How Jesus Recruits
Are you a true disciple of Jesus? Jesus, very often, rather than coax people into recruitment, He would challenge His followers with abrupt, bottom line statements that caused many to turn around and not follow Him any longer. 'You want to follow me? Give up all that you have.''You say you love me, your love for me must make your love for others look hateful.' (Luke 14:26,33; John 14:6 and many others.) I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Jesus wasn't a seeker sensitive preacher. He told it like it was because He didn't want any false expectations of what people were getting themselves into by becoming His disciple.
In John chapter 8 verses 31-33, we see a good example of this. Right after Jesus spent a bunch of time explaining to the Jews who He was, many finally came to believe in Him. What does Jesus do? He doesn't congratulate them or lead them through a simple prayer to invite Him into their lives, He immediately poses a challenge and invitation to them... 'If you continue in My word, [then] you are truly disciples of Mine;' In other words, Jesus explains that if we really want to be a follower of Him, it takes more than just a 'head nod'. We must prove our belief to be true by doing what He says to do - exclusively and forever. It's no small commitment.
He says that true discipleship is conditional on one thing: we must continue in His Word. When we do, it causes a chain reaction of knowing the truth, which then leads to the truth setting us free. Jesus counts this as proof that we are truly His disciples. In other words, Jesus says, 'You want to prove that you're truly my disciple? Great, continue in my Word. Then and only then will it be evident, and you'll be truly free. Otherwise, don't bother. It won't work. You'll be living in denial thinking you're following me, thinking you know the truth, but in reality you have no idea of who I truly am.'
Over the next few Sundays, we're going to look into this. We'll see how the Apostle John reveals Jesus as the true disciple seeker. In our next few verses in chapter 8 (31-47), Jesus explains exactly what He thinks a 'true' disciple is, compared to a 'false' disciple. We'll break this section down over the upcoming weeks so we can really allow the Holy Spirit to move in our hearts on this critical topic of true verses false discipleship, or even more specific, true verses false conversion.
We'll begin our study tomorrow with verses 31, 32 and 33. Be sure to meditate on these verses tonight if you can.
May the Lord prepare our hearts to worship Him tomorrow as we reflect tonight on His unfailing, everlasting love, which He has personally for each of us, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
