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).