So, you are taking this passage to mean that a true Christian must suffer for their sins? Jesus said we are to take up our cross and follow him he does not say in taking up this "cross" we are to suffer for our sins. If that were the case, just what did he suffer on the cross for? We are certainly told to put him before all else, we are told to not hold back anything from him, nor to allow anyone else to hold us back from following him and that is what we are doing exactly when we by faith trust in him as Lord and Savior. We are giving over our lives to his hands and surrendering to his will for us. How better could Jesus have put it?
What has happened over the years is Christians do not experience the kind of suffering that the early church did. Most of us have no idea what true persecution is. We roll up in a ball and cry for mommy whenever somebody says something to us in disagreement, or calls us a name or rejects our company just because we claim the mantle of Christian. In times past, some people, afraid they weren't suffering enough, committed self-mutilation or caused themselves intentional discomfort all so that they could appear pious or so that God would see they really were suffering for Christ. I look at that kind of behavior and can only imagine God shaking his head at that total misunderstanding of what he was actually talking about.
I really do sorrow over people who think like that because it tells me that they have no idea of the joy and love God wants for his children and they miss out on so much of the goodness of him and the easy yoke and light burden that Jesus promises those who follow him. They are easy and light because he is there with us helping us carry it and not behind us in the cart with the whip.
This is a wonderful statement from the Protestant perspective and I thank you for it. In the light of the Passion of the Christ, and the intense suffering and ignoble and painful drawn out death that Christ suffered, the Protestant idea of taking up the cross of Christ means actually taking up the beach chair, flip flops and mai tais on the beach in Hawaii?
No wonder the Reformation succeeding in the worlds of Phineas T. Barnum - suckering a rube every minute.
I really do sorrow over people who think like that because it tells me that they have no idea of the joy and love God wants for his children and they miss out on so much of the goodness of him and the easy yoke and light burden that Jesus promises those who follow him. They are easy and light because he is there with us helping us carry it and not behind us in the cart with the whip.
I have said often, and maintain to this day, that the appeal of the Protestant churches over the Christian ones is the relative ease and convenience. This helps provide even more justification for that belief. Paul speaks of driving himself on as if by whips, and you speak of ease. If you guys cannot get Paul right, how can you hope to get Jesus right?