Come and Die

From a challenging article by Dane Ortland at The Resurgence:

Jesus’ secret to joy and life was simple: Die.

“If anyone would come after me,” he said, “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 and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

Against what all our instincts of self-preservation whisper to us every day, total surrender to Jesus is the safest investment we can make.

For disciples of Jesus, the gospel of grace not only plucks them from the easy path to hell but also places them on the hard path to heaven. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

That’s more than a cute tweet.

  Read the whole thing at the link.