Every teaching Jesus gave was meant to point His disciples to lay their lives down.
When we think about the gospel being preached today, we sometimes picture a man on a stage giving a powerful altar call with a praise band. The message we call the gospel is that Christ came, Christ died and Christ rose again. I would never disagree with that message. But do you ever wonder what Jesus preached when He preached the gospel before He had died?
I’ve heard people say Jesus went to the cross so we wouldn’t have to, but as someone once said, He went to the cross to show us how to. The gospel Jesus was preaching before He died was just a forerunner message to His death. He was teaching people how to lay down their lives, only to then demonstrate it on the cross.
You see, Jesus came with a message that was radically different from the Old Testament. It wasn’t different because it was the opposite.
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It was different because He was in the process of fulfilling it Himself.
Jesus was taking the Old Testament to a new level. Where the Old Testament would say, “An eye for an eye,” or “A tooth for a tooth,” Jesus would say, “Turn the other cheek,” (Lev. 24:19–20, Matt. 5:38–39). Where it would say, “Thou shall not murder,” Jesus would say, “To hate your brother is to already have murdered him” (Matt. 5:21–22). Jesus demonstrated a greater laying down of His life in the New Testament, which He lived as well as taught. Whether it was His miracles, His teachings or His parables, Jesus was constantly pointing us to lay our lives down and die to ourselves.
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