NOTES for Mat 16:24
Why does God need a person to renounce himself, his own personality? Why would He need facelessness? But He calls us to renounce not personality, but selfhood. Personality as something unique is revealed when we enter into relationship with others, while selfhood, being closed in on one’s own interests, makes us indistinguishable from one another. In pride we are all the same!
Jesus’ words about the cross are astonishing. Today we read into them our idea of certain inconveniences of life. But in Jesus’ time this word could not have had such a meaning: the cross was a terrible and shameful execution, and nothing else. Therefore Christ’s words could only mean a call to consent to suffering, death, and shame. And for what is all this self-denial? Simply this: “If anyone wants to come after Me”...