The Cost of Discipleship

So often we struggle over the relationship between salvation by grace through faith and the high demands of discipleship. After all when Paul was asked what must I do to be saved by the Philippian jailer he simply responded, "Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your whole family." And yet Jesus said no man can be my disciple unless deny himself, take up his cross and follow him. He said no man can be his disciple unless he give up all his possessions.

How do we harmonize these statements that seem to be in opposition to each other? I'll be the first to admit that I struggle here because Jesus statements are so absolute in nature. But I suggest that what Jesus is doing is using hyperbole to make his point. He did this a lot. For instance he tells us that we must hate our loved ones if we are going to be his disciples but we all know that he literally didn't mean for us to "hate them." Instead he was using hyperbole to say that our love for Him most so dwarf our love for others that those relationships seem like hate. He told us to give up all our possessions but again we know that it's not the disposal of our things he desires but rather the surrender of those things to His will.

I say all that to qualify Jesus' statements that we can not be his disciples unless we have obtained absolute perfection in our surrender. Jesus knows, and we all know, that this side of death we will never be there. We will never love him as perfectly as his persona deserves, we will never surrender the things of this world as completely as his nature demands and we will never follow as perfectly as his grace merits. Jesus is setting before us the seriousness of His Lordship. Being a disciple is not meant to be taken lightly. Count the cost. Though it is true we will fall short, but by his grace we will continue to grow in our surrender. And I might add that even in our surrender, we often take two steps forward only to fall back a step or two from time to time.

But one thing we must make clear. Jesus the Savior is also Jesus the Lord. He is Lord whether we acknowledge that or not (Acts 2:36; Philippians 2:11). He is the Lord of every true believer whether or not we grasp this fully or obey him fully. When a person receives God's free gift of eternal life they must understand that God Himself has come, Jesus the Lord, and He has borne our sins on the cross and paid the debt in full. We might not understand all that means, or feel the import of it, but salvation comes when we confess with our mouths Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead.

The book of James makes it clear that if we say we have faith but reject God's position as Lord in our lives that there is something wrong with that faith. Saving faith leads us in growing surrender and our faith grows as we surrender.

Here's where the parable of the soils can help us. Many people say they trust Christ and even say, yes I believe on the Lord Jesus. They seem outwardly to be real and genuine Christians but then the Lordship of Jesus takes them to a hard place where they don't want to go. The rocky, shallow soil illustrates a reexamination of the Lordship of Jesus and many people turn away from Him and won't follow anymore because the demand is too great. Or in their faith they realize that must surrender something that is precious to them or something they really enjoy and the thorny soil illustrates another reexamination of the Lordship of Jesus and many others turn away from Him and won't follow anymore because the demand is too great.

In Luke 14 and other places in the Bible Jesus gives us the ultimate demands of His Lordship. They are things like the surrender of your most important relationships, the surrender of your possessions or even the surrender of your very life. Jesus knows that we all fall woefully short of such an absolute submission to His will but none the less this is the supreme call of salvation-- that in the grace given to us by Him, we might surrender our all to Him.

All along our Christian life God is going to be asking for our surrender. He's going to ask us to bow the knee to the Lordship of Jesus. At times we will, at times we won't but eventually will, but this is the call of sanctification. As a believer we will make progress.

I end with this promise and this hope. "For whom God foreknew He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus our Christ!" It's going to happen. As a Christian, a follower of Jesus, he promises by His grace I will one day be just like Jesus. I will one day be completely and perfectly surrendered to the Lordship of Christ! I look forward to that day. In the mean time, I'm pressing on.