Follower, Admirer, or User?
4 March, 2010 -
An admirer is impressed. A follower is devoted. An admirer applauds. A follower surrenders. An admirer approves. A follower obeys. Alot of people admired Martin Luther King, some marched with him. Not many went to jail with him. Not many had their houses bombed as he did. Alot of people admired Mother Theresa. Not many followed her to live among the destitute and the dying.
When you come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew talks about two groups of people, and there’s a dynamic that runs throughout the gospel of Matthew. Jesus begins to teach and we’re told when He saw the crowds, He went up to the mountainside. His disciples came to Him and He began to teach. There are two groups - one is the crowd, and there’s lots of ‘em, and they’re very impressed by Jesus. In fact when he gets to the end of His message, we’re told when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were amazed at His teaching because He taught them as one who had authority, not as their teachers of the law. The whole crowd admired Jesus but while He was teaching something happened in the hearts of a few of them - that went way beyond admiration.
For a few people, their hearts started pounding. And their minds started racing. And something deep inside them said “This is it! This is what I have been longing for my whole life...to be cleansed and forgiven of all my sin and mess, to know God, to have courage, to have a life beyond the constant worry and fear and anxiety, to not be a slave any more to sexual desire, or money, or peoples’ approval, or success. To be a part of God’s work in my own little way, to redeem the world, to have confidence beyond death. I must have this. I would rather have what this man has and give up everything else in the world, than have everything else in the world and give up this man. Therefore I will pay any price. I will do whatever He wants me to do. I will go wherever He tells me to go. I will be whatever He says I should be. I am leaving the crowd. I am not just an admirer. From this day on, I will live my life as a fully-devoted follower of this man!”
One of the things Jesus is constantly doing is challenging people to move from admirer to follower. Generally that move involves some kind of action, some price to pay, something quite concrete. There is, in the new testament, a natural progression as people are coming to know Jesus.
People begin as ‘strangers’ to Him. And then from ‘strangers’, they become ‘admirers’. And then from ‘admirers’, they may become ‘followers’. And of course at each one of those points people may decide they’re not going to go any further. Pilate does not become an admirer. Herod does not become an admirer. The rich young ruler does not become a follower. I think what has happened in churches in our day, is that we have added an additional category. And that category is ‘users’.
We never put it that way, but in many peoples’ minds there is an alternative relationship with Jesus that goes like this, “I want to use Jesus to get into heaven when I die. And there’s a deep problem with the gospel and the way it’s been presented. To many many people the gospel has become the proclamation of the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when I die. Now again we never put it that way, but it’ll go something like this: “how do you know you’re going to go to heaven when you die?” And of course there’s little, if any discussion about what kind of community heaven might be, and what kind of person might I need to be to actually enjoy being in heaven? It’s just thought of in this cartoon way as the pleasure factor and hell’s the torture chamber. How do you know you’re going to get in to the pleasure factor cos God’s going to get people out? And the gospel is: “you’ve been trying to earn your way in, so don’t do that any more. Get on the grace plan. Believe the right stuff about an arrangement that has been made for you and then you have obeyed the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when you die.”
And then you become a ‘user’ of Jesus. There’s no intrinsic connection then to being a disciple, being a follower. Is your church producing followers of Jesus, disciples, or just Christians, commonly understood? A Christian, commonly understood, is someone who identifies with a religious sub-culture, so ‘this is our team, the Buddhists are another team, muslims are another team, and we like it when more people join our team’. It’s somebody who believes they’re going to heaven when they die because they accepted an arrangement to get them in. But discipleship, making a serious intention to obey everything Jesus said, making a serious intention to do what Jesus said to do, is treated as largely an option...extra-credit. And churches are full of this kind of Christian. And then church leaders spend alot of time trying to re-motivate or re-excite them so that the church can be successful. And it gets tiring for everybody. It is interesting I think that the New Testament uses the word ‘Christian’ only twice. It’s a derisive nickname. It uses the word ‘disciple’ two hundred and sixty eight times. It’s a lot easier to make a Christian (commonly understood). But the New Testament is a book about disciples.
No one can be a disciple of Jesus because they think they should. You have to actually want it. You cannot do it because you think you should. I’m not talking about the people in your church. I’m talking about me. I have to actually want it. I have to find it more desirable than anything else.
(Transcript taken from REVEAL Conference Session 8 by John Ortberg)
