“He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
And he who does not take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me.
He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”
It is at this point that a disciple has to choose what he will do. If he would be ‘worthy' of Christ (deserving of His interest and saving concern) then he must put his love for Christ before his love for his father or mother. He must put his love for Christ before his love for his son or daughter. Still filled with love for them He must go forward in love to obey Jesus' words. He must take up his cross (dying to his old life) and follow Jesus. The taking up of the cross refers to the fact that when a man was sentenced to crucifixion he himself had to take up and carry the crosspiece of the cross on which he was to die. Thus to take up the crosspiece signified deliberately taking the way of death. In this case it is used to parallel the choice between Christ and relatives. So here he is choosing to die to his relatives and the ways in which they want him to walk rather than forsake Christ. This may result in actual death through martyrdom, but not necessarily. The emphasis is on a dying to the old life and its claims upon him, for now he is following Christ, and Christ alone.
At this point he is again confirming his choice of the narrow way. If he seeks to ‘find' his old life again by turning his back on Christ and His truth, then he will undoubtedly lose it (or ‘destroy it'). He will lose all his hopes for this world and the next. He will destroy all that is good and right in his life. But if he loses his old life for Christ's sake (whether by a life of obedience to Christ or by actual martyrdom) then he will find true life both in this world and the next (Matthew 19:28-30). Note the emphasis on ‘for My Sake'. For that is the point. He is not doing it in order to gain eternal reward, he is doing it for Jesus' sake, because of his love for Him, but it is that that is then the guarantee of eternal reward.
It must be considered possible that ‘taking up the cross' had in Galilee become a way of speaking of total fidelity to God. In their recent past men had risen up against the Romans because of their love for God, and the result had been that they had been crucified. Jesus might well have seen such things as a child, as men were crucified on the main road that went through the valley below the mountain on which Nazareth was built. And each time it had happened the conspirators had been aware that they were, as it were, taking up their crosses, as they followed their leaders. They were committing themselves to a way that might end up in crucifixion. And as such things will it may thus have become a grim jest among them, with the result that conspirators began to describe their commitment in terms of ‘taking up their cross'. It is quite probable therefore that the cross had become a symbol of fidelity to God, and that ‘taking up the cross' had come to mean choosing to face up to the enemy head on. The symbol does, of course, gain new meaning in the light of Jesus' cross but that was not in mind here.