If anyone comes to me and does not hate
father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own
life—such a person cannot be my disciple. —Luke 14:26, see also 27, 33
If the
closest relationships of my life clash with the claims of Jesus Christ, Jesus
says my choice must be instant obedience to him. Discipleship means passionate
devotion to a person—to our Lord, Jesus Christ. There is a difference between
devotion to a person and devotion to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a
cause; he proclaimed that we should be personally devoted to him. To be a
disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord.
Many of
us who call ourselves Christians aren’t devoted to Jesus Christ. We may admire
Jesus Christ, we may respect and reverence him, but we do not love him. The
only lover of Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit, and the only way anyone on earth
can possess passionate love for Jesus is if the Holy Spirit imparts it to them;
it is the Spirit who puts the love of God in our hearts. When the Holy Spirit
sees a chance of glorifying Jesus through you, he will take your heart, your
nerves, your whole personality, and make you simply blaze and glow with
devotion to the Lord.
What does
this devotion look like? The life of the devoted Christian is marked by the
moral originality that comes from abandonment to God. This spontaneous
obedience to the Spirit leaves the Christian disciple open to a charge that was
leveled against Jesus Christ: the charge of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was
always consistent to God. As Christians, we must be consistent to the life of
the Son of God inside us, not to our creeds and ideologies. People pour
themselves into creeds. God has to blast them out of their prejudices before
they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.
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