Following JesusНамуна

Day 4 Devotional:

Determined to Follow Jesus

The three responses that Jesus gave to the three nameless people in this passage, who were distracted from following Him by the things of this world, help us to see what following Jesus really means.

In verse 58, to the first distracted person, Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Jesus was telling this man that following Him could very well involve giving up the securities of life that this man had previously known. For example, think of the high price of unpopularity, hostility, and rejection that one pays for following Jesus and His values today.

In verse 60, to the second distracted person, Jesus said: Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God. Christ was telling this procrastinating person that the spiritually dead could bury the physically dead, and that the spiritually alive should be busy living and modelling the life of the kingdom of God in their everyday lives.

In verse 62, to the third distracted person, Jesus said: No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

These three responses by Christ that show us what it means to follow Him are reinforced in verse 51.

In the KJV, verse 51 reads like this: When the time had come for Jesus to be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. In other words, although Jesus knew that He would face unjust arrest and death in Jerusalem, He was determined to go there.

So, verse 51 shows us that Jesus’ long and determined walk to Jerusalem is a metaphor of the kind of firm and steadfast resolve that should characterise both our own decision to follow Jesus as well as our actual determined experience of following Him, despite the distractions and challenges we may face.

The message at the heart of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ reminds us of the determination with which Christ resolved to go to the cross to lay down His life for our salvation and to make the gospel experiential in our lives.

So, if Christ, with such great determination, went through that incredible suffering and pain and death on the cross for us, can we not too make a determined decision to follow Him?

So, we can summarise our third D from this passage by saying that following Christ calls us to the same determined resolve with which Christ Himself, in His great love for us, so willingly went to the cross to lay down His life for our salvation and transformation.