Tracking people nowadays is easy. We start following someone by clicking on a button on social media, the cost is minimal. At most, you lose a little dignity (depending on who you follow). We usually want to follow friends and family or people whose lives we covet lives. Celebrities have millions of followers and don’t ask for much in return, maybe sometimes “likes. “”. These days following someone is easy, so easy that we can follow hundreds or even thousands of people. I wonder if this phenomenon has not confused us with the words of Jesus: “Follow me. “
The life Jesus calls us to imitate was not coveted by anyone. If Instagram existed in the 1st century, I don’t know if Jesus would have many followers. He was a religious outing, so the pious wouldn’t be surprised to follow him. Today, spiritual but not religious, they also find it difficult to follow Jesus for two reasons.
- First.
- Jesus asks us to follow Him in a way that we do not follow anyone else.
- “If someone comes to me and does not hate his father.
- His mother.
- His wife.
- His children.
- His brothers and his sisters.
- And always into his own life.
- He cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).
- Family and celebrities are happy to share their disciples.
- But Jesus is not.
- You cannot follow Jesus and dedicate yourself to others in the same way you dedicate yourself to him.
- This type of exclusivity is particularly difficult in societies like ours.
- Where christians are not happy to include Jesus among the great religious teachers.
- But not above them.
- Yet Jesus will not share the stage with anyone else and demands that our love for him be unique.
Secondly, Jesus asks us to follow Him precisely when He does not feel excited or comfortable. “And he who does not take up his cross and does not come after me, cannot be my disciple?”(V. 27). The comfort and glory we often want for us is contrary to the cross. Therefore, to follow Jesus is to embrace a cruciform life. John Calvin wrote that Christ’s disciples “must prepare for a difficult, painful, restless life filled with many different types. “evil. ” Is the cost of following Jesus so high that it urges us to carefully consider the decision before there is no follow-up?(vv. 28?32).
Jesus concluded his call to become a disciple in Luke 14, saying, “Then can any of you who do not renounce all that he has, cannot be my disciple?”(V. 33). Simply put, following Jesus will cost everything, but what you earn is greater than what you lose. Through the cross, we receive Christ who, for our salvation, endured him before us.