“Then Jesus said to his disciples,
‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow me.’”
Matthew 16:24
One would never believe that defining what it means to be a disciple of Jesus could be so confusing. Jesus seems to make it very clear here in Matthew 16 (and twenty-one other times in the four gospels). It is comprised of denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following him. Here’s my problem. For most of my life, instead of emphasizing Jesus’ command to “follow me,” I stressed his invitation to “believe” in him. In other words, instead of focusing on living like Jesus, I centered on thinking properly about Jesus; and my discipleship became a matter of having right theology. And while I may never have admitted it, right thinking was more important to me than right living.
Now, “believing” is important and understanding theology is crucial, but to emphasize head over heart (or head over heart and feet) is terribly misguided. And while I never believed that obedience was irrelevant, I did believe that having the right theology covered a multitude of sins (as long as they weren’t big or public sins). As a result, I’ve spent most of my life running after good theology, but not so much seeking to grow in the ways of Jesus. And that is a problem.
But focusing only on “believing in Jesus,” had other side effects, as well. These “side effects” warp our faith in several other ways. These side effects hit me hard as I was reading Scot McKnight’s great book, One.Life. It was uncanny how similar our backgrounds were. Scot’s church life impressed upon him five major beliefs—reading the Bible, prayer, evangelism, going to church and keeping far removed from sin, sinners and sinful places (especially the sins of drinking, dancing, drugs and degrading yourself with promiscuous sex). And just so you know, by hook or by crook, I had those same principles (aka, rules) imparted to me. With this impetus, Scot formulated a definition of what a true Christian was. He writes (page 13): “A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus; and the Christian life is the development of personal (private) practices of piety, separation from sin and the world, and a life dedicated to rescuing sinners from hell.”
I never formulated it in such words, but that matched my understanding perfectly. Christianity was all about having the right thoughts and not doing bad things (or at least not getting caught). You made one “simple” decision to accept Jesus (often into your heart, but for me it was into my head) and one major resolve not to commit any big sins. But, as I said, this had some bad side effects. I became judgmental and I became a legalist and I became consumed with knowing all about the Bible (if I was honest, I would say knowing all about Paul or all about the prophets or all about the Law, but oddly enough, not so much about Jesus. After all, wasn’t it Paul’s job to explain Jesus to us and tell us everything we need to know about him?). But these side effects soon began to wear me down and instead of finding “new life in Jesus,” I was simply going through the motions and playing the game.
But then, after years of being a Christ follower, I discovered that my definition of a Christian was completely backwards and that the key to being a Christ follower was to follow Jesus. And following Jesus is much bigger than one quick decision to accept him and much, much bigger than simply staying away from sinful things and much, much, much bigger than knowing all the right answers. Following Jesus involves giving our whole life (intellect, emotion and will) to Jesus and to his kingdom purposes, and following Jesus involves loving him and not just loving his teachings. And the Bible no longer is the place we go for facts about God, but the place we go so that we can grow wise and learn about God’s character and get swept up into Jesus’ kingdom purposes so that we can live for him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And the gospels become the place where we can see Jesus so that we can love him more deeply. My whole life, I was looking for information (and the right information), but I should have been focused on transformation because being remade into the image of Jesus is what following Jesus is all about.
Now, of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the word, “believing.” It is just that in our culture we usually believe with our heads, but love with our hearts; and when it comes to following Jesus, we can’t separate those two. If we want to follow Jesus, we must love him, know him as the truth of God and walk with him in the way he set apart for us. Or as Jesus himself said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” And what does that look like? Hopefully, the next nine verses will not only give us a clear picture, but will draw us into the heart of God so that we will follow Jesus.
