The Pallet and the Cross

Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk." (John 5:8)

As I came to this passage again this morning prayerfully, listening for what else God might want to teach me today, I was reminded of another thing that Jesus taught that is at the center of what it means to be a real Christian.

And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23)

I have seen that the healing of this sick man has far more meaning than just to prove that Jesus can heal sick people. Out of the whole crowd of sick people all around that pool only this one man received healing. That opens up another whole line of questions that I have touched on before, but what is more important is that it was entirely up to the man himself as to whether he would actually receive the healing being offered to him. Jesus never imposes Himself on anyone, but He does offer the goodness and grace of God to everyone. But He also is aware of the best timing to make them aware of that.

The more I look at these two verses the more I see parallels between them. I see three main components in the words of Jesus in both of these passages.

1. This man had been sick for a very long time and the passage says that Jesus was aware of that – whatever that implies. As I compare these two verses it would seem to me that this man just may have been thinking more intently about wanting healing than possibly anyone else in that crowd that day. That is why Jesus singled him out, to demonstrate both His loving compassion, His healing power and the need for responsive faith in the heart of all who might truly want to become whole and free. In short, this man deeply wished to have a better life, a life that corresponded much closer to that which measures with the life of God.

Likewise, I find myself wanting to respond to the invitation of Jesus to come after Him. As I dwell on the life of Jesus and see how He treated people, how He demonstrated the truth about how God feels about all of us, how He expressed love and compassion and caring and integrity, I find within myself longings to live a life like what I see in His example. I feel that wish, like this sick man, to follow after Jesus and to enjoy the kind of life that I see Him enjoying.

2. What I find interesting is the correspondence between Jesus' words to get up and His words to deny himself. At first glance it seems like the parallel falls apart here. But as I allow the Spirit to unpack this for me I notice that they are in fact very similar.

What does it really mean to deny myself? That has been a deep misunderstanding in my mind for most of my life. That is one reason why I have missed perceiving many things about what it really means to be a Christian for so long. For the popular views of these words tend to emphasize the supposition that in order to impress God we have to find things in our life that we really enjoy and then assume that God is asking us to give them up before He will accept us.

That is a very blunt way of putting what is usually conveyed far more subtly. But I have to sometimes reduce things to their raw form to better expose the falsity in some of their essence in order to more easily see the lies in the root. Then it is easier to contrast it with the real truth about what God is really saying to me and allow that truth to displace lies that still lay deep in my heart and keep me from trusting and following Him.

As I ponder what may have been in the heart of this sick man that Jesus was asking him to deny, I can begin to see that it very well could have been a struggle to give up or deny his own unbelief before he could lay hold on the faith needed to act on the invitation of Jesus to enter into a whole new life of wholeness. Just like me, this man could have easily clung to his excuses as to why he could not act on the words of Jesus. He had already started down that path by listing all the reasons why he could not get into the pool to receive healing. But Jesus checked him in this line of reasoning by simply offering him the blunt choice to either believe or to turn away and cling to his excuses. He had to deny his own opinions about what was viable, what was possible and to take a plunge into believing in God as opposed to a plunge into a physical pool in hopes of maybe receiving what he so wanted.

It is slowly dawning on me increasingly that true belief likely always involves a corresponding denying of myself in similar ways. To take hold of belief requires that I let go of all the things and excuses and logic and memories that hold me back and block me from believing and trusting the heart of God. The more I think about this the more clear it is becoming. To enter into real belief each day – which is what is necessary if I am to live a life of following Jesus – I must also deny the things and ideas and lies of the enemy that hold me back from believing and acting on what Jesus is revealing to me each day.

This is not nearly so easy as it may appear at first. But it can become much easier if I focus my attention on the face of Jesus instead of dwelling on all the reasons why I am not worthy or capable or whatever. It is my own choices about what I am going to believe about reality when I am faced with opportunity for change that will determine my future, not God's arbitrary choices imposed on me. God is always desirous of bring me to life and hope and wholeness; but it is my own doubts and fears and my clinging to my past experience that can sabotage His will for me. I must deny myself, my own views of what is real or possible and of how God feels about me – I must be willing to let go of those things while at the same time I become willing to take up the cross that represents the humility and choices of Jesus and allow Him to live His life within me.

3. Finally, it is not enough to just believe the words that Jesus says to me superficially. I must believe to the extent that I am acting on what I hear Jesus saying to me. In the Hebrew language the word for belief had within it the very concept of acting and living in congruence with whatever it was that one claimed to believe. But in our modern way of thinking we often separate the idea of believing something from what we actually do. But this is not the kind of belief that is needed to enter into the life that God is offering. If we want to enter into healing and joy and the thriving kind of life that Jesus longs for each of us to experience, we must embrace the kind of faith in God that will catapult us into acting on what we profess to believe no matter what others may think about us.

Jesus asked this man to walk. He also invites us to follow Him – pretty much close to the same thing. Do we find ourself responding so slowly to His invitation that by the time we have picked up our pallet in obedience to His words and look back around that He has already melded into the crowd and we can no longer find Him? What might have been different if this man had responded quickly enough to have been able to stick close to Jesus while carrying his pallet around on the Sabbath in violation of social regulations? It seems to me that the attacks leveled against him about breaking the rules would have had a very different effect if Jesus had been right there with him.

There is so much more that I can see in the parallels between these passages that can be so exciting and instructive for me. But today I want to learn to respond quickly to the promptings of the Spirit in my own heart revealing how I need to let go of old lies and to act more quickly on the words of Jesus in my life. I sense that my cross may not be anything like what I have assumed for many years. It may look more like the pallet that I have been laying on instead of an instrument of torture right now. I want to allow the Spirit of God to so transform my pictures of Him that I can see the glorious opportunities being offered to me instead of the impossibilities that I have believed that have kept me imprisoned all these long years. I choose to enter into life, the new kind of life that only Jesus can provide for me.