True Followership

UV 1552/10000 True Followership
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Matthew 16 v 24

The cross an instrument of slow execution, a demonstration of absolute human cruelty and greatest public disgrace became the symbol within a few days after the execution of Jesus of the absolute mercy and grace of God. In fact, the thief on the cross received salvation and hope of eternal life while still dying on the cross. It implied that anyone who placed his or her faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross would have hope and eternal life from then on till the end of time. Even in the most hopeless situation and for the most hopeless person, the light of God’s love and the power of His grace would begin to work. We need to understand the concept of true followership before we can understand what is true leadership.

Today, being a follower does not cost anything at least on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. It does not require our commitment or belief in the ideas and thoughts of the one we are following on social media. The follower is faceless and voiceless. But Jesus taught his disciples even before He ascended the cross that they too should deny themselves and take up His cross in order to follow Him. It implies that any follower of Jesus should deny his own lusts and desires and give priority to the will of God in their lives. It costs us our sinful desires and passions to follow Jesus. We should be willing to say “ No” to our sinful selves and say, “ Yes “ to Jesus. Why does Jesus compare the process of sanctification to dying on the cross? It is painful. One’s ego begins to die as we stop feeding it. Till then we lived for our own gratification or our own glory. Hereafter, we live for the satisfaction of God’s will and the glory of God.

We cannot be a true leader without being a true follower of Jesus. True followship implies that we need to offer our bodies daily as a living sacrifice and subject our minds to the discipline of the Word. Jesus urged his followers to sit down and calculate the cost of following him just as Proverbs says, “Even a fool will sit down and calculate the cost of a pillar he is planning to erect.” Yes, we are building a pillar in the kingdom of God, brick by brick, moment by moment, day by day, act by act, word by word and even thought by thought. We need to discipline our appetite for the world. We need to run filters on our thoughts and speech. We need to make a covenant with our eyes and our intellect not to entertain sexual lust. The act of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah implies that we should offer our lives as a daily sacrifice to the Lord in response to what He did on the cross to ransom us, to purchase for us so great a salvation. Abraham offered his first love, His only son Isaac to the Lord. Similarly, we need to offer our first love to the Lord. He does not want our dead sacrifices but He does want a living sacrifice. It might cost us our whole lives, all our talents, abilities, resources. It might seem scary at first that we are going to loose all to the Lord. The actual fact is that we stand to loose only all our negativities. True followship means that the Lord will remain our first love, our greatest passion for the rest of our lives. The passion of Jesus and the passion for Jesus will fan all our positivities into full flame. The cross that Jesus bore was to begin with a shameful cross. On His shoulders were heaped all the sin of mankind. The cross that we bear as followers is a glorious cross, a symbol of victory over sin, death, failure, misery, pride, lust and all that drags us into the dust.

Prateep V Philip