There really aren’t degrees to how we follow Jesus. Much as we might think there are, Jesus never made allowances in His call to follow Him. It was always the same, always demanding, and always without reserve.
There is only one way to follow Jesus, and that is holistically. We see this in a number of passages, but consider one of the most well known:
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” – Luke 9:23-26
Jesus said to them all. To the rich and the poor; to the young and the old; to the educated and the un-educated; to the powerful and the lowly. There are no exceptions to this rule; there are not asterisks to Jesus’ call. And that call is an all-encompassing one: to take up your cross and follow Him.
Now in our day and time, the image of the cross is prolific. We see crosses on necklaces, paintings, tattoos, and buildings; it’s as familiar as any symbol in the modern world. But it would not have been so for Jesus’ first audience. For them, the cross was the symbol of shame and pain and guilt and blood. Only the worst offenders were executed in this fashion.
For that audience, the cross meant death. And so it does for us as well. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once famously wrote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
So Jesus is still extending the call to all, and to all it is a call to give over every part of ourselves to His rule and reign, holding nothing back. Now while that might sound simple enough, we might still misunderstand the call to radically follow Jesus. In our misunderstanding, we will actually fail to grasp the fullness of Jesus’ call to us.
Misunderstanding#1: Radically Following Jesus Means Making Jesus Your Number 1 Priority
Perhaps, at some point in your life, you’ve done a kind of life inventory exercise. You want to have a realistic assessment of what really matters to you, and so you sit down with a pen and piece of paper and begin to make a list of everything you value. You put everything on that list from your family to friends to career to your favorite sports team.
Then you begin to examine just how much of your time, and your emotions, and your financial investment each one of those things receives, and based on that assessment you force rank all of those things. If anything other than Jesus is rated at the number 1 position, then you spend some time in prayer and recommitting yourself to keeping Jesus in the first place.
While I understand and appreciate the intent behind an exercise like that, it is actually a misunderstanding of what it means to follow Jesus.
The reason why is because even if Jesus is number 1 on a list, it is still a list, and the items on the list are really unaffected by each other. Even if Jesus is your number 1 priority, it might be that Jesus has no real effect on your number 6 or 7 priority.
A better picture for the Christian is to not have a list at all, but rather a wheel with Jesus at the center and everything else in life as a spoke leading out from Him.
With Jesus at the center, He effects everything we do, think, and feel. He isn’t just the most important thing; He is the lens through which we see everything else so that no area of our lives is untouched by His lordship.
Misunderstanding #2: Radically Following Jesus Means Doing Big Things
When we see this command to follow Jesus – to take up our cross in doing so – it feels like a big thing. And it is. It means willingly giving over everything we have, feel, are, and aspire to be to Him.
But we should also recognize that though it is a big commitment to follow Jesus, that commitment is actualized in a thousand small things every single day. Consider a passage from Paul, later in the New Testament:
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. – Col. 3:1-4
There’s a lot of talk about death in these verses as well, but notice the pattern here – You died…therefore die…
We take up our cross and follow Jesus, but that commitment is refreshed, reaffirmed, and re-performed daily. And it’s done so in small ways.
- We take up our cross when we choose contentment instead of greed.
- We take up our cross when we walk across the room to befriend the person no one else is talking to.
- We take up our cross when we refuse to take part in the same kind of humor as those around us.
If we only think of following Jesus as “big things,” then we will miss all the daily opportunities that exist for us to take up our cross and follow Him.
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Misunderstanding #3: Radically Following Jesus is All About Loss
Yes, following Jesus is about dying. That’s what taking up your cross means. It means dying to our own desires, our own ambitions, our own pleasure – it means dying to ourselves.
But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that dying and loss is the end game here. It’s not for Jesus. For Him, dying is only the pathway to living; loss is only the pathway to gain. Consider again His words in Luke 9:
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” – Luke 9:23-26
Jesus is not calling us to die, or at least not in the ultimate sense. He’s calling us to live! He’s not calling us to lose; He’s calling us to gain!
In that call, He knows that the only way to truly live, the only pathway to true gain, is by walking the road of loss. It’s only when we take up our cross and follow Him that we will finally, ultimately, truly see what it means to truly live.
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