The Hard Sayings: Luke 9:23

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

This article is part of a series explaining the sayings of Jesus that are hard to understand. This list was put together by the Lord's Library. To see the list an access earlier articles in this series, go to this page.

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Jesus said this to the apostles before going up to Jerusalem for his crucifixion. Peter had just said that the apostles consider him the Messiah. Jesus then said that he must suffer many things, die, and be resurrected from the dead.

This is a modern translation of Luke 9:23:

NIV: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

• The words in boldface are explained in this article.

Jesus’s Greek words could not have been heard this way by his listeners at the time. While this verse is very meaningful to today’s Christians, this version would have been meaningless to the apostles.

This translation is nearly identical to another entry on the “hard list,” Matthew 16:24-25. See its article here. It differs only in adding “daily,” which is two Greek words, a prepositional phrase meaning “for a time.” In the context of time, the preposition primarily means “for” or “during” depending on the form of its object. The Greek noun translated as "day," or “daytime,” also means "time" in general. The noun would be singular with “for” and plural with “during” so, with the word form in this verse, “for a time,” or “during daytimes.”

Though all the other words in this verse are the same as the earlier one, we will discuss only as one of those words here. We will start with a bigger issue that I missed in that earlier article, but which seems important to the way Bible mistranslates both verses.

Jesus Carrying the “Cross”

We all know that Jesus is portrayed in our traditions as as carrying his cross to his crucifixion. However, in the synoptic Gospels, the text says that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross (Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21, Luke 23:26).

The only verse that people claim refers to Jesus carrying his own cross is John 19:17. Its English translation talks about Jesus, saying “and he bearing his cross went forth(KJV).” This is mistranslated. The Greek says, “and the one bearing the cross for him, they went forth.” The word translated as “his cross” means “the cross for him.” The Latin Vulgate, also translated this as “a cross for him,” not “his cross.” The “went forth” is plural, the two of them, Jesus and Simon, together.

We must remember that Jesus had been whipped for hours at this point. He was practically bled to death and barely had strength to carry himself, much less a cross. Given how “the cross” is portrayed today, this carrying of the cross is often shown with him just carrying the smaller cross member. This too seems unlikely because the existence of the crossbar is as unhistorical as its carrying is unbiblical.

The “Cross”

Why are scare quotes used around “cross?” Because the Greek word does not mean any kind of “cross.” The original “cross” represented Jesus because it was the first letter of the Greek word “Christ.” To us, a “cross” is used primarily as a symbol of Christ’s death and, as an object, telephone poles. To his apostles, the word meant an everyday object. It was not an object used very often for execution and it would not have brought execution or torture to mind.

The word translated as “cross” means a "stake" or "post." It describes the posts used in buildings, palisades, to hold up tents, and in fences, primarily those stakes use as fence posts. Stakes and fences marked boundaries. See picture of wooden fence above. The Latin word that this Greek word was translated into in the Vulgate moved it more toward larger posts, meaning post, tree trunk, and gallows. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that was translated into this Greek word was used to describe a gallows for hanging someone by a rope.

These crosses were not the square, planed timbers in the joined crosses depicted today. Think about the expense of the carpentry for the comfort of the deaths of criminals. Milling wood was expensive throughout most of history. The Romans did not expend money and effort so lightly. What did these expensive items after they were used? Store them for later crucifixions?

Criminals were probably originally just nailed to trees by the side of the road. The point was to have them die slowly. high enough so they could be seen by everyone. This was a form of publicizing the punishment for violations of Roman law. After the slave revolt of Spartacus, thousands were executed by being nailed up to stakes over a few days, lining the roads from Rome. This was not a huge carpentry project. Criminals were simply nailed hanging from upright posts.

The number of criminals often exceeded the number of trees, especially in places like Palestine, where there were fewer trees. So, the Romans used the long posts used in building palisades. Other than removing their branches, these posts were not finished in any way, certainly not having their bark removed. This was meant to be public punishment. These posts were probably used in building palisades after being used for this “crucifixion.” The evolution of this “stake” to a “cross” is interesting, see this article about the staurogram.

The phrase “take up your cross” uses a verb that means “take” or “receive.” It would have been heard in that era as "take up your fence stake."That stake would make a good walking stick. The phrase had the same metaphoric meaning as it does now: pull up what marks your boundaries and what holds you in place, and use it for travel.

Conclusion

There are a lot of other words here that we can explain, but they were explained in the earlier article on Matthew.

Here is how Jesus’s followers might have heard this:

Listeners Heard: If anyone wants to show up after me he must reject himself and he must take up that stake of his for a time and he must follow me.