True Christian discipleship demands an uncompromising avowal of attachment to Christ, of adhesion to His person, and of adherence to His truth. The offence of the cross is not ceased. A real decision for the Redeemer cannot exist without some sacrifice, demanded and made, as a term of discipleship. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
The sacrifices thus expected and thus endured are various. The pang of separation from father or mother, brother or sister or child, who can estimate? The deep, lonely grief, who can describe?
Yet the Savior has said- “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and He that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.”
But for whom are you enduring and suffering and sacrificing all this? For Jesus! For Him who, though He was rich, for your sakes became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich. For Him who was not ashamed to call you His brother, but bowed His Godhead to your nature, and on your behalf became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. For Him who, while working out your righteousness by His life of unwearied and perfect obedience, could say, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” For Him who gave His back to the smiter, and His cheek to those who plucked off the hair; who sorrowed in Gethsemane, clad in a purple robe of blood; who was mocked and buffeted and spit upon in the judgment-hall; who bore the full weight of sin and the curse, and the suffering and the desertion upon the cross, and then bowed His head and died.
Before this stupendous spectacle, this amazing sacrifice, we exclaim, in the language of an inspired apostle, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes.”
And, in the words of a Christian poet “Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Octavius Winslow