Lent 1: Is Following Jesus Hard or Easy?

C.S. Lewis says, “The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down…Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’ Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.” (Mere Christianity, 196-7)

Have you ever pondered this seemingly odd juxtaposition in the teachings of Jesus? At one point he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And at another point he says, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Read Matthew 10.38-39; 11.30.

The way of Christ is harder and easier than what we are trying to do. This is one of the many deep mysteries of the Christian life and we would be wise to give it careful consideration in this season of Lent.

For those of you who are not familiar with the season of Lent, it is the forty-day liturgical season before Easter. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where he endured temptation by Satan (the Accuser). Read Matthew 4.1-11. The purpose of Lent is to prepare believers - through prayer, fasting, confession of sin, and sacrificial giving - for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the death of the Messiah Jesus, which culminates on Easter Sunday with the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

During the season of Lent, let us look to God’s Spirit as we consider how Jesus has made our lives both easier and harder.

Through his life, death, and resurrection Jesus has opened wide the door of salvation for us and has freed us from the curse of sin and death. And so, life is easier for believers because God is at work in us through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. In Christ, God is accomplishing our salvation. As the apostle Paul says, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15.54-57)

But our new life in Christ is also harder than what many people are doing because God now calls us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2.13-14). Our responsibility as followers of Christ is to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. And this task is possible only because God is at work in us. Because God’s new creation is bursting into the present world, we are called by God to work out the salvation that he is accomplishing in us. Yes, the victory is ours in Jesus Christ. But that victory must be lovingly and peacefully implement in the world through we who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

“Therefore, my beloved brothers and sister, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15.58). As God’s new creations in Jesus Christ, may this be our focus and passion in this Lenten season and always!