‘And he said to all,'
‘He said to all.' This is the indication in Luke that all who are following are now included in what follows, not just the twelve. In Mark the words that follow are introduced by, ‘and He called to Him the multitude with His disciples, and said to them'. These and the following words must therefore be seen in the light of general teaching to the wider group of followers, and not as specifically connected with what He has told His disciples. It was general teaching aimed at bringing all to a final decision.
“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow (present tense: ‘go on following') me.”
Jesus first challenge here was this, and it was a vivid one. Were they willing from now on to deny themselves and take up their crosses daily and go on following Him? For if they wanted to come after Him, that was what would be required of them. Jesus here chose the most vivid picture that He could think of, a picture that was constantly displayed before Jews because it was constantly a penalty carried out on insurrectionists.
There was not a town in Galilee which had not seen the soldiers arrive, arrest one or more of their sons, lay across their backs the crosspiece on which they would be suspended, and then drag them off to die horribly. It was the ultimate in self-sacrifice. And once a man took up his cross all knew that he was saying goodbye to his past life for ever. He was saying goodbye to everything. He was walking the hard way which demanded of him (compare Matthew 7:13-14). And he had committed himself to that from the moment that he became an insurrectionist. There is indeed a sense in which it was at that first moment of choice that he had taken up the cross. It is in fact tempting to think that when those brave, if rather foolhardy, men secretly joined up with the insurrectionists they jested to each other that they were ‘taking up their crosses', for they would know that that was what lay in store for them if they were caught.
Jesus had seen an especially vivid example of this in his younger days when Judas the Galilean had roused the people of Galilee against the Roman census in 6 AD, raiding the local arsenal at Sepphoris, not far from Nazareth, and leading a band of brave men to their deaths. The result had been a multiplicity of crucifixions along the roadsides, the razing of Sepphoris to the ground and the sale of its inhabitants into slavery, something which Jesus and His contemporaries would never have forgotten.
And that is what the man who followed Christ had to recognise. He was called on to face up to the same ultimate choice as those men, and that was to follow Him to the utmost, without any regard for himself. He must even be prepared to follow Him to death. (In the light of what they had recently been told this would have a special significance to the Apostles).
The emphasis here was on daily commitment of the most extreme kind. The point was that each one who would come after Him must be prepared to turn his back on himself, and his own ways and his own desires, and his own chosen road, and to daily walk the way of the cross, picking up his cross anew each day so as to walk in His way in total self-sacrifice. He must choose daily to walk in the way of Christ, rather than his own way (see Isaiah 53:6), however painful it might be. He wanted them to recognise that this was what was involved in following Him. The mention of the cross was to speak of the most dreadful suffering known to men of that day. All had seen the Roman crosses set up by the roadside as a warning to criminals and rebels. All had seen the men who hung there in agony and the suffering involved. They must therefore even be prepared for that. It was a demand for total self-surrender and commitment, and a warning that it might include death.
Later this statement would be given a slightly different emphasis by being interpreted in terms of a spiritual dying to the self, and a living only for Christ through His resurrection life (compare Romans 6:3; Romans 6:11), but here in its initial form it is stark in its reality, and refers to actually being ready to go out into life each day with the intention of turning their back on all the old ways and living wholly for Christ, recognising that any day death might be a possibility because of their choice. In view of the growing antagonism Jesus did not want them to be unaware of what might await them. And thus He tells them that they must live their lives in the light of impending death. They were to take seriously the words, ‘in the midst of life we are in death'.