Morning Bible Study: Luke 9:23-27

Take Up Your Cross

23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. 

24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it. 

25 For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself? 

26 For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and the holy angels. 

27 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Commentary

(the following are excerpts from Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)

"We must prefer the salvation and happiness of our souls before any secular concern whatsoever. 

• "That he who to preserve his liberty or estate, his power or preferment, or to save his life, denies Christ and his truths, willfully wrongs his conscience, and sins against God, will be, not only not a saver, but an unspeakable loser, when profit and loss come to be balanced."
• "We must firmly believe also that, if we lose our life for cleaving to Christ and our religion, we shall save it to our unspeakable advantage; for we shall be abundantly recompensed in the resurrection of the just, when we shall have it again a new and an eternal life."
• "If we could be supposed to gain all the wealth, honour, and pleasure, in the world, by denying Christ, yet when, by so doing, we lose ourselves to all eternity, and are cast away at last, what good will our worldly gain do us?"

"To encourage them in suffering for him, he assures them that the kingdom of God would now shortly be set up, notwithstanding the great opposition that was made to it, v. 27. "Though the second coming of the Son of man is at a great distance, the kingdom of God shall come in its power in the present age, while some here present are alive." They saw the kingdom of God when the Spirit was poured out, when the gospel was preached to all the world and nations were brought to Christ by it; they saw the kingdom of God triumph over the Gentile nations in their conversion."