Matthew 16:21-26 - Divine Job Descriptions - September 13, 2020

It doesn’t always happen this way, but this year, Labor Day came at a time when work was definitely on the minds of many Americans. Millions have lost their jobs due to the pandemic and millions more have had their work schedules and routines thrown into turmoil. Parents and teachers and students are adjusting to a new normal when it comes to class work and homework. And to top it off we have two presidential candidates promising to put America back to work again. Since work is already on our minds, it’s fitting then that our text this morning draws our attention to job descriptions – divine job descriptions. Two of them: one for Jesus, one for us. Since we like to talk about ourselves, we’ll start with ours first.

Most earthly job descriptions are pretty boiler plate: they list the necessary qualifications, the desired skill-set, and the personal characteristics the employer is looking for. For employers who want to maximize their employee’s time and talents for their own benefit and profit – qualities like being ambitious, assertive, and productive are not only welcomed but demanded. Many think that’s how it is with the Church; that God “hires” you to produce for his Church. But this is unlike any earthly job description. The Christian’s job description requires no pre-qualifications – Jesus invites anyone…to follow him; it requires you to deny yourself – not assert yourself; it says take up a cross – not pick up a tool. And the only thing crosses are useful for producing is death. In addition, this divine job description says that we are to follow Jesus, not take a leadership role. And where does Jesus lead? To Jerusalem, not Disney World. To suffer, not to party. To be mocked, not praised. To be crucified and killed and then raised from the dead.

This job description goes against every natural instinct we have. We are wired from birth to try to save our lives, to advance our lives, to squeeze the most we can out of our 70 or 80 years of life. But Jesus says whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. This paradoxical theme runs throughout Scripture. For example: when did Samson find his life? It wasn’t when he was the powerful and famous judge of Israel, hanging up Philistine pelts whenever he wished. It was when he was standing, bound and blinded, between two pillars and gave up his will, his desire to live in order to serve the Lord’s will. It wasn’t until Samson gave up his life that he found eternal life. Countless other passages confirm that the goal of the Christian is to lose his life: precious in the eyes of the LORD is the death of his favored ones (Psalm 116:15); blessed are the dead who die in the Lord (Revelation 14:13); for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). And have you ever noticed how frequently the theme of death is found in our hymns? How many of them point to death? How many even revel in death? Is there anywhere you hear about death more than the church? Whatever else may be involved in the Christian’s job description – the final goal is death.

Now if death is not what first comes to your mind when you think of taking up a cross, it’s because we’ve been taught to think of the Christian cross as merely a burden to bear. We say, “We all have to bear our crosses.” According to that expression, the cross is something to be endured, often something aggravating or painful in our lives – it’s not the ending of our lives. This comes out when someone is sick or suffering and says: “Yeah, but I just think about how many other people out there have it so much worse: wounded soldiers, victims of abuse, etc.” Or when we refer to our children or spouse or job as our cross to bear. Those sentiments make sense. They sound religious and wise. But we must realize that human wisdom is not necessarily divine wisdom. And that’s particularly true when it comes to the way of the cross.

As we said before, crosses produce only one thing: death. Picking up the cross does not merely refer to enduring a burden, a sickness, a problem, a challenge. It refers to crucifying, to killing, the self. God may certainly use burdens and challenges to kill the self, but they aren’t the same thing. You can endure a burden, a sickness, a problem – and keep the self very much alive. In fact, the self often thrives on suffering by taking advantage of the opportunity to claim victim status – something all-too-common in our culture. The self would choose anything, even suffering, over death. But the job description of a Christian is not just to endure suffering, it is to die.

What does this mean? What does it mean to deny, to, in fact, die, to self? First we have to understand what our sinful selves look like to God. They look like little children. You know how one of the first phrases every child learns is “me want”; how you can put two children in a room full of toys and they will inevitably fight over the same one? To God we look like selfish, demanding, bratty children – we’re just better at hiding it from others. By nature we all look after and love ourselves above all things. Therefore, to die to self means to crucify that innate desire. It’s not just learning to put up with not getting my way; it’s not wanting to get my way in the first place. That’s why this job is so difficult – it’s a living death. For example, God calls husbands to place the needs and desires of their wives and children above their own (Ephesians 5:25-33, 6:4). He calls wives to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24). He calls children to honor and respect their parents (Ephesians 6:1-3). He calls citizens to honor, respect and even pray for those in authority – even when they are foolish and wrong (Romans 13:1-7). In a culture that glorifies the self, that exalts individual rights and privileges to do what I want to do or say, Christians are to be counter-cultural, to do the opposite, to put the self to death.

That’s our job as Christians: to die to self while carrying a cross. How’s that going for you? Is your mind always – 24/7 – on God’s will and on what others need and how you can satisfy that need? Me either. So, if keeping my job and getting into heaven depend on how dead my self is, I’m going to be fired; I’m not going to get in. I can no more put my self to death than I can hold my breath until I pass out.

Thanks be to God, then, that our salvation doesn’t depend on our dying on the cross. No, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to work at it, to kill the sinful self every day through repentance. But we should be clear that when we’re talking about our job description, we are talking about sanctification – living a holy life; not about justification – being saved. And saving souls definitely not our job. Justification is Jesus’ job, and his job description reads accordingly:

Here’s Jesus’ job description: from that time (that is, from the moment the disciples, led by Peter, confessed his true identity) Jesus began to show his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, the chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again. These words, this mission statement – as it were, are the reason Jesus is no more popular today than he was in the first century. Jesus wasn’t sent into this world to build an impressive kingdom. He didn’t come to be a pop-culture icon or to be remembered by history as a great man. He didn’t come to start a revolution or to bring prosperity and jobs to the world. He came to suffer and die. This is what he had to do. Why? Two reasons. First, because it was his Father’s plan, formulated before the creation of the world (1 Peter 1:18-20).

Second, this is what Jesus had to do to save our souls from eternal destruction in hell. That was his job. His job wasn’t to save us from ever getting sick or from ever having family troubles or from ever going through financial, emotional, or career pain. His job was to save us – body and soul – for all eternity. To accomplish this job he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from his enemies. The Roman whip had to rip through the flesh of his back to remove the burden of sin from ours. His blood had to drip from his broken body into the scales of God’s justice to outweigh and cover our guilt completely. He had to endure the full blast of God’s wrath to shield us from it. He had to be abandoned by his Father so that we never would be. Jesus’ job on this earth wasn’t to live, and certainly not to live life to its fullest, but to die – and that was God’s plan all along. That was how he planned to save us from the hell we deserved.

These two threads of our job and Jesus’ come together in verse 26: after all…what can a person give in exchange for his soul? What can we give to save our souls? Time, money, effort? Undergoing and enduring suffering, illness, challenges? Psalm 49 says no one can by any means redeem himself. He cannot give God a ransom for himself – (Yes, the ransom for their souls is costly. Any payment would fall short.) (Psalm 49:7-8) That’s why Jesus had to give what we never could: he exchanged his perfect life for ours (2 Corinthians 5:21); he gave God the only thing precious enough to buy back our souls – his holy, precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Jesus is why our job on earth is to die. Our job is dying while following Jesus because he has paid for our sin, saved our souls, and wants to give us more than the whole world could ever offer. This can’t be said often or clearly enough: our dying is not the cause of our salvation but its result. The result of being saved is that we die a little more each day as we focus more on Jesus’ death. As John the Baptist said so well: he must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30). Peter didn’t like that focus. He thought it was an ugly, unpopular, negative message. He thought he knew a better way, that it didn’t have to end in death for Jesus. Peter didn’t think Jesus deserved punishment but mercy. If it were up to Peter, a throne, not a cross would be the instrument of Christ’s victory and the symbol of Christianity. He wanted Communion to proclaim the life, not the death, of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:26). He wanted Baptism to join us to Christ’s life, not his death (Romans 6:3).

But that’s not the way of the cross – that’s the way to hell. That’s Satanic talk. Satan doesn’t mind people and church’s focusing exclusively on a living and ruling and glorious Christ.  He loves it when churches focus on how much we are doing for Jesus. He loves it when pastors promise that great wealth and health and happiness will be yours if you follow Jesus. What he can’t stand is people and churches who talk about a Jesus who suffered and died for sins or Christians who follow him by dying to self because he was crushed by Jesus’ death and the sinful self is one of Satan’s most powerful allies, one he can’t afford to lose. And we are not immune from Peter’s Satanic thinking. We too can yearn and strive and work for glory instead of the cross. We too can think that all of our sacrifice, our time, our offerings ought to earn us God’s mercy and blessing. We can swell with pride over how many challenges we’ve overcome, how much suffering we’ve endured. That makes sense, it builds up our ego and our self-esteem. But it’s not the job of a Christian. That’s to focus only on the things of men. The job description of the Christian is to die. I know it doesn’t sound very ambitious, very empowering, or very American to say “not my will, Lord, but yours be done” (Matthew 26:39) – but that is what it means to be thinking the things of God. And the reason we will want to take this job is because Jesus promises that as we lose our lives, as we die to self in the service of God and others – that’s when we find true life, eternal life in him.

First the cross, then the crown; first death and then eternal life – that’s the way of the cross. That’s the job description assigned to Jesus and to us. And it’s one more reason we shouldn’t get too upset about the viruses, riots, violence, and elections of today. Our job is not to make the best of life, our job is not squeeze everything we can out of life or cling on to it with every ounce of strength – our job is to die to this life. And because Jesus finished his job 2000 years ago on Calvary (John 19:30), we can be sure that when our job of dying here is done, he will raise us to true, never-ending life in heaven. Amen.