Following Christ, bearing the cross

God saves us.  Full stop.  Given our parish-wide reading of Exodus we know the model and paradigm for our salvation is God breaking into the slave camp and picking us up from a living death.  But does that not also mean a changed life?  Paul, in his letter to the Romans, talks about dying with Christ so that we also might rise with him.  And Christ himself, in Matthew's Gospel, tells his disciples that following him has a cross-shaped pattern.  It is in dying with Christ, dying to the cultures and patterns of sin, that we really live and breath the fresh air of resurrection.