"Come here to Me, all who are growing weary to the point of exhaustion, and who have been loaded with burdens and are bending beneath their weight, and I alone will cause you to cease from your labor and take away your burdens and thus refresh you with rest. Take at once My yoke upon you and learn from Me, because I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find cessation from labor and refreshment for your souls, for My yoke is mild and pleasant, and My load is light in weight." (Matthew 11:28-30, WUESTNT)
I love the above expanded translation of the Greek by Kenneth S. Wuest (1893-1961), a Biblical Greek scholar. He really brings out the refreshing points from our Savior here. This passage sounds so pleasant to our ears in times of trouble. I've often turned to it for encouragement as I'm sure you have as well.
So, after reading these gracious words from Jesus' lips, how is it that we then turn around and say that life or Christianity is hard? After all, we also read this from Jesus:
..."If anyone is desiring to come after Me, let him forget self and lose sight of his own interests, and let him pick up his cross and carry it, and let him be taking the same road with Me that I travel, for whoever is desiring to save his soul-life shall ruin it, but whoever will pass a sentence of death upon his soul-life for My sake, shall find it. For what will a man be profited if he gain the whole world but forfeit his soul-life? Or, what shall a man give as an exchange for his soul-life? For the Son of Man is about to be coming in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall recompense to each one according to his manner of acting." (Matthew 16:24-27, WUESTNT; see also Mark 8:34-38; Luke 9:23-26)
"Pick up his cross and carry it," and "passing a sentence of death upon his soul-life" sound like contradictions to the previous passage describing Jesus' yoke as, "mild and pleasant... light in weight." In fact, Jesus' cross was too much for Him to bear Himself. He had to have help from a man from Cyrene named Simon (see Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26). Picking up a cross and carrying it doesn't sound mild, pleasant, nor light in weight. How am I to carry this heavy cross on which I was to be crucified, on my own shoulders? How could this cross compare to a yoke of burden spoken of by Jesus that is mild, pleasant, and light? This compelled me to ask the Lord how to handle this seeming contradiction. I basically asked Him, "Is my walk with You supposed to be easy (rest, mild, pleasant, light) or hard (carrying a cross of death)?"
As usual, Jesus often answers a question with a question. It seemed to me He asked in my heart, "Why did I bear My cross?" That was an easy enough question to answer by even the most amateur of Christians, right? We say it all the time. I answered, "Why, You bore the sins of the world, Lord, on Your cross, in Your own body..." I paused, still quite puzzled. But a passage of Scripture quickly came up in my mind, and I found it in my Wuest translation and read it out loud:
"For to this very thing were you called [namely, to patient endurance in the case of unjust punishment], because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving behind for you a model to imitate, in order that by close application you might follow in His footprints; who never in a single instance committed a sin, and in whose mouth, after careful scrutiny, there was found not even craftiness; who when His heart was being wounded with an accursed sting, and when He was being made the object of harsh rebuke and biting, never retaliated, and who while suffering never threatened, but rather kept on delivering all into the keeping of the One who judges righteously; who Himself carried upon to the cross our sins in His body and offered Himself there as on an altar, doing this in order that we, having died with respect to our sins, might live with respect to righteousness, by means of whose bleeding stripe you were healed, for you were as sheep that are going astray and are wandering about, but now have been turned back to the Shepherd and [spiritual] Overseer of your souls. (1Peter 2:21-25, WUESTNT)
I hope after reading that your eyes opened to the answer! If not, I'll help you sum it up. Jesus went to the cross for other people's sins. And this is His example for us to follow. Why do I take up the cross of my death? For the same reason as Jesus; for other people's sins. Please don't take that the wrong way! We are not capable of dying in the place of other people's sins to save them like Jesus. That requires sinlessness, which no man or woman has ever had. Only one Man has achieved that, the Man, Jesus Christ. So, what does this mean then? It means that my cross to bear is putting up with other people's sins without offense. This is indeed a very heavy burden! You know this by experience. Most of the time, we put up with our own sins easily enough, justifying our failure or our weakness and depending upon Jesus to understand us when we fail and then depending upon His mercy and grace to put us back in right-standing with Him. But then we will turn around and condemn many other people for their sins, especially if their sin happened to hurt us in some way. Instead of following the road Jesus walked, when our "heart [is] being wounded with an accursed sting," or "when [we are] being made the object of harsh rebuke and biting" we retaliate, or at least threaten to retaliate. And if not that, we gossip to others about how appalling that other person's sins are. We pretend we are shocked that they can call themselves "a Christian" and behave like that! Behind their back we criticize them and make them look bad to other people because of their failure to measure up to our standard.
This is so far from what we are called to! This is indeed hard! Right? Well, hold on. Is it?
At my workplace, my boss has a saying that he has lived by, and though it has a political overtone, it fits with this situation. He says in not so many words, "The Constitution of the United States does not guarantee freedom from offense. But we can choose to not be offended and then life gets so much easier." Amen. Do you see it now? I'll help you again...
Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus went to the cross? Jesus struggled under the stress of what He was going to do. He even asked God the Father to remove this burden from Him if it were possible. Yet after suffering so hard with this in the garden all night, He arose fully resolved to carry out His ultimate commission; go to the whipping post for our healing, and to the cross for our sins. He knew He was to suffer humiliation and excruciating pain in His physical body, and also the anguish of His soul when the sins of all of humanity were placed on Him on His cross. In other words, He knew He would suffer for other people's sins and it was going to hurt in every way possible. That's hard! But He had resolved to do so anyway. Praise Him!
But get this, dead men don't suffer, do they? Dead men don't get offended either, right? I saw the hard and the easy at the same time!
HARD: The struggle to make that once-and-for-all decision to bear with other people's sins and not be offended, but rather do it freely.
EASY: After that decision is made, it is easy to not take offense. Why? When you are not offended, you circumvent the pain. Instead, you are yoked to Jesus and go about setting the captives free instead of condemning them to hell for what they have done.
So, is Christianity hard or easy? It is hard to make what should be that one-time decision of bearing with other people's sins and offenses. But once you decide to do that, as my boss would say, "life gets so much easier." Indeed! Dead men aren't offended. Those supposed offenses roll off you like water off a duck's back in a rainstorm. You are no longer subject to being manipulated by narcissists or those who would feign emotion in order to control you.
So, stop being offended. Decide once and for all to "forget self and lose sight of [your] own interests." Once that is done (the hard part), then you will find that being yoked to Jesus is, indeed, a "cessation from labor" and "mild and pleasant, ...light in weight" (the easy part). Then in your day-by-day walk with Him, He will "cause you to cease from your labor and take away your burdens and thus refresh you with rest."
Amen!
