Jesus’ Call to Costly and Liberating Discipleship

The following is an excerpt from the chapter on Jesus in my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. An e-version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

Jesus’ call to enter the rule of God by taking up the cross and following him calls for a radical new approach to life and living.  Yet, we can often look at the demands Jesus voices in the Gospels with great trepidation, knowing that these are often too difficult for us to follow.  Perhaps we are much like the folks in Mark 3:21, thinking Jesus has “gone out of his mind.”  Indeed, the church and individual Christians have ignored Jesus’ radical teachings preferring to find spiritual fulfillment in a personal relationship with Jesus that is based solely on Jesus being our savior.  Taking up the cross, renouncing possessions, loving and serving our neighbors and enemies, all seem too stringent and costly for us.  We want the Jesus who calls us to salvation, but we reject the Jesus that demands discipleship.  Yet, the irony of following Jesus is that though it is costly, it is at the same time, liberating.

          
In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer states very powerfully that grace cannot be cheap.  “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.”  Bonhoeffer coined an almost paradoxical phrase to describe the experience of salvation and discipleship: costly grace.  In his words, costly grace is “costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”  Bonhoeffer sees the call to follow Jesus as a call that is both costly and liberating.

         
In the Gospels, we find Jesus calling those who would become his followers.  In the first chapter of Mark’s story, Jesus calls two sets of brothers, all of whom are fishermen.  He calls them to leave their nets, to leave their families, and to follow him.  In this story, and other call stories, we discover the tension that Bonhoeffer points out as that which epitomizes the gospel: Discipleship is both costly and liberating. 

When Jesus comes upon these fishermen they are doing what they normally do on any given day; they are fishing.  Indeed, this was their life; this was their existence.  Fishing was what was routine and comfortable for them.  While their occupation as fishermen was hard work that brought many challenges, it is what they knew and it is who they were.  Yet, when Jesus calls them, he calls them to leave their lives as they know them.  He calls them to turn away from their normal existence and to let go of what they know best.  How costly is such a decision? 

         
While leaving fishing may not seem big to us, let’s take into account what Jesus demands from another.  A rich man approached Jesus wanting to know how he might gain eternal life.  Jesus told him to keep the greatest commandments; to love God and to love others.  Jesus then told the man, “Sell all your possessions and give to the poor.”  At this demand, the man turned away, refusing to accept the cost.

         
We must be careful not to distance ourselves too much from this story.  In calling us to follow him, Jesus always demands that we relinquish our claims; our claims of independence, our claims to security and freedom, our claims to what we own, and our claims to live our lives as we see fit.  To answer the call of discipleship is always costly.  If it is not, it is not discipleship.

         
Yet, even as we speak of discipleship as costly, we must also view it as liberating.  The call to the two sets of brothers to leave what they know, what gave them comfort and security, is at the same time a call to find liberation and hope in something that is transformative. While their lives of fishing certainly gave them a sense of normality, they were unknowingly missing what authentic life with God was like.  Jesus’ call for them to leave their nets and follow him was a call to embrace a new liberating existence. 

         
But to accept the call of Jesus to follow him, we must relinquish what holds us back from the true gospel and what prevents us from becoming authentic disciples of Jesus.  We must count the cost of discipleship, and we must be willing to move from our status quo existence of comfort, security, and that which we know as normal, to embrace the life changing, world transforming, and liberating power of the gospel.  This is authentic discipleship that is both costly and liberating.