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. (Mat 4:18-22)
They didn’t say to Him, let us stay here and keep working as fisherman and we will be your disciples when we have the time. They dropped their nets and followed Him. Notice also the sons of Zebedee, they left not only their nets but their father as well. The call of Christ trumps family. They left their family, their old lives, their livelihood to follow Him. Take another example:
Another of the disciples said to him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead." (Mat 8:21-22)
That seems reasonable doesn’t it? Just let me do what anybody else would do, bury my father and once that is done I will follow you. That is not what being a disciple is about. It is a total surrender to Christ and His will, setting aside our own in the process. We don’t place Christ at the top of our priority list because there is no list, there is just Christ. Everything else stems from being a disciple of Christ. It is not one of the competing priorities in our life, it is the only priority in our lives.
And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (Luk 9:23-24)
What does it mean to deny ourselves? At least in part it means that we abandon what is important to us, most important to us in some cases, and make following Him the most important. It is not to deny ourselves a couple of hours on Sunday morning but a complete denial of ourselves. That might require us to abandon that which is most precious to us. In fact there is no “might” about it, it absolutely demands that we abandon what is most precious to us but for the one who knows Christ, this is not a sacrifice at all.
Here is one of the hardest verses in all of the Scriptures:
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luk 14:25-27)
Those are hard words. You must hate your family, your children, you own life. If you don’t, you cannot be His disciple. If you do not bear your own cross and come after Him, you cannot be His disciple.
What keeps you from serving Christ? Your stuff, your friends, your family? Are you worried about what your friends and family will say? I want to be “saved” but I don’t want it to inconvenience me or make me stand out. I still want to serve Mammon most of the week except those tiny windows when I let God intrude on my schedule. The American dream is not the Christian dream. Earning more than the other guy, having a bigger house than the other guy, owning more stuff than the other guy and raising your kids so that they have even more stuff than you is not even on the radar screen for a disciple.
Being a disciple is more than walking an aisle, becoming a “member” in a local church, showing up on Sunday mornings. It is also more than Bible studies, more than daily devotionals, more than “read the Bible in a year” plans. It is also more than being "Reformed" or homeschooling or headcovering or agrarian living. It is a complete and utter abandonment of everything that we hold most dear because when it comes to Christ, there is only room for one object of love and adoration. It is not our family, our country, our rights, our possessions, not even our churches. It is Christ and Christ alone. Until we strip away all of the things that we love in place of Christ, all of the things that deflect our attention, all of the things that compete with Him, all of the things that make us cling to this life we will never be His disciples. Is it possible to be a disciple of Christ while worrying about maintaining a middle-class lifestyle, of earning and consuming with a few breaks to go be religious? I don’t think that it is. The clamor of the world, the constant din of our entertainment, the ever increasing demands of the workplace, the drumbeat of “more, more, more” drowns out that solitary voice that says: “Follow me”. Being a disciple is not adding Christ to our lives, it is stripping away everything else until only Christ remains.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mat 16:25)
6 comments:
Stripping away our pretenses to goodness ought be the forst thing that is stripped away.
We are in bondage to sin and do not want to be freed from that bondage. The Word of law repeatedly condemns and convicts us, and the gospel Word raises us to new life.
Calls to become a better Christian just throw gasoline on the fire by making the person a bigger phonie, or helping he/she to become a bigger hypocrite and self-righteous (a modern day Pharisee).
Those who have been baptized have "put on Christ". (Galatians)
I find it odd that you take what Jesus says about the Lord’s Supper and baptism and turn them into something they are not (i.e. “sacraments”) but then feel free to ignore what He does say about the changed life of one who is a disciple of Christ. Paul writes in Titus 2: 14 that Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” You say that a zeal for good works is a bad thing and that we shouldn’t even talk about it. I guess Paul was just making all of us into hypocrites.
Based on your definition, as long as you are baptized and take the sacraments, you are good to go. I say the Bible teaches that this is mere empty religion and more akin to Roman Catholicism than to Biblical Christianity. If someone claims to be a Christian but is content to sit on their duff in church once a week and never feel driven to help their neighbor or serve one another, that person is deceived and not a Christian at all. They are a religious person perhaps, a moral person even but they are not a new creature who has been born again.
More on good works resulting from salvation later today.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.
Jesus never says this 'represents my body' (Paul never says that either).
Jesus says, "this IS my body" "this IS my blood"
Your side is distorting the text (and therefore the meaning)...not my side.
Baptism, the same thing. Jesus tells the disciples to go and give people the Holy Spirit???
No...he tells them to "go and baptize... in the triune name of God..."
Then he finishes by saying "Lo, I am with you until the end of the age."
He IS there...in it. He commands the Sacraments because He intends to be there, in them.
So when Jesus, in the flesh, says "This is my Body" it really literally is His Body? Even though His body in the flesh is right there. It cannot be anything BUT a symbol. It is not "Do this and eat my flesh", it is "Do this in remembrance of me". We do it to remember and proclaim, not to imbibe Him. That is one of the errors of Rome's transubstantiation. He also doesn't say what you describe:
No...he tells them to "go and baptize... in the triune name of God..."
You conveniently left out an important part. He says:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,(Mat 28:19)
Make disciples of all nations. Not baptize them and have them eat some bread in the hopes that they are saved. He also doesn't say or even imply that He is with us in the "sacraments". We are the temple of the Living God (2 Cor 6:16).
Read the accounts of people being converted, none of them are baptized in water until after they have been regenerated by the Spirit. The water doesn't do a thing for them, it is the changed heart. You are blurring the Old Covenant types and shadows with the New. More importantly you are letting your tradition override the Scripture.
For a thousand years (500-1500) just about every single Christiam was baptized as an infant.
All of the Reformes wee baptized as infants and none (that I am aware of) were re-baptized.
Jesus, in saying this IS my body (IS my blood) was saying that He is there, in it.
Also, a good post from Pastor Bror at Utah Lutheran:
http://utah-lutheran.blogspot.com/2010/01/unless-one-is-born-of-water-and-spirit.html
When He says Baptize in my name, He is saying that He will be there, in it, for the Baptized.
Why would He command us to do an empty ritual? He wouldn't.
Listen to this sermon (on Baptism) that my pastor delivered on Sunday):
http://theoldadam.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/the-baptism-of-jesus/
It may clear up a few misunderstandings.
Then again...it may not.
Steve,
For a thousand years (500-1500) just about every single Christiam was baptized as an infant.
I would quibble with that idea since everyone was baptized as an infant and not all (or even very many) of those people were Christians.
I would also point out that while it is true that infant baptism was the virtual sole practice for 1000 years, I am more interested in the reality that people in the New Testament did not baptize infants than I am in the practice of a heretical church for a millennium. It certainly is true that Rome mandated infant baptism virtually unchallenged for 1000 years. On the other hand people were also burned at the stake and drowned for refusing to baptize infants so you can see why most people, with little Biblical knowledge and no desire to be killed by the authorities, went along with infant baptism. If the priest says that is what God wants and you can’t see that it isn’t by reading the Bible for yourself and if the magistrate says “dribble or else”, well it certainly is understandable that you would baptize infants. I just can’t figure out for the life of me why people still do it now in the face of the utter lack of evidence in the New Testament for us to do so.
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