Take Up Your Cross

When I was taking a flight a couple of days ago, I was in the security line behind a nun who had a big cross on her neck.  She took the cross off and placed it in one of the bins to go through the screening.  The TSA worker there said to her, “You don’t have to take off your cross to go through security.”  I’ve been thinking about that comment and find it very symbolic.  As members of the Church we don’t typically wear physical crosses, but the mandate to “take up your cross” is for all of us.  And we should never take off that cross, for it is our security.    

The Savior taught, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).  References to taking up our cross in the scriptures typically seem to involve denying ourselves of the things of the world or keeping the commandments in general.  Mark 8:34 and Luke 9:23 use the same language as Matthew with the phrase “let him deny himself” associated with the taking up of the cross.  When the rich young man came to Jesus asking how to obtain eternal life, the Savior responded, “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me” (Mark 10:21).  So here taking up the cross was associated with the act of giving of our own possessions to help the poor.  When the Savior taught the Nephites about adultery and lust He said, “Suffer none of these things to enter into your heart; For it is better that ye should deny yourselves of these things, wherein ye will take up your cross, than that ye should be cast into hell” (3 Nephi 12:30).  Again the idea here is that to take up our cross we need to deny ourselves of worldly sin that Satan tries to entice us with. 

In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord equated taking up our cross to keeping the commandments, which is also a form of denial: “And he that will not take up his cross and follow me, and keep my commandments, the same shall not be saved” (D&C 56:2).  To Joseph Knight the Lord said, “You must take up your cross, in the which you must pray vocally before the world as well as in secret, and in your family, and among your friends, and in all places” (D&C 23:6).  For Joseph Knight taking up his cross meant following one particular commandment—prayer—which must have been one that he was struggling doing.  I think the best description of taking up our cross comes from the JST: “And now for a man to take up his cross, is to deny himself all ungodliness, and every worldly lust, and keep my commandments” (JST Matt 16:26).  This seems to incorporate the ideas of all the other scriptures inviting us to take up our cross: we must refuse worldly temptations and accept the commandments of the Savior in order to truly take on us the cross.

                The pressures and temptations of the world and what may seem like the burden of following the commandments may lead us to want to symbolically take off our cross for a time.  But that is always a mistake because only in taking up our cross do we have the security and protection of the gospel and our covenants.  The yoke of the cross on us may seem heavy, but it will always be light compared to the burden of sin that living after the world will give us.