The Blueprint of Grace

A guest post from Robert Allen

This is a guest post from Bob Allen, author of The Blueprint of Grace: Seeing and Submitting to God’s Design for Sanctification. You can order it at Amazon or Wipf & Stock.

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In Matthew 16, Jesus tells his closest friends that if anyone wants to be his disciple, the first step is self-denial, followed by identifying with his death. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 16:24–25). Earlier in Matthew, Jesus says that the way to life is entered through a narrow gate and is a hard journey. Given these words here in Matthew 16, I can see why.

Abandon your self.

Walk away from the life you used to know.

We’ll explore this picture more in the coming chapters, but we have to start with the end in mind. In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes that God is always shaping those he has saved into a better representation of the one who has saved them. God works to conform his adopted children into the image of his Son, Jesus.

So what does that mean for you and I as Christians? It means that our job is to focus on Jesus. But before you get too far down the track, I want to give you a word of caution about this path: it is hard and it is going to cost you your life. I don’t mean that you’re going to die because of your faith. You’re going to die one way or another, barring a miracle. No, what I mean is that the path Jesus lays out for you in Matthew 16:24–25 is the path he himself walked. Think that through for a moment.

During his earthly life, Jesus constantly talks about how he can only do what he sees the Father doing and how he has a mission which is not his own. Everything Jesus does comes as a direct result of him doing what God wants from him. I know the mental gymnastics it takes to consider how obedience fits into Jesus’ life. The author of Hebrews writes that we have a great high priest in heaven who is able to sympathize with us in every way because he was tempted in every way, yet he never sinned. If Jesus is fully man, then of course he was capable of sin; and in the same breath, Jesus was fully God, so could he really sin? I’ll leave that discussion to theologians much smarter and wiser than me, though for my part I believe he could indeed have chosen, in his humanity, disobedience. But it is crucial to show how that plays out in real time.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem in the last week of his life, looking ahead at what would come his way, he expresses emotion after emotion. He is heralded as he enters Jerusalem. In the next scene Matthew narrates for us, Jesus overturns the tables of those exploiting the financial poverty of his people in the temple. We see righteous anger, gentle correction, pointed teaching, truth-fueled rebuke, and merciful lament. The images and stories flash around the city, each soaked with anticipation of what this prophet from Nazareth might say or do next.

Finally he settles in to observe the Passover with those closest to him, the Twelve. It is a meal mixed with sorrow and love. But after the meal, after Judas Iscariot has departed from the group to betray his rabbi, Jesus takes his dear friends with him to a place outside the city, to the Mount of Olives, to a garden called Gethsemane.

What is it Jesus says? “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24). Jesus asks his disciples to pray with him and then he wanders off deeper into the garden to pray by himself. What does he pray? “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39) Jesus doesn’t want to die. He knows what lays ahead. He grasps the physical torment of what will unfold in the next twenty-four hours. He understands the emotional agony he will experience as his friends desert him. In his humanity, Jesus wants nothing to do with any of it.

But he surrenders himself.

He denies himself.

Do not miss this: Jesus of Nazareth chooses to set aside his own physical and emotional well being in order to fulfill the will of the Father—“. . . not as I will, but as you will.” How hard is it? He has to pray it three times! In verse 42 it says he prays, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And then in verse 44 he prays once more, the same words, and I am blown away when I read them. Jesus denies himself. He denies his flesh, which screams, “I want to live! I don’t want to suffer!” Every atom in his body bucks against the prospect of this death. He sweats like drops of blood in anguish at the very thought of it.

And he lays his own will down.

He refuses to allow his bodily discomfort and fear win out.

In what follows, we see that he takes the very next steps he prescribes as the requirement for being his disciple in Matthew 16:24. He takes up his cross and carries it with the help of Simon the Cyrene to the place of the skull to be crucified. He lays his life—his perfect, sinless, loving, merciful, gracious life—down for you and for me.

Remember, this isn’t your neighbor Randy who dies. It is the very Son of God. He is a gift of love from God for you. He is the offering God makes on your behalf to settle your account forever. God is perfectly just in that the penalty for disobedience is death and he is perfectly loving by providing a payment for you in Jesus. And what does God ask in return? That you let him make you more like his Son than you are now.