Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (Part 4)

The Apostle Paul passed on the call and character of his life to his protégé Timothy when he wrote, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).    Paul exemplifies for us what it means to journey daily the three-fold path of wholly following Christ.   In this post, I’ll conclude our brief description of the pathway of a disciple who is wholly following Christ in the concrete realities of life in the present. 

The path for all who wholly follow the Lord Jesus is three-fold – living a submitted, singular and sacrificed life daily for others.  The pattern is set by Christ himself:  to suffer, to die and to rise.  We are called to choose the path of wholly following, but we cannot choose it by our own strength of reason or self-determination.  We are both prompted to choose this path and enabled to follow his pattern of life only by the grace and strength Christ gives to us as his followers.

We must, however, be very clear on this point.  There is nothing, not a single iota of desire nor scintilla of inclination, naturally arising from our human hearts or minds that would prompt us to follow Christ wholly.  From the first to the last step upon this path of self-denial, cross-bearing and following Christ the whole way to death, each step is enabled by grace through faith.  Our daily following is by faith through faith just as much as our initial conversion was (Ephesians 2:8-10).  Just as we began our journey by faith, so the continuation each day on the journey of wholly following after Christ can only be undertaken by faith through the power of God’s Spirit (Galatians 3:2-3). 

Each step along the way is a step of faith – a step believing that Christ lives within us right now.  And so, we pray each day “Live Jesus!”  Wholly following after Christ is patterning our lives in the here and now after the life that Christ himself lived.  “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).  The path Jesus walked thus becomes the pattern for our living and dying for others at this very moment in time.

We are able to “follow in his steps” only in the strength that God daily provides us to live submitted to his Word, singularly focused to do his will and ultimately sacrificed for others.  It is by such wholly following after Jesus that we humans image God in the person of Christ to others.  Living life in this way is the fulfillment of God’s purpose in re-creating us in Christ.  In so doing, we live lives imitating Christ.  In him we find our pattern; in him is our daily purpose.  And ultimately, Christ’s life living through us will lead us to death for others.  Laying down our life for others is the completion of a life imitating Christ. Wholly following Christ, then, is our destiny as human beings created Imago Dei.

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 3)

Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on his journey to Jerusalem – to taking up the burdens and sins of others.  Ultimately, his journey is along a path to death, yet it is a death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call, then, is to live a sacrificed life.  We offer-up ourselves for others just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life is the goal of wholly following. 

We may think about discipleship as a daily walk along a three-fold path wholly following Christ our Lord.  It is the path of living a submitted life, a singular life, and a sacrificed life.  The three-fold path embodies the whole life of a follower of the Son of God who himself lived a full human life and died a full human death.  He died for us not only to accomplish our redemption from eternal separation from God, but also to enable us to pattern our life and death in this present world after His.  He enables this wholly following in the here and now because he is our life – Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). 

When Christ spoke his call to discipleship he spoke not only the particular path that lay before him, but also the pattern for everyone who wholly follows after him.  It was the path of Peter as the risen Jesus foretold it to him when he met Peter on the shore of Galilee.  Jesus said “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).  John explains that by these words Christ showed “by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (21:19).  Peter, as one of the first followers of Jesus, lived a life and died a death that was both patterned after Christ.

The path Jesus walked in his life and in his death was also the pattern of Paul’s life.  God foretold the pattern of Paul’s life in his commission to Ananias, the person God used to convey his call to Paul: “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15b-16).  Paul himself passed on that same destiny to his protégé Timothy when he wrote, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).    

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 2)

God became fully human in order that humans could become fully men and women bearing His image - the Imago Dei.  Christ now calls and enables all those who follow him to live responsibly in the concrete realities of life in the here and now.    As we ponder this very present reality, we must ask yet another question: Where do we hear this call from God? 

The call to live such a life comes to us in the words of Jesus when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).  It is a call to live wholly following after him.  It is a call to live a submitted life as we deny ourselves; to live a singular life as we take up his cross daily; and to live a sacrificed life as we follow him on the road that leads to death upon that cross.  Christ calls the disciple to deny himself.  We deny ourselves by submitting to Christ and his Word. 

We subject ourselves to his examining eye.  We pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and see if there be any evil way in me.”  God must search us.  We cannot search ourselves.  We cannot examine ourselves.  We would too easily find excuses and justifications for our choices. 

Only by examining ourselves by his Word and as the Spirit of God wields its discriminating blade, sharper than any two-edged sword as it discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts, (Hebrews 4:12), will we begin to live the submitted life – a life of denial to self.  Through living a submitted life we begin wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to take us his cross. We take up our cross by recognizing that the cross must mean to us what it meant to Christ.  It is an instrument of death, indeed our place of death, but not merely a death to our self-centered, self-focused life, but a death of the follower for others.  The cross was the fulfillment of Christ’s work on earth -- the work that the Father had given him to do – the giving up of his life for others. 

The cross was the sign-post that marked the way that Christ walked.  It displayed his willingness to do the will of his Father.  So the cross that we take up is for us the singular emblem of the one thing that the follower of Christ desires, and that is: to do the will of God.  Living this singular life takes us to the core of wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to follow him.  When a person instructs you to follow, he knows the path that must be taken.  So, the question must be asked: where was Jesus going when he issued this call?  The answer is found in the preceding verse: "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised." (Luke 9:22)  Christ knew the destiny that he had been born to fulfill.  

With that knowledge, he calls upon his disciples to follow him on that journey to Jerusalem – to taking upon himself the burdens and sins of others – ultimately, to death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call is for us to live a sacrificed life just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life, then, is the goal of wholly following.   

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.   Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

So what are “the essential facts of life” to which Thoreau refers? We might begin the inquiry with some basic questions: What is a human being that God would take thought of him? What is the purpose of God’s creation of humans and His plan for their redemption? Is that purpose only to provide humans with a future hope that they will live forever with God after they die? Is the essential fact of life found by asking the question, “Where will you spend eternity?” Or, is the fundamental question of human existence something quite different?

Could it be that the primary purpose for which God gave His Son to die was that his human creatures might live fully in the here and now? Did God become a man so that men could live in heaven or rather, was it so that humans could become fully human and live meaningful lives in this present world? Maybe our question still needs to be refined.

What is the meaning of eternal life? When does life begin to be eternal? Does this happen only after we pass on from this present life? Or rather, could it be that eternal life begins the moment God grants a person the gift of faith – the moment that a person is born anew from above by the Word and Spirit of God?

Paul clearly taught that faith in Christ gives us more that just a reason to live in this present world. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 – “If only in this life we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.” In Paul’s day, the truth of the Gospel gave men and women a hope to live a meaningful and purposeful life in the here and now. It also assured each follower of Christ of an eternal on-going existence with Christ throughout all eternity. That hope inspired them to face and accept a martyr’s death for the sake of Christ.

In our day, however, we tend to be focused on the other extreme. We have hope for the life to come, but our faith does little for the way we live in the concrete realities of our daily lives. We are all too often simply living like everyone else around us – conforming to the world rather than transforming it. Maybe we need to be challenged by a new word: “If we have hope only for the life to come, we are of all men most meaningless.”

No one wants to live a miserable life. No one wants to live a meaningless life. So what makes the difference? What enables us to live lives freed of misery and full of meaning? Here again, our question needs to be refined. It is not a “what” that enables full and complete living in the here and now. It is a “who”. And the “who” is none other than the very Son of God, Jesus Christ. God, who became fully human that we, his creatures, could become fully men and women bearing His image, the Imago Dei, now calls and enables us to live responsibly in the concrete realities of life here and now.

[I'll continue on this theme in additional posts]