Christ's words about the soul, which can easily be lost but can also be saved, are sometimes understood in a somewhat spiritualistic way. People speak of the soul as a certain immortal principle within a person, which is easily lost if one cares too much about earthly life, but which can be saved if one gives it to Christ and follows Him, taking up one's cross. Yet in New Testament texts the word “soul” most often means not some immortal principle that outlives the body and must necessarily be kept intact because otherwise one would die completely, but the whole of life, in all its fullness and all its manifestations.

The problem here is not to preserve within oneself something special that must never be lost, even at the price of losing everything else, but to allow the stream of life that the Bible calls the soul to flow freely, without losing its fullness and depth. The person himself, of course, plays an enormous role here: his spiritual “self,” which the Bible calls the heart and from which come the desires and aspirations that determine the course of his life.

In the Bible these aspirations and desires are usually called thoughts or intentions. What is meant here is not thoughts themselves, as a modern reader sometimes assumes, but precisely the intentions, aspirations, and impulses that determine a person's spiritual state, the course of the stream of his life, and therefore his path. At all times, among all peoples, in every spiritual tradition, people who sought the way tried to solve this very task, the task connected with the spiritual quality of their own life. In Yahwism, and later in Judaism, the way of the inner Torah became such a solution; its roots go back to the pre-exilic period, to the time of the preaching of the prophet Jeremiah.

This way, however, proved extraordinarily difficult for a person, for the consequences of the Fall had not disappeared and prevented him from attaining perfection. Jesus offers an entirely clear and simple alternative: give your life to Me, unite it with My life, and it will not be lost. It will not only be preserved in all its fullness, but will acquire an even greater fullness of which a person in the fallen world could not even dream. This is the Christian way: the same way of the inner Torah, travelled in unity of life with the One who came to reveal the living Torah to the world in all its fullness.

Why does God need a person to renounce himself, his own personality? Why would He need facelessness? But He calls us to renounce not personality, but selfhood. Personality as something unique is revealed when we enter into relationship with others, while selfhood, being closed in on one’s own interests, makes us indistinguishable from one another. In pride we are all the same!

Jesus’ words about the cross are astonishing. Today we read into them our idea of certain inconveniences of life. But in Jesus’ time this word could not have had such a meaning: the cross was a terrible and shameful execution, and nothing else. Therefore Christ’s words could only mean a call to consent to suffering, death, and shame. And for what is all this self-denial? Simply this: “If anyone wants to come after Me”...

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Where the Russian text has “go,” the Greek text uses “ἐλθεῖν,” the aorist infinitive of “ἔρχομαι”—to go, to come. The literal meaning, then, is: whoever wishes to come after Me. This is not about simply walking somewhere behind Him, but about following Him to a definite goal. One can walk without any special effort or commitment, but if you want to follow Him all the way to the goal, then the conditions He sets come into force. These are Christ's own words about what we are to do.

Deny yourself. We can renounce only wealth that we possess or could potentially possess. It is impossible to renounce the process by which icebergs form in Antarctica. But the icebergs themselves—yes: what do I need them for? To renounce something means to give up claiming authority over it. It is impossible to renounce being a living human being. But it is possible to give up control over that person's life—your own life. To deny yourself means accepting as right and good not the aims and circumstances in life that please you, but those that God chooses to give you. For most of us this means first of all consenting to remain unnoticed and refusing to be guided by our own vanity or that of others.

Take up your cross. In the Gospel, the cross always names what happens when the divine comes into contact with this sinful world. When we sense hostility, we usually either run away or respond in kind—and often do both at once. Christ does neither. He accepts pain and suffering as the inevitable companions of love and innocence in a world stricken by sin. It follows, incidentally, that if you want to take up your cross, merely agreeing to do so is not enough. You too must acquire love for others and innocence; that is, you must stop doing evil and begin doing good.

And follow Me. Contrary to common opinion, eternal life cannot begin after death. It either begins here already or does not begin at all. Following Jesus can begin only in this life; otherwise it will be too late. For us human beings, the chief thing in this following is to seek God's guidance, to seek the rule of the Holy Spirit.