Jesus uttered this command to a good number of people, and, if he had uttered it to me, I'd picture my response to be something like, "Follow You, a first-Century Jewish peasant in a small Jewish town controlled by Imperial Rome? You trying to be funny?" But, amazingly, this is not the response of most of the ones Jesus uttered this command to. Their response continues to perplex me, and it should perplex every person who reads it.
Matthew 4:18-22
"While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.' Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him."
What?! This Jewish peasant just walked up to other Jewish peasants and said, "Follow me", and they followed him? Is that not crazy? Not only did they follow him, "they left their nets." The fisherman's net was his livelihood, their sustenance, what they depended on to survive. And they left them. They left their job to follow Jesus. Now, I want to avoid using the word "radical", simply because Platt has stolen that word and made it unusable in normal conversation. (I mean, think about it. If I say the word "radical" to a crowd full of evangelicals, they're going to respond with something like, "I read that book, and it was so good! You gotta get radical with your faith!" I can't use that word.) But, the action which Matthew says they take is, in a word, stark. It slaps you in the face and says, "Yeah, I just did that." What's even crazier is the response of the next two men Jesus calls, James and John. They didn't just leave their nets...they left their dad. "Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him." They stepped it up, leaving their job AND their family. Whoa. And this is what Jesus bids us to come and do in a conversation with his disciples (more like a speech to his disciples).
Matthew 16:24
"Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' "
If anyone wants to come after him (Greek word here translated as "after" is opiso, meaning "after, behind"), this is what it looks like. If anyone wants to come after, or behind, Jesus, these three things are the natural outgrowths of that "coming": denial of self, taking up one's cross, and following Him.
So, if I want to follow Jesus like the disciples did, then I have to leave my job and my family? Well, a couple of points to combat this. The first is that these men were literally and physically following Jesus wherever he went. He was theirs, and they were His. It would have been equally ridiculous of them if they had said to Jesus, "We'll follow You with our hearts, but we want to keep our jobs and stay with our families." They saw Jesus, and the natural response to his call was not a half-hearted, keep-everything-we-have-but-give-you-our-heart kind of following.
The second point is that it was considered an honor in the 1st century for a Jewish rabbi to give a young boy the same command as Jesus gave to these men. When a rabbi told a boy to "follow him", the boy would do it with eager abandonment of self, and sacrifice of self to that rabbi. It was both an honor and a privilege for the young boy who'd been called to discipleship under the rabbi. So, for these men, it was the norm to come under a rabbi, a teacher of the Scriptures, especially when that teacher expresses his desire for you to come under him by commanding you to follow him.
However, we do live in a different context, a different culture, a different "horizon" if you will. Now, at some point, being a follower/disciple of Christ does lead to some form of sacrifice. If nothing else, following Christ is sacrificial in that we are called to sacrifice the old self and, as Paul described, "put off the old self with its practices". This is sacrificial for us because, frankly, we want our old self to stay with us. We want to feed it crumbs under the table, we want to hide it and let it grow and fester like a scab on otherwise good-looking skin. So, if we don't sacrifice anything else, we sacrifice both our old self and our desire to let our old self live to GOD every moment we breathe.
But, the point which I'd like to make at the outset is that following Christ does not mean practicing ascetism, leaving our families, and quitting our jobs. The way we follow Christ is a different way than the 1st century, but it is just as effective. Instead of quitting our jobs, we attach a higher, more meaningful purpose to them, that purpose being the glorification of GOD through the dedication we show to our jobs, and another purpose being the proclamation of the Gospel in the workplace. Since we don't have the physical manifestation of Jesus, we don't follow him physically; we follow him spiritually.
Now, more often than not this spiritual kind of following should lead to a physical manifestation of said following. When we give ourselves up to GOD and his purposes, it leads to us both physically and spiritually showing the fruits of those purposes which are now both GOD's and ours. We proclaim the Gospel physically with our mouths, and its hearers respond to it spiritually and physically. (Am I using those two words too much? If you can identify what those two words are without me telling them to you, then I probably am; shame shame Patrick...shame shame.)
So, instead of us following Christ by practicing a rigorous ascetism, leaving everything behind and traipsing about the world after a Jewish peasant-turned-rabbi-turned-rebel, we give our lives to Him and have Him do in us what He wants to do. If He wants us to leave our jobs, our families and our friends to follow Him, then that is exactly what we do. If He wants us to invest in our co-workers, our families, and our friends, then that is what we do. What's important now for the Christian as it relates to following Jesus is what he/she does with the things he/she has, not getting rid of them. Rather, we give them a new purpose, a new goal, a new mission, and in that way we do sacrifice them/give them up to GOD, for His uses...not ours.
Christian, you are called to give up everything you have to follow Christ. But what we Christians must realize is that there are many different ways to "give something up" to GOD. You can sell it to someone else, or you can give it new meaning by giving it a spiritual purpose. Either is effective, and either is acceptable.
Let's look at one more story that, in my judgment, illustrates this truth well.
Luke 18:18-23
"And a ruler asked him, 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.' And he said, 'All these I have kept from my youth.' When Jesus heard this, he said to him, 'One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich."
Though this story (along with the rest of the Bible) is incredibly rich and dense with truth, there's just one thing that I want to point out about it. This ruler is pretty confident in himself after Christ gives him some commands from Exodus 20 in response to the original question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And he shows it by his confident statement, "all these I have kept from my youth." But (and I may be wrong), the rich ruler seems to say it with a tinge of expectancy. It's as if he's saying, "I've done all that stuff since I was a boy. So that's it?" He knows that this isn't all he has to do; it's not that easy for anybody. Then Jesus levels him with "Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." This statement makes the man increasingly sorrowful, "for he was extremely rich." But money isn't the problem here; it's the fact that he goes away sad about the fact that he has to sell his stuff. That's the problem. Jesus, after hearing the man's statement of his own ability, strikes at the throne of the man's heart with the "sell all you have" command. The man's wealth was the crown jewel of his heart, the thing the man was most attached to, and Jesus tells him to get rid of it...and then follow Him.
So, what's important is not the stuff we have, but our attachment to this stuff. Money is an inanimate object, and by definition it can neither be good or bad in and of itself. It can be used for good or bad, but it itself is not good or bad. Christ doesn't arbitrarily call the man to just get rid of all his stuff; he tells the man "to distribute it to the poor", to use it for a good thing instead of hoarding it...but the man couldn't do it. He was too closely attached to the things he had; they were on the throne of his heart, the seat of his affections. If women had been on the throne of the man's heart, I'm certain that Jesus would've told him to give up his fornicating ways and stay faithful to one woman in covenant marriage...and follow Him. If drunkenness was the man's vice, the thing which the man loved so much, I'm certain that Jesus would've told him to give up the wine and get sober...and follow Him.
Christian, who/what is on the throne of your heart? What do you care about most? What do you think about most? If the answer to these questions is GOD, then you are following Jesus. If it is not, then pray that GOD would do a work in you, and when you get to the point when GOD is all you want, all you need, all you desire, then you, my friend, are following Christ. Follow him.
In Christ and His Love,
Patrick
