Kasemann on Discipleship and the Cross (Gupta)

N.T. Wright has said that if he had to take the works of only one Pauline interpreter to a deserted island – it would be Kaesemann. Not that Wright always agrees with Kaesemann, but he found him exegetically and theologically challenging and provocative in stimulating ways (see What Saint Paul Really Said, 11).

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly and I want to share this quote from Kaesemann on the cross and discipleship (Perspectives on Paul)

The church lives under the sign of the cross, that is to say, given over to death inwardly and outwardly, waiting longingly with the whole of creation for the liberty of the children of God and manifesting the imitation of Jesus through the bearing of the cross…The person who does not share in the carrying of the cross, leaving the things that lie behind, has no part in the church; nor has the man who does not stand in the no-man’s land before the gates of this world’s permanent camp, repeating Israel’s Exodus. He is in truth not a Christian at all, but a member of the old world, whose characteristic is enmity to the cross. No one can take on the likeness of Christ in the birth-pangs of the Messiah without having become a disciple of the one who was crucified (p. 67, 68).