to the call of a follower of Jesus Christ.

D. A. Carson reminds us that Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 1 that no public philosophy or commonly accepted wisdom can have enduring significance if its center is not the cross (The Cross and Christian Ministry, Baker Books, 161). In the modern church’s emphasis on making congregants comfortable and the church seeker friendly, stressing the centrality of the cross in its application to Christian discipleship seems outdated and strange. Yet Carson says the emphasis of the cross of Christ would have similarly sounded extreme in the early church. “In the first century, [a crucified Savior] must have sounded like a contradiction in terms, like frozen steam or hateful love or upward decline or godly rapist—only far more shocking. For many Jews, the long-expected Messiah had to come in splendor and glory; he had to begin his reign with uncontested power” (Carson, 247). As Martin Luther stated in warning against such a “theology of glory” in the Heidelberg Disputation, “without the theology of the cross man misuses the best in the worst manner” (Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 3rd ed., Fortress Press, 23).

As Jesus explained discipleship, He used concepts such as “cutting off your right hand” and “plucking out your right eye.” The call to follow Jesus required a cost, one that Jim Elliot immortalized when said and lived out the truth that “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” For Elliot, that heavenly wisdom cost him his young life.

Indeed, faith in the cross requires obedience to its ultimate call. Are our congregations hearing of that true cost of discipleship? Are our people taught both the crown rights of Jesus and the cross requirements that bestowed them on Him (Phil. 2:8–11)? Are they called to offer not only sacrifices of praise in worship but also sacrifices of goods and resources for the sake of others (Heb. 13:15–16)? Are they encouraged not only to invite their friends into their homes for hospitality but also to invite the poor and crippled and blind (Luke 14:12–14)? Are they claiming with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8)? Truly, we must call people to count the cost of discipleship.

Barry York | Dr. York is president of the RP Seminary and is a contributing editor to GentleReformation.com.