(Music by Chris Tomlin: I Will Follow)
Introduction
What was supposed to be a 14-month sabbatical from preparing lessons for this ministry in order to focus on my doctoral work and my personal health challenges turned into two and a half years of walking closely with Jesus while he cared for my weary body and soul. Let’s praise God together that I’ve completed my doctoral work and my health has improved considerably. You may be interested to know that not only did this ministry not suffer during my absence, it also grew significantly! God was faithful to his promise to provide continued interest in the website even when no new lessons were published. In fact, more than 10,000 people from around the world every month are accessing the nearly 300 lessons that are available on the website! God kept the ministry alive and vibrant when I no longer had the strength to do it. Praise God for his faithfulness!
I learned a great many things during the last two and a half years of doing my doctoral research. I will share some of those things with you at the end of this lesson. Aside from the things I learned doing my doctoral work, I learned that there is a difference between walking with God and following God. Specifically, walking with God is a kind of abiding in his presence. It is an unsurpassing joy of fellowship and community with the Creator of the universe who would move heaven and earth to be in fellowship and community with me. Walking with God for the last two and a half years, at least for me, has been a process of simply resting in his love and care.
Following God, however, is something very different. Following God has at its root the understanding that God knows the way, and we do not. Implicit in following God is submitting to his Lordship over our lives. It’s easy enough to say that Jesus is the Lord of my life—in theory. But when he says Follow Me, that’s when theory becomes reality. I have found, at least in my life, that it’s how we respond when Jesus says Follow Me that our faith undergoes its greatest test. Some people think the hardest part of answering Jesus’s call to follow him is fear of the unknown. That may be true for some people, but I think the hardest part of answering Jesus’s call to follow him faithfully is the cost. Being his follower is not just going to cost us something; it’s going to cost us everything. In order to become the kind of follower Jesus envisioned, it has to cost us everything.
I can already imagine some of you jumping up and down objecting, saying (probably screaming) that salvation is God’s free gift of grace that Jesus paid for so we wouldn’t have to. And you’d be right. But only in the narrowest understanding of both salvation and grace. Modern Christianity, at least here in America, has condensed being a follower of Jesus into what amounts to a painless profession of faith. But this is not how Christians in many other parts of the world understand what it means to be a follower of Christ. Especially in countries that are hostile to Christianity. It is also not the historical understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ. However, somehow here in America, being saved and being a follower of Christ are two different things. You can be saved by Jesus but don’t have to be a disciple (another name for a follower of Christ) of Jesus. So, what does Jesus actually mean when he says Follow Me?
Subject Text
Matthew 16:21-25
21From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Context
At the beginning of Matthew 16, we see Jesus being challenged, again, by some of the religious leaders who wanted Jesus to perform some kind of miracle as a sign to prove his claim of being the Messiah. Imagine, if you can, what Jesus’s reaction might have been, what he might have been thinking. We like to wag our fingers at the religious leaders and roll our eyes at the irony of creatures demanding the Creator perform a miracle to prove he is who he says he is. Jesus chastised them for sure, but mainly because they, of all people, should have quickly and easily recognized him as the Messiah they’d been waiting for. I wonder, though, if Jesus knew how often people would demand that he perform a miracle to prove he is God. I wonder if he could see that I would be one of those people. I wonder if he could see that some of you would make the same demand. Like some of you, I have been at the bedside or gravesite of a friend or family member and demanded Jesus prove he is God by healing or bringing back that person who means so much. How many of you have demanded Jesus prove he is God by stopping those who are persecuting you? How many of you have demanded Jesus prove he is God by ending the addiction that is destroying your family or putting a stop to your spouse’s abusive behavior or by bringing home safely your son or daughter who has run away from home? So many of us have demanded some kind of sign, a miracle that never came. Our motives may be different than those of the religious leaders of Jesus’s day, but many of us have made that demand nonetheless. And when there is no answer to our cries for help, it can leave a person with even the strongest faith wondering if Jesus hears our cries for a miracle. Well, I want to assure you Jesus does, in fact, perform miracles. They just don’t look the way we expect them to. Aside from the resurrection, which stands at the pinnacle of Jesus’s many miracles, consider this: a handful of men and women who were Jesus’s first disciples literally changed the course of history all because they responded in obedience when Jesus said Follow Me. And that miracle continued throughout the history of the Church, even to today whenever anyone faithfully responds to Jesus when he says, Follow Me.
In order to set the stage for Jesus to explain what it means to be his follower, to be his disciple, he asks his disciples who they believe he is. They respond by telling him that they believe he is the Messiah. It is a monumental confession, the gravity of which will become apparent as we gain a better understanding of our Subject Text.
Text Analysis
21From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
We take Jesus’s revelation of his mission for granted because this is the Messiah we know as revealed to us by the Scriptures. We know the Messiah who came to lay down his life as a ransom payment for humanity’s sins. But this is not the Messiah the Jews, including the disciples, were looking for. They were certainly looking for a conquering Messiah, but one who would conquer Israel’s oppressors, at that time Rome, not a Messiah who came to conquer sin and death. The Messiah the Jews expected was supposed to be a military leader who would free them politically, not spiritually. Nevertheless, Jesus repeated his mission often, and he was insistent that it had to be this way because it was God’s plan from the beginning. No one was going to dissuade Jesus from his sacrificial mission. The disciples, and by extension all of us, must believe and follow Jesus on his terms or not at all. It is Jesus’s way or no way. This understanding will weigh heavily on how we respond to Jesus when he says, Follow Me.
22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Jesus was not subtle in rebuking Peter. However, before we all pile on Peter, let’s try and understand his motives and see if, just maybe, we’re not guilty of something similar. There are probably countless possible motives for Peter’s reaction to Jesus. If we give Peter the benefit of the doubt and assume he loved Jesus, even if he didn’t fully understand who Jesus was or what Jesus’s real mission was, we can certainly empathize with Peter in wanting to protect a loved one from impending harm. My guess, though, based on Jesus’s rebuke, is that Peter’s motives were more selfish. More likely, Peter wanted to protect Jesus and the chances that he would turn out to be the military Messiah the Jews believed would liberate Israel from its Roman oppressors. Peter’s hopes for a free Israel weren’t a horrible motivation, but if a plan doesn’t coincide with God’s plan, then no matter how good it might be, it’s not the best plan. There is a word of warning for all of us when Jesus rebukes Peter. Specifically, God’s plans aren’t always sensible to us because of our finite knowledge. And this is really what Peter, and many of us, are guilty of. We know that Jesus’s death was necessary and for our good because we know more of the story than Peter did. But to Peter, Jesus going to his death willingly just isn’t sensible. The lesson then for Peter and for us as well is that when Jesus says Follow Me our response can’t be based on whether or not it is sensible. Instead, if we choose to follow Jesus, we do so in faith, trusting that he knows what is best even if it doesn’t make sense to us.
24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
No matter how often we read these verses and try to massage their meaning, we just can’t get around Jesus’s conditional statement. It’s not structured like a normal if/then conditional statement, but it has the same effect. Specifically, if anyone wants to be his disciple, then they must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. There is no other way to be a disciple of Jesus! Unfortunately, we are living in an age, particularly here in America, where faith in Jesus costs nothing. There is no self-denial, no cross-bearing, no death. There is simply a profession of faith and thereafter life, for the vast majority of believers, goes on like it did before making that profession of faith. Sure, there may be a period of emotional ecstasy, but the reality is that real spiritual transformation rarely occurs. In large part, that’s because much of Protestant Christianity, especially evangelicalism, has conflated conversion and discipleship into a simple act of making a confession of faith. However, that’s not even close to what Jesus expected. If we are going to respond properly when Jesus says Follow Me, then we should be clear what he is calling us to do. If we read this chapter carefully, we begin to understand that believing and following are two very distinct and necessary components in the life of a Christian.
It’s not included in our Subject Text, but if we go back to vv. 15-16, Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say I am?” Peter makes an important confession that Jesus is the Messiah. If we then move to our Subject Text and specifically vv. 24-25, Jesus makes it very clear that the profession Peter made previously comes with conditions. First, there must be belief. Without belief that Jesus is who he says he is, then our effort toward holiness has no purpose, no point of reference, no goal. However, belief does not, by itself, make one a follower, a disciple of Christ. Without choosing to follow and a corresponding effort toward a life of holiness we were created for, a shadow is cast over the sincerity of our confession of faith. I can already imagine some of you objecting that no one has the right to question someone else’s confession of faith. Relax! We don’t have to question the sincerity of anyone’s confession of faith because Jesus is pretty clear that whoever will not deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him cannot be his disciple. I think that’s pretty clear. If you aren’t going to do what it takes to follow Jesus, then your confession is empty words. The question then is, can someone believe in Jesus but not be a disciple, not follow him? If you say yes, then you must ask, why? Why would someone believe in Jesus but choose not to follow him? Most likely it is the desire to be saved from an eternity separated from God, saved from hell, while at the same time longing to hold fast to the pleasures of this present earthly life. However, Jesus addresses this in the verses immediately following our Subject Text when he says that anyone who wants to save their life will lose it and anyone who loses their life for his sake will save their life. The second half of Jesus’s assertion makes it clear that Jesus isn’t referring to saving or losing our physical life. Instead, he is referring to the non-physical part of life, our lifestyle, you could say. The verses could therefore read, “Anyone who wants to save their earthly way of life will lose their eternal life with God, but anyone who relinquishes their earthly way of life in exchange for a life of following Jesus will save their eternal life with God.”
So, can someone be a sincere believer and consciously choose not to be a follower, a disciple of Christ? I think we can confidently say no because Jesus says no. But let’s ask this question: Can someone be a sincere believer and not understand how that relates to being a follower, a disciple of Christ? To this, I believe we must reply with a resounding yes! Consequently, what is desperately needed, yet sorely lacking in our churches, especially here in America, is clear direction in what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, how to respond when Jesus says Follow Me.
Conclusion
What does Jesus mean when he calls us to pick up our cross and follow him? Unfortunately, we have this terrible habit of romanticizing the cross. However, history tells us that the cross was always only understood as an instrument of physical pain, suffering, and death. In the context of our Subject Text, Jesus was not specifically referring to the need for physical pain, suffering, and death as a condition for following him, although that is certainly a daily reality for some of you. Instead, the cross, in the context of our Subject Text, refers to the process of putting to death our old way of life to free us to be fully committed followers of Christ, to be his disciples.
“Disciple,” like the cross, has become devoid of its historical meaning and significance. For much of the church’s history and certainly during Jesus’s time, prominent teachers and religious leaders would have disciples. Disciples were students who imitated their respective teachers in every possible respect. A disciple’s teacher could be identified by watching the conduct of or listening to one of his disciples. A disciple would train to become the mirror image of his teacher, to be “like” his teacher. The teacher/disciple relationship was radical to say the least. Teachers gained prominence and respect based on the number of disciples they had and how devoted those disciples were to them. Let me ask you something: In all honesty, does that describe all, or even most, of the people today who call themselves a disciple of Jesus? Maybe in some parts of the world, but not generally here in America. So how do we change that? To become like Jesus, we must diligently seek to find what Christ is like. The problem, for most people, is that they have a truncated understanding of Jesus because they have artificially limited their perspective of Jesus to what they can read about in the gospels. What they fail to consider is the trinitarian nature of being like Christ. Christ is present with the Father in the Old Testament at the drafting of the Law that was intended to set apart a chosen people as holy and distinct from the surrounding nations. Christ is personally present in the gospels in part to demonstrate to those chosen people what perfect holiness looks like in everyday life. Finally, Christ is present with the Spirit at the creation of the Church and the training and guiding of a chosen people of another kind, a people who are still called to be holy and especially distinct from the surrounding culture.
Today, the Spirit’s work is particularly important. But it is still within the context of the Trinity. The Father has given authority to the Son, and the Son has sent the Spirit to point us back to the Son in order to become like the Son because that pleases the Father. Jesus promised his disciples that after he left them, he would send the Holy Spirit to remind them of his teachings and guide them into all truth. The Spirit is always at work in the life of a true disciple of Christ. Always reminding him or her of who they were created to be. The Spirit is the driving force behind reshaping us into the image of Christ. Perhaps reshaping isn’t the right word. Perhaps we should say that the Spirit is always at work as the driving force to recover the image of Christ in us. Don’t let that idea shock you. Remember that all of humanity is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Since Christ is God, then it is entirely accurate to say that we have been created in the image of Christ. So, what happened? Sin happened! Sin has distorted the image of Christ in humanity. All of humanity has been affected by sin to one degree or another. Unfortunately, one of the distortions of sin is no longer having a clear picture of what the image of God or Christ really is. We get a glimpse of what Christ is like from the gospels, but let’s be honest, reading about what someone is like and spending days, weeks, months, and years with that person is not the same thing. Jesus knew that. That’s why he sent the Spirit to dwell within the believer, to guide us, to show us, to teach us how to be like Jesus. Most importantly, to help us (remember he is also referred to as the Helper) become like Jesus. Who better to help us recover the characteristics of God in our lives than God the Spirit?
What are the characteristics the Spirit nurtures in our lives that are on display in abundance and perfect balance in the life of Jesus? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). These characteristics are the fruit of the Spirit’s work in our lives. However, they don’t just magically develop in our lives simply because we make a confession of faith. Nor does the Spirit ram them down our throats. Like Peter, we must first reach the point where we believe Jesus is who he says he is. Thereafter, though, we must freely respond to Jesus in obedience when he says Follow Me. Consider this: The cross he tells us to pick up-the things that must die on that cross-are all those areas of our lives that don’t conform to the character of Christ. Hate, misery, worry, intolerance, meanness, wickedness, faithlessness, harshness, and an undisciplined life must die on the cross to make room for the fruit of the Spirit to develop and grow. Really the only question that we should seek to answer then is: How do we go about cooperating with the Holy Spirit in our own spiritual growth and transformation toward Christlikeness?
Application
In my absence for the last two and a half years, this was the question I sought to answer. It would be great if the Scriptures provided clear and concise instructions on how to grow in Christlikeness. But that’s not really the primary purpose of the Scriptures, is it? We can certainly find instructions on how to live, but if that’s all we look for in the Scriptures, then we miss the most important thing they contain—God! More specifically, how to be in relationship with God. Being in relationship with God, being in his presence, is how we learn to become like him. Remember that we have been created in his image. This is the brilliance of the incarnation. How could we know how to be like God if he didn’t come to us and show us? This is the foundation of discipleship—the student follows the teacher around in everyday life and imitates all the teacher says and does. It’s a little harder for us than the first disciples because we don’t have Jesus physically here with us. However, we have something the first disciples did not have while Jesus was with them. We have God actually living in us to show, remind, and lead us in the way of Jesus.
If we study Jesus carefully, we’ll start to recognize certain things he engaged in on a regular basis. Things that were consistent with all the practices that the Jews of his day were entirely familiar with. Without trying to provide an exhaustive list for you of all the things Jesus did, a cursory observation reveals that he read from the Scriptures, prayed, spent time in quiet solitude, fasted, and served. Today, we refer to these practices as spiritual disciplines. Obviously, Jesus didn’t do those things in order to grow spiritually. He did them because of who he was. By doing them, he set an example for us to follow so we could become like him.
For much of the history of the Church, it was assumed that Christians would leave behind the sinful practices of their old lives and immerse themselves in the practices that would transform and shape them into the image of Christ. We see that model repeated throughout the New Testament era after Jesus’s earthly ministry as the first disciples founded new churches throughout the region. They would stay with the people that made up the new churches in order to instruct them and show them how to be disciples of Christ. Paul described the model perfectly in his first letter to the Thessalonians when he wrote, “You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined to live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the master (1 Thess. 1:5-6).” This is how the first Christians learned how to become disciples, true followers of Christ. Throughout most of the New Testament era, this model was successfully repeated. It has only been over the last century or so that spiritual guidance and direction were replaced by a spirituality that is fun and entertaining—what I have often referred to as worshiptainment. A weekly dose of fun and entertainment is not biblical discipleship. Unless we stop demanding to be entertained and return to the biblical model of discipleship that includes a healthy and balanced regimen of spiritual disciplines, then the trend that shows that believers think and act no differently than unbelievers will continue and Satan will have won a great victory—the creation and perpetuation of irrelevant Christians who have ignored Jesus’s call to Follow Me.
(Music by Hillary Scott & The Scott Family: Thy Will)
