Coming After the Lord

What a difference there is between running ahead and coming after. In the third year of His sojourn upon earth, the Lord Jesus began to emphatically tell His disciples where He must go and what He must suffer. “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.” This instruction came after the multitude wanted to take Him by force and make Him a king. How many in our day want to take Christ by force and make Him a king in their own life or in the lives of others. Also, the disciples, after a long a time of following Him, understood so little of the way to the kingdom. How patiently the Lord instructed them of the way.

The cross

The Lord did not mean in this verse to take up an actual cross. His words are symbolic and deeply spiritual. The cross is an instrument of death—an instrument of a cruel, painful, and above all, cursed death. “For it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13b). Thus, all true disciples must follow Him upon the way to His kingdom—a way that goes into death before life—humiliation before exaltation.

True followers of the Lord must learn to carry their cross daily. How rough, humiliating, painful, shameful, and heavy the cross can be that causes them to die daily. How heavy the curse of the law is which presses them down—how draining the weight of a desperately wicked heart—how grievous the cross of the world: called to be separate, desirous to be separate, but now feeling how conformed they are to the world. What vexations and temptations they face as they are assailed by the devil—how perplexing the way—how weak they feel under this cross.

There can be other crosses that we all must bear such as afflictions in the body, disappointments with children, loss of loved ones, etc. Have these been sanctified?

The Lord will instruct His true disciples not only with natural crosses but with spiritual ones. When the Lord begins and continues His work, He may use bodily afflictions to draw sinners unto Himself and to wean them from the world. This makes them more and more dependent upon Him. Try as they may to get from under their cross, they will be instructed that death is deserved. What a cross they, then, must carry. Yet, they have been drawn by cords of love, and true faith causes them to follow. “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” He has called them by His Word and Spirit internally, effectually, and irresistibly. Indeed, they are a people that have been made willing in the day of His power.

The Lord sees through all hypocritical following, too. “And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest” (Matthew 8:19). But the Son of man hath no place to lay His head. What ceaseless following is required. When the curse of death presses us down, then there is no rest. This way of coming after was too much for the rich young ruler. He went away sorrowing because to deny self was too much. He would not trade his riches for a cross. How loathe we are to carry our cross. By nature, we will neither own our curse nor the other consequences of our sins.

The Lord makes His people an exercised and experienced people so that they should seek the Lord. They will “feel” after Him, and find Him (Acts 17:27). The Lord lays His people low. He will have His people bow before Him, and although many are the afflictions of the righteous, the Lord delivereth him out of them all. (Psalm 34:19). The Lord will have His followers learn what we sing in Psalter 398:2, “The Lord is just in all His ways, in all His works the Lord is kind, and all that call on Him in truth, in Him a present Helper find.”

My friends, do you know of this way of coming after? There is an eternal difference between laboring only under a natural cross, and one which we are made to feel the weight of by the work of the Holy Spirit. “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

The comfort

The followers of the Lord Jesus must be conformed to His suffering image. If they are to follow the Lamb withersoever He goeth, then they also must suffer with him for His name’s sake. Must they suffer as He suffered? No, neither can they, nor must they. He alone could suffer the eternal wrath of God, and with that one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). But if they are to be glorified with Him, they must also suffer with Him (Romans 8:17). They must go through Gethsemane, with Him to Gabbatha, and also to Golgotha to behold what their salvation cost Him. Ah, what a wonder when the curse is lifted from their back, when He is nailed to the cursed cross in their stead—when the handwriting of ordinances that was against them, which was contrary to them, is taken out of the way and nailed to His cross (Colossians 2:14).

Oh, what a blessed coming after. Indeed, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). That coming after may then continue. Where has He gone? “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.” What is more? “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17b). His true disciples perhaps fear they will never come there, experiencing often that they are such halting, unwilling, stumbling deniers—even fearful that they deceive themselves and will betray Him at last. But by His suffering and death upon the cross, He closed hell for His followers, He laid down His life willingly and bore their shame and their guilt so lovingly. With the price of His blood, He redeemed them, and because He was pressed under the curse of their sin and bore His Father’s wrath for them, they are His. Therefore, with His pure blood He washes them. With His active and passive obedience, He unlocks the door to the Father’s heart for His people so that through His perfect satisfaction they can once again be received into favor and communion with Him.

Oh, burdened follower, He was delivered for your offenses and was raised again for your justification. Therefore, you will certainly come to that place where you will never have to take up a cross again. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Have you been made such a blessed follower?

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