You Must Carry the Burden

I've recently been reading Pilgrim's Progress for the first time.  Only being 30 pages in, I'm wishing I would have read it a long time ago.

Christian is a person on a long journey with a heavy burden on his back (symbolic of the cross), sure that one day he'll be able to set the burden down and live in joy for forever.  Along the journey he is often tempted to take sidesteps that make the burden easier.

At one point he begins a conversation on the road with a man named Worldly Wisdom, who tells him that he can't enjoy the benefits of God's blessing until he sets his burden down.  Worldly Wisdom tells him that God doesn't want him to carry the burden.  Then he begins telling him of a town where he can go for relief.  The town is called Morality, where Christian is to look for a "very judicious man" named Legality, who will help, as well as his son Civility.  These two men will help ease the burden of the cross.

As he begins journeying toward Morality to find these two men who can help, the hill up to the town is too daunting to imagine traversing (symbolic of the Law).  So eventually he runs into Evangelist, who first gave him the message and the promise of joy, along with the accompanying burden.  Evangelist asks Christian, "How is it that thou art so quickly turned aside?"  As Christian tells Evangelist what has happened, the latter reminds the former that the righteous live by faith, and that all Worldly Wisdom is interested in is saving man from the cross, at the expense of the eternal joy that is awaiting at the end of the road.

In other words, civil religion might make for a world nice neighbors (a true blessing indeed), but it does nothing to save the soul.  The soul is saved through a long journey of taking up the cross and following Jesus, and the reason for the cross is not that God is mean, but that God is kind, and man, being a sinner, must live with the daily honest burden of the gap between true godliness and sin which is without and within.  The cross is a burden not because God makes salvation hard -- but it is because the fallen world and our fallen hearts make it impossible.  But when one puts their hand to the plow, takes up their cross, and follows Jesus, they are on the path to life, sure that it is as much their's already as Jesus is alive and ruling already.  Thus the Christian is the person who boasts only in the cross of Christ, because by it the world has been crucified to them and they to the world (Galatians 6:14).

I for one am praying that our recent social war -- or perhaps it's better to call it an awakening to the social controversy that's been there all along -- will awaken both Christians and non-Christians to the bankruptcy of civil religion, and bring them to the narrow path that leads to life.  My prayer is that believers who have been living in civil religion, just trying to be morally upright, and hoping that that will be enough, will see that the Gospel is much more radical, because indwelling and out-dwelling sin is much more serious and all-encompassing than they thought.  My prayer is also that non-believers will see that true Christianity can save the world, because perhaps what they've known as Christianity this whole time -- social, civil, moral Christianity -- is religion, but not Christ and the power of the Gospel.

To take up the cross and follow Jesus is to say, "The world needs to be saved -- especially me."  It isn't to say, "I'm right, and these people are the problem," or, "The world would be better with my camp, and that camp just needs to change."  That is to set up another Law.  Rather, the problem is inside of each of us, and Jesus came to make a new creation.  And that new creation, until He returns a second time, is marked by a long road, a heavy burden, and a reward of eternal joy.  But one must take up the cross and start walking to even begin.