FOLLOWING CHRIST

You almost certainly have heard preachers stress the Christians' obligation to follow Christ. If you know much about the New Testament, you know the Bible writers urged all people to follow Christ. For example, Paul commanded the Corinthians: "Be followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (1 Cor. 11: 1). The English Standard Version translates the verse: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." The Greek word translated "follower" means imitator or mimic. In fact, our word "mimic" comes from the Greek word rendered "follow." Paul exhorted the Thessalonians to follow him. "For yourselves know how you ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you: neither did we eat any man's bread without paying for it; but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have not the power (or authority), but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us" (2 Thess. 3:7-9).

I have some questions for you to consider. What does it mean to follow Christ? Must we follow him in all his religious practices? What will be our great blessings if we follow Christ? What will happen to those who do not follow him? I shall answer these questions in the order I listed them.

We can follow Christ only if we have the attitude of Christ. The Apostle Paul pled with the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). If we have the mind of Christ, we shall walk as he walked. The Apostle Peter provides wonderful insight into the way Jesus walked. "For what glory is it, if, when you are buffeted for your faults, you take it patiently? But if, when you do well, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were you called: because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we follow in his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him who judges righteously" (1 Pet. 2:20-23).

If Christians have to suffer for their misconduct and they take it patiently, there is no particular glory in that. For example, if you are caught stealing and you bear up under your punishment, you do not deserve any credit. But if you do well and have to suffer for it, this is acceptable with God. The word "acceptable" in this passage comes from the same word translated "grace." In this context, the word means going beyond what is normally expected. As you know from your study of the life of Christ, that is the kind of example he provided for us. The word "example" literally means a writing copy for one to imitate. A similar word appears in the narrative about Christ's washing his disciples' feet. After Christ had humbled himself to wash his disciples' feet, he asked them if they knew what he had done. He then told them: "I have given you an example, that you do as I have done unto you" (John 13:12, 15).

The tenses of the verbs in the passage from 1 Peter are very meaningful. I shall take the tenses of the verbs into consideration. Please listen. "Who, when he was continually reviled, he kept on not reviling again; when he continued to suffer, he kept on not threatening, but kept on committing himself to him who judges righteously." Christ's behavior was not intermittent. It was the way he always lived. If we walk as he walked, we shall deal with persecution and abuse in the same manner. Will it be easy to emulate the Lord in this respect? It is almost certainly very difficult, but it is the way our Lord lived.

Jesus Christ was willing to forgive those who mistreated him. There is no greater example than his words to the crowd as he was being crucified. He had been beaten and scourged like a vicious criminal. They hanged him on a Roman cross, the most severe punishment a human being could experience. He looked down on the crowd with compassion and prayed: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lk. 23:34). In the face of Christ's wonderful example of compassion and forgiveness, how can we justify retaliation for some insignificant mistreatment?

Have you carefully considered the way Christ confronted doctrinal error and hypocritical behavior? He did not soft-pedal the false teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but directly confronted them for their ungodliness. In one of his very latest books, The Jesus You Can't Ignore: What You Must Learn from the Bold Confrontations of Christ (Nashville: Nelson, 2008), Dr. John MacArthur demonstrates how Christ deliberately provoked the Pharisees and other enemies of the truth. Dr. MacArthur comments: "The conflict (with institutionalized religious hypocrisy) began almost as soon as He entered public ministry and continued relentlessly until the day He was crucified. In fact, it was the main reason they conspired to crucify him. So Jesus' campaign against hypocrisy is a prominent, if not dominant, emphasis in all four gospels" (p. xix of the Introduction).

I ask you to compare our Lord's approach to false doctrine and immoral conduct with what you hear on television. How many of you honestly believe Joel Osteen would ever say to the wickedest people on the face of God's earth: "0 generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Mt. 12:34)? Would Robert Schuler or any of the other so-called "positive thinkers" tell adulterers, covetous people, extortioners or thieves: "You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell" (Mt. 23:33)? Was Jesus wrong when he used such harsh language of the Pharisees? The Apostle Paul imitated his Lord when the occasion demanded it. He told a sorcerer who was trying to prevent a man's hearing the gospel: "0 full of all subtlety and all mischief, you child of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord" (Acts 13: 10)?

We do not have the insight into human behavior Christ did. The Apostle John explains: "But Jesus would not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25). We do not know men's hearts as Jesus did. But when a person commits some heinous deed or acts the part of a hypocrite, we need to stand up against such evil. I noticed recently that Sean Hannity called Al Gore a hypocrite. Is that not being too judgmental? Just because a man says one thing and does another, does that make him a hypocrite?

If we follow Christ's example, we shall expose false doctrine and oppose all moral evils. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They asked Jesus a hypothetical question which they thought would destroy his teaching on the resurrection. "Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed to his brother. Now there were with us seven brothers; and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her" (Mt. 22:23-28).

Before I remind you of the Lord's answer to their question, I must ask you: How would the positive thinkers answer the Sadducees' question? Would they have said: "Let us dialogue on the situation? We cannot afford to be too judgmental. After all, there is no such thing as absolute truth. You may not believe what I believe, but every man has a right to his own belief." That kind of approach to moral values has brought the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union, in Cambodia, in Cuba and in other pagan nations and cultures.

Jesus said very bluntly to the Sadducees: "You do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God of heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt. 22:29-32). What a blow to their false dignity that Jesus accused the Sadducees of being ignorant of the scriptures and of the power of God! Would modem compromisers accuse the Lord of failing to win friends and influence people?

There is much more I would like to say about our obligation to follow Jesus. But I need to answer the second question. Must we follow Christ in all his practices? You know - if you have read the scriptures discerningly - that Jesus Christ kept the Sabbath, observed the Passover, worshipped in the Jewish synagogue and obeyed all the other precepts of the Mosaic covenant. He lived every minute of his life under the Law of Moses. He had absolutely no doubt that the old covenant was from the very mind of God. He told his Jewish contemporaries: "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

Some people have reasoned: "Since Jesus (is) the same yesterday, today and forever" (Heb. 13:8); therefore we must keep the Sabbath, and other ordinances of the Jewish covenant. There is a serious problem with such reasoning. One of the requirements of the Mosaic covenant was the sacrificing of various animals. The Jews offered cattle, sheep, and even birds. Is anyone who claims to be a Christian offering animal sacrifices today? We cannot pick and choose what parts of the Mosaic covenant we should observe. If we make a practice of keeping any of it, we are morally bound to keep all of it.

But not one - not even one - precept of the Mosaic covenant is binding on anyone. In fact, those who try to observe the laws in the Old Testament have fallen from grace. The Apostle Paul could not have made that truth any plainer. He exhorted the Galatians: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing. For I testify to every man that is circumcised, that he is debtor to do the whole law. Christ has become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; you have fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:1-4).

Paul was not condemning circumcision as a health practice or as a sign of being a Jew. He condemned requiring circumcision to be saved. He was telling the Galatians that nobody has to become a Jew to be a Christian. There were people in the early church who believed Christians had to observe the rite of circumcision. Luke tells us of some who believed that. "And certain men who came down from Judea taught the brethren, and said, Except you are circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15: 1).

The Apostle Paul called the Old Testament "the letter," "the ministration of death" and "the ministration of condemnation" (2 Cor. 3:6-9). The "ministration of death" was "written and engraved in stones." The only part of the Mosaic covenant that was written and engraved in stones were the Ten Commandments. Paul concludes: "For if that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remains is glorious" (2 Cor. 3:11). That which was done away was the Law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments. That which remains is the gospel of Jesus Christ. How could any passage make this truth any plainer? These verses are devastating to anyone who seeks to live by any part of the Mosaic covenant.

Throughout the book of Hebrews, there is a contrast between the Law of Moses and the gospel of Christ. Over and over, the inspired author says that the gospel is better in every way. Under the gospel age, we have a better spokesman (Heb. 1:4), "a better hope" (Heb. 7:19), "a better testament" (Heb. 7:22) and "better promises" (Heb. 8:6). Even if we were given the choice of which covenant we should honor, why would anyone want to live under the inferior covenant? The author of Hebrews calls the gospel "so great salvation" (Heb. 2:3). The same author stresses belief in Christ and obedience to his will. "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them who obey him" (Heb. 5:8:9).

The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin. So God sent Jesus Christ in the world to be our Passover (1 Cor. 5:7). The Lord himself said: "Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, 0 God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither had pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God. He takes away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. 10:7-10).

Jesus Christ is speaking of two covenants - the Mosaic covenant and the gospel of Christ. Jesus came to take a way the first - the Law of Moses - that he might establish the second - the gospel of Christ. I readily confess that there are difficult passages in Hebrews, but this is not one of them. The passage is so simple it would take considerable help not to understand it. Hebrews also teaches: "For the priesthood being changed (that is, changed from that of Aaron to that of Melchizedek), there is made of necessity a change also in the law" (Heb. 7:12). So while Jesus Christ kept the Mosaic covenant perfectly, we no longer live under that covenant.

What blessings has God promised those who follow our Lord? The Apostle Peter raised that question in the long ago. He began to say to Christ: "Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. But many who are first shall be last; and the last first" (Mk. 10: 28-31).

Contrary to what you may have heard some of the so-called "prosperity gospel:" preachers say, these verses do not guarantee great wealth to faithful children of God. Jesus Christ told some of his fellow Jesus: "I do always those things that please God" (John 8:29). But there were times when he had no place to lay his head (Lk. 9:58). Do you believe the Apostle Paul was a devout Christian? Why were there times he was hungry (Phil. 4:12) and had "no certain dwelling place" (l Cor. 4:11)? There is no doubt Christians are blessed in this life, but that does not mean great wealth or perfect health. The Apostle Paul assures all faithful Christians: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).

I have one final question. What will happen to those who do not follow Christ? The Apostle John quotes Jesus as teaching: "He who rejects me, and receives not my words, has one who judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak" (John 12:48-50).

What has the Lord spoken concerning salvation? In the chapter that records the meeting between Jesus Christ and Nicodemus, Jesus said: "He who believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:36). The second time the word "believe" appears in this verse in the King James Version, it should be rendered "obey." The English Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible translate the word "obey."

Obedience to the gospel demands repentance (Lk. 13:3), confession of our faith in Christ (Mt. 10:32-33), and baptism for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38). Jesus also said: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned" (Mk. 16:16). We must continue to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Mt. 6:33).

Winford Claiborne

The International Gospel Hour

P.O. Box 118

Fayetteville, TN 37334