The Lord Jesus Christ is our master, and He has gone before us and we must enter by the same path that He has walked. That is the path of the cross. What exactly does that mean? For it certainly does not mean that we’re to die on the cross for either our own sins or for the sins of someone else. Jesus died once for all; there is only one atonement. But Jesus did say that if you are going to be His disciple, if you are going to have Him as your Savior, you must take up your cross and follow Him. The way of godliness, which is the way of the people of God, is the way of suffering and self-denial.
Thus, it is more important for me to follow Jesus Christ than to have anything else the world may have to offer on the world’s terms. So we have to turn our back on all of that. We have to be different. We must think and act as those who are ultimately citizens of a different city. And that is the point at which we recover something of what Adam lost back in the garden and find ourselves once again with useful work to do, even in this fallen world.
You know, much of what we do in this life will endure just for a tiny bit of time. And some things we spend so much time and resources on are worthless and will not endure at all. But you see, in the Lord’s service, when we suffer for His sake, and when we follow in the path which He has set out, we do that which is honoring to God; and because it is honoring to God and demonstrates the character of God, those things are eternal and last forever. That’s what makes life so worthwhile now. It doesn’t make any difference whether the world thinks it is or not. Perhaps there might even be times when we are discouraged as we live out our Christian lives because of some form of persecution or trouble that comes to us for our faith, and we struggle through whether all our suffering really is worthwhile. But we have to remind ourselves that whatever hardships we face are what God has given us to endure because all that is the way of the cross. It is following the pattern that our crucified Lord set for us. But in addition to being the way of the cross, it is at the same time the way of resurrection because we follow a risen Savior who has triumphed over sin and death by His empty tomb.
Our Lord was raised from the dead and because He was raised, those who are united to Him in saving faith will be raised also. You know how the apostle Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 15, that great chapter on the resurrection. He says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (v. 50). But at the last trumpet, all those mortals who are united to Christ by faith will put on immortality, and what is perishable will put on the imperishable. When that glorious change happens, as the Scripture says, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” At that point paradise is regained and it’s by the work of Christ, who through His death and resurrection has opened that heavenly portal for us, even the very door of paradise.