A cross-shaped life
Categories : Christianity, Quotes, books |
Furthermore, when Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow him, he is calling believers to a form of brokenness. The old self needs to die. The self-centered orientation needs to be shattered. And the healing that comes beyond this brokenness does not involve simply picking up the pieces and gluing them back together so that we can go on being our old selfish selves. Rather, they are reconfigured into a new whole, a new self. Just as the risen Christ still bore the stigmata, we too will bear the marks of our former brokenness as new persons in Christ. The old is both transfigured and transformed, but it is not entirely transcended in this lifetime, if by that one means it is totally left in the past. We are called to remember where we have come from, what kind of persons we once were, to own up to our past and claim that God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses. A cross-shaped life does not ever reach the place in this lifetime where it no longer needs to bear the cross or to stand in it’s shadow.
~ Ben Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans pp 152-153
