The Yoke of the Cross: Why Does Jesus Call It Light?

Many think that living a life of humility and love is a burden too heavy to bear. Especially when viewing the cross of Jesus as the chief revelation of this love, one is compelled to ask, Who can bear the weight of such a heavy load as this? How can we love like Jesus did! We look up to “saints” who seem extraordinarily gifted with love as they trudge up the mountain of obedience to Jesus, admiring them from a distance. They’ve made divine love the overarching purpose that determines and guides all else that they do. Even as they enjoy life for the sake of personal renewal their ultimate goal is still to gain higher ground in the joy of humble self-giving. How can we be expected to live like that! We are tempted to respond by accepting a much lower standard of love for ourselves. Albert Camus has written, “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” This is the ethic of the masses: one should not take on more than a little concern (a modest dose of love) for others. A life governed by self-giving love seems impractical, even unbearable.

The fact is that this common-sense justification for placing self-regard above concern for others does not align with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which means it’s not good news at all. In fact, the assumption that the dominantly self-serving life is the lighter and happier load to bear is delusional. Self-centered living is actually the heaviest of all loads to bear, for its promises are empty and its rewards are hollow. Sin is a cruel task master. The lighter load is rather that of divine love! Note this most intriguing text from Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The above text is intriguing because it seems so counter intuitive. A yoke on the back is restful and light? In fact, the precise meaning of this text of Scripture seems so ambiguous. Hans Dieter Betz even wrote of this text, “it is like a vessel which itself has no content, but which stands ready to be filled.”[1] However, this text’s ambiguity might be partly cleared up, as Matthew Mitchell points out, by noting that a key word in it seems to have been widely mistranslated. The word for “easy” (as in “my yoke is easy”) should be translated “beneficial” or “good.” Thus, the closing phrase of our text should read, “For my yoke is beneficial and my burden is light.” With this translation, Christ’s yoke is described as “light” for a reason, namely, because it’s a good yoke, the best yoke imaginable, the most beneficial for the good life.[2]

But what is this yoke of which Jesus speaks and why is it so worthwhile to bear? Jesus describes it as his yoke, namely, his lowliness and humility. Unfortunately, misunderstanding has tended to shroud the meaning of this phrase as well. We often assume that Jesus refers here to a meekness of spirit, which many understand as a lack of self-confidence, self-assertion, or even the presence of self-deprecation. Jesus meant nothing so abstract and shallow as this. Karl Barth rightly notes that Jesus is here describing instead the lowliness of his entry into flesh and his path to the cross, in other words, the lowly and humble path of self-giving love.[3] The Messiah of Israel will redeem creation through an unexpected path, not one of self-serving aggrandizement or aggression, but rather one of humble, self-giving love, the path that took him to the cross to die for us. This is the lowly yoke he carried and now offers to us to share with him. It has the insignia of the cross, of self-giving love, engraved on it. “Join me at my yoke” is the same as saying, “Pick up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24-26).

The lowliness of Jesus’ yoke of love for others did indeed bear up under the rejection of others, but it was not passive; it was a mighty force for good. Christ took a strong stand against evil, even clearing out the temple court in protest against a calloused religious system that lacked concern for the poor (Matt. 21:12-17). Many among the Jewish leadership had no proper concern for the poverty, sickness, or dehumanization of those who were the most needy in their midst. The witness of the law to the liberating life of divine compassion, mercy, and justice within the Kingdom of God was muted. Their religious traditions thus tended towards self-justification, a masking of their own spiritual callousness. They used the law of God as a weapon to exclude the outcasts, which they labeled as “unclean.” By callously applying these religious rules and traditions to them, they ended up only worsening the weight that the outcasts had to bear in life. Jesus said to these leaders: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). These leaders gave a tenth of their spices while neglecting (even worsening) the much greater needs all around them, thinking that they were well off in doing so. They were fools. Paradoxically, one must take on the heaviest weight of the law’s witness before one can discover its joy and lightness. It’s the seemingly light path of a meticulously-protected and self-centered status that ends up the heaviest load of all to bear.

Jesus offered the masses a much better yoke. Here is how he described the witness of God’s law to the good life: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37-39). Left only to our own resources, this yoke of love does indeed make us feel helpless to bear it. But we are not called to bear it from our own resources. Divine love carries its own weight. As the embodiment of love, Jesus went to the cross, where he paid our debt of love to God and overcame our state of helplessness in the process. His path was costly and dotted with anguish and tears, but it was also upheld and carried by the joy of love’s fulfillment. Hebrews 12:2 says of Jesus: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Love wins! Christ then pours his Holy Spirit into us, imparting God’s love abundantly to us (Rom. 5:5). The presence of the Spirit makes present Christ in us. We learn from him daily what it means to bear his yoke. Sharing this yoke of love’s cross with Christ, Paul wrote poetically, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). It’s Christ in us that bears the weight. Love carries its own weight.

When I say that divine love carries its own weight, I refer also to the inherent rewards of this love, which make this yoke so liberating, so light a load to bear. The yoke of Christ’s love is beneficial, a fitting and worthwhile yoke. It fits us well and fulfills us richly, because we were made for it. Even in our fallen state, we find ourselves discovering this truth about our joint yoke with Jesus more and more as we wear it, mimicking him in doing so. We do indeed grow weak, especially when we turn our gaze away from Christ. It is even possible to lose our first love, to fall short of the joy of service. But renewal and strengthening are always at the next turn for those who once again let God have his way in them. In fact, we are meant to find divine love so freeing that it can be likened to a rest from the really unbearable yoke in life, a life plagued by self-serving ends and all that comes with it, including fear of others and hate for them. As Martin Luther King said, hate is the hardest of all burdens to bear.

Simone de Beauvoir once said concerning love, “You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” Such love as Jesus displayed costs everything, indeed; but, paradoxically, it feels as though it costs nothing; in fact, one is made to feel that one has actually gained everything instead. Sin takes and never gives, even though we might reach to possess everything. As Jesus said, “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matt. 16:25).

[1] Hans Dieter Betz, “The Logion of the Easy Yoke and of Rest (Matt. 11:28-30),” Journal of Biblical Literature, 86.1 (1967): 10. [2] Matthew W. Mitchell, “The Yoke is Easy, but What of Its Meaning? A Methodological Reflection Masquerading as a Philological Discussion of Matthew 11:30,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 135.2 (2016). [3] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, Pt. 2 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1978), 169.