We sometimes think and talk as if cross-bearing — following Jesus in self-sacrifice — is the ultimate goal. It’s not. The cross wasn’t the goal for Jesus, and it’s not the goal for his disciples either. Self-denial and cross-bearing is the pathway to a door and a goal. The door is resurrection, and the goal is new creation. When we forget the goal and see only the path of suffering, we unintentionally undercut our motivation to stay the course. We misrepresent the gospel to ourselves and others.

In this post, I want to highlight the way Jesus calls his disciples towards the goal of new creation.¹ Listen to the call:

If someone wants to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23).

The call is to follow, but where is Jesus headed? In chapter 9, Luke uses his words to paint a beautiful picture of where Jesus is headed, the ultimate goal of discipleship.² Let me explain.

The Hinge Text

Luke 9:23–26 is a hinge text that stands between (a) Jesus’s announcement that he is on a mission to suffer, die, and be resurrected (9:21–22) and (b) the preview he gives of his resurrection, his new creation glory (9:23–26). He calls it “the kingdom of God” (9:27).

Here is an overview of the stories in chapter 9:

• Jesus calls the twelve and sends them out with his authority (9:1–6).
• Herod wonders who Jesus is and ponders the possibility of John’s resurrection (9:7–9).
• Jesus equips the twelve to miraculously feed the crowds (9:10–17).
• Jesus asks who they/you say I am, and Peter says, “The Messiah of God” (9:18–20).
• Jesus says he will suffer, die, and be resurrected on the third day (9:21–22).
• Disciples must follow Jesus through death and resurrection (9:23–26)
• Jesus shows his disciples the end goal of cross-bearing: the resurrection glory of the eternal Son, the kingdom of God (9:27–36).
  

In the hinge text (9:23–26), Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on the path of suffering and death through the door of resurrection into the ultimate goal: the new creation kingdom of God (9:27–36).

Resurrection: The Door to New Creation

Luke 9 makes clear that resurrection is a doorway into new creation; resurrection is just a door. Much of Luke 9 focuses on the door. The topic is teased as Herod wonders if John might have been raised (9:7–9), Jesus explicitly states that his path is headed towards death and resurrection (9:21–22), and he gives his disciples a preview of his resurrection, new creation, kingdom of God glory (9:28–36).

Luke does not, however, stop with the door. He previews the new creation kingdom by revealing Jesus’s glory as the eternal Son of God. Jesus calls this glory “the kingdom of God” (9:27).

New Creation: The Goal

Jesus isn’t going solo into new creation. He’s resurrecting Israel to follow him into new creation. 9:27–36 reveals the ultimate goal he is calling disciples towards.

While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes shown like lightning. Look! Two men were talking with him. They were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory. They were talking about Jesus’s exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. (9:29–31)

There’s a whole world of things to say about this scene. I’ll try to say it in short: Radiating with the divine light of new creation (Gen 1:3), Jesus appears in his eternal glory — the glory he had before all creation and the glory he is leading disciples into, “the kingdom of God.” In the Old Testament two people stood at the top of Mount Sinai and talked with Yahweh — Moses and Elijah. Here, they are talking with Jesus, and the topic of conversation is the new exodus Jesus is about to complete in Jerusalem. Through death and resurrection he will resurrect Israel and lead them into a new creation glory that far exceeds the Garden of Eden.³

Conclusion

Jesus calls disciples to deny themselves and suffer, like him, but that isn’t some abstract ethic that’s valuable in and of itself. Suffering is horrendous. Crucifixion is torture; it’s awful. What makes it glorious is that Jesus willingly walked into and through that awful suffering “for us and our salvation,” the salvation of Israel, God’s people.

He calls disciples to follow him on the same path through suffering into new creation. If the path stopped at the cross, then Jesus’s life and mission would have been worthy of the ridicule they hurled at him as he hung on the cross. Christianity would make no sense. Israel’s story would be unfulfilled. We would truly be waiting for another if cross-bearing were the ultimate goal.

Thanks be to God Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed. He calls us to follow him through suffering into new creation. The author of Hebrews will think back on Jesus’s life and say it this way:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who crafted and completed the faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and took his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Prayer

☩ Lord, help us to see like you saw. As we try to fix our eyes on you, remember how weak we are. Help us not lose sight of where we are headed. Don’t let us be tricked into acting like all you have for us is misery and suffering. Lift our eyes to see the new creation you are making. Lead us to you, one God — Father, Son, and Spirit — in a new creation world without end. ☩

Footnotes

1. This post is a sequel to the previous post — Luke 9: The Messianic King is Resurrecting Israel ↩
2. It is important to distinguish the climactic moment of a story from the point when the narrative tension resolves. The cross is the climactic moment of the story of the Bible, but the resolution of the story is yet to be fully realized. Jesus announced the advent of the kingdom — the arrival of the resolution — but we await the full realization of kingdom come, pictured in Isaiah 65–66 and Revelation 21–22. Through self-sacrifice and cross-bearing, we follow Jesus to the end of the story, an end which we caught glimpses of in the middle of the story, in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the eternal Son. See Michael J. Gorman’s The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of Atonement (Cascade, 2014), who states, “The greatest form of hope in the Bible is for a new creation in which violence, suffering, tears, and death will be no more” (p. 5). ↩
3. In Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically (Zondervan Academic, 2024), Keven Vanhoozer does a magnificent job teasing out the way the theme of divine light runs across Scripture, leads to Jesus, and shines through him in the Transfiguration. In The Transfiguration of Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Reading (Baker Academic, 2024), Patrick Schreiner clearly and concisely unpacks the theological implications of the Transfiguration. Patrick concludes, “My thesis has been that the transfiguration reveals Jesus’s double sonship. It is both an epiphany (because Jesus is God) and an apotheosis (because Jesus is man). God does not merely bestow Jesus’s identity; he reveals Jesus’s full identity. It is a vision both of what is and of what is to be. The narrative gives hope to the troubled disciples by means of revelation. The suffering of their Messiah will lead to glory” (p. 148). ↩