John 21:22
You follow me!
All of Christianity is subsumed in this statement. Stop and consider it for a moment with me.
Jesus doesn’t say, “follow these precepts” or “live according to these rules.” He says, “follow me!” He is the Way, Truth and Life. There is, therefore, no conflict, no philosophical tension between concretes and abstractions. Christ is the living Word and all the biblical principles testify and teach about Him! To have a relationship with Him one must go to His holy and life giving Word. You may not have thought about it before, but Jesus Christ, the God-man, not only reconciles us to God through faith, but answers the deepest questions of life. Let’s consider some of them.
How does any one life matter in a vast universe of diversity? Because Jesus died for you!
How is anything actually meaningful in a material universe? Because God is the ultimate Person and we know Him in Christ so we also know that matter (the material universe) is real but that personhood is ultimate since God is the creator of it all. This answers the atheistic conundrum of how truth can be immaterial in a materialistic universe and, moreover, how it is that truth matters to individual persons. In a purely materialistic universe love, truth, and meaning are futile. This is why in our technological age so many have turned to Eastern religions and practices – they’re searching for meaning even as their education has obliterated it through secular humanism.
We don’t follow, therefore, an abstract set of principles, but the sovereign God who, in the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity, died for the sins of His people. Clearly, Jesus doesn’t say that He knows the truth and that you and I should follow it, but that He is the truth! And this truth is that God sent His Son to redeem all who have faith in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for sin and rose again so that He’d be the firstborn of many brethren (Romans 8:29).
Without Jesus Christ, we’re under the death sentence of God’s judgment on sin. No matter what intellectual shenanigans we might attempt, no matter how great our philosophical gymnastics, we must all answer when that bell inevitably tolls for us. And it will. That’s the point of Jesus’ statement to Peter. This echoes the call to his disciples early in His ministry (Matthew 4:19, Luke 5:27) and restores Peter to the status of apostle after his denials. It’s the heart of Christian life – to follow Jesus and be His disciple. And to be a disciple is to be a “disciplined learner”. Jesus doesn’t call us to a life of passive following as though one is wandering aimlessly in His general direction. His call is one of devotion of mind and body. We’re to be transformed by the renewal of our minds by the submission to and application of Scripture in our personal lives through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Any attempt to follow Christ outside of Scripture is a false conversion because Jesus told us in the upper room discourse that the Holy Spirit would come and sanctify us. How? Through the truth of His Word (John 17:17).
What if something terrible happens to me? Well, in light of what’s just transpired, the arrest, torture and murder of Jesus Christ, and then His resurrection, there can be no rational fear of the future for those who are in Christ Jesus. The message of the gospel isn’t just the record of these events but, more importantly, what these events mean. Because of the arrest, torture and execution of Jesus, we rest assured, through faith, that the penalty of our sin has been paid in full. That death couldn’t hold Him is all the evidence we need that God the Father accepted the extraordinary sacrifice by His Son on our behalf.
Think about this truth often. It’s life changing. The greatest thing we have to fear is the judgment of God yet that’s exactly what we won’t ever face now that we’ve come to Him in faith. The confidence of the apostles in the face of a dangerous world didn’t come by accident, or by wishful thinking but by the correct apprehension of the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. We should, therefore, live just as boldly as they did for we follow the same Jesus. We don’t know the particulars of our future but we know the final destiny and that’s all that matters. No, we don’t know what will become of this and that, or how every little detail will play out. This shouldn’t cause us stress though because we know in back of all of it that Jesus Christ has died for our sins and risen for our justification. It’s like this, in this context only, that we’re more than conquerors.
To banish fear and stress in life is, for the Christian, not wishful thinking, but sound logic. Jesus Christ has you! He will not lose you, Christian. Your every struggle, every failure, and every tear, are meant to lead you to Him and, indeed, you will rejoice with Him because you are His and He loves you. This is the antidote for sloppy Christian living, lethargy, anxiety, and sin. How can we continue in sin now that grace has abounded and the truth known? What person among us would win a new and beautiful home but then insist on living in a hovel? Or what famished soul would reject a great meal and instead lick up crumbs from the floor? Sin is moral insanity. To reject the free gift of God in Jesus Christ is an incalculable folly. Sadly, though, we must report that so many Christians fail to take hold of the peace and joy that is theirs in Christ and instead focus on their circumstances rather than their glorious Savior. To follow Him is to know all this about the gospel and what it means to have been delivered from the death that is sin. And to know that is to stop fretting over every little thing because the God who brought you to Jesus will also bring you on the great day to the Kingdom, holy and blameless, crying sweet tears of joy as you see at last the glory of God with your own eyes!
What are you waiting for? Follow Him. And never look back. Follow Him to eternal life.
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