“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” -Diedrich Bonhoeffer
God calls out to his sons and daughters and proclaims, “I know it may feel like you’re losing your life, but you will find it in Me”.
This is what he was saying to his disciple Peter in John 13 when Peter frantically grasped for Jesus’ life, proclaiming to lay down his own life. When the Lord knew that Peter was grasping for what he did not know, Jesus knew Peter’s own weakness and inability to stand on his own and that Peter would be redeemed, strengthened, and overcome by His own death just days ahead. You see, Peter was refusing the washing and mercy of God in John 13, he knew that he should be the one to wash Jesus’ feet, that he should be the one to die, but Jesus came to reveal the Father and the love of God to a weak and broken world in bondage to sin.
This is the cost of sin. When we come to know and behold the beauty and love of God in the face of Jesus Christ we cannot help but become one like peter, not wanting to see the Holy One come so low as to wash our feet, or to take the sin of our lust, our fear, hatred, jealousies, and rage. But still He comes and proclaims, “if I do not wash your feet, you have no part with Me”, He took the weight and burden of sin that day at the cross and stands now at the right hand of God continuing to call, “Come”, “Follow Me”. “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
Jesus knew Peter would understand after His ascension, He knew that he Holy Spirit would come as Peter’s helper, and this is the very spirit of God that has now proclaimed the Church as God’s body, as overcomer’s in Christ, and which cannot help but come under the weight of the love of God in Jesus. We now, in all things, have received the washing and continual purification and justification before God. Grace is not cheap, it came at a cost, and when we come we must surrender our little lives that Jesus would be known in us and through us. Peter’s life proclaimed this in his boldness, love for the church, and eventual martydom for the love of Jesus. He gave Peter his desire, to lay down his life, but only by the blood of Jesus, for he could not stand on his own. As children of God, we are called to live this way everyday;
“always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2Corinthians 4:10-11)
(John 13-17)
