Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Matthew Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the tax booth. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So, he left all, rose up, and followed Him. Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them.
Luke 5:27-29/Mark 2:13
When Jesus said to Matthew at the lakeside ‘Follow Me’ He was really laying down a principle which lies at the root of all Christian discipleship. Christian discipleship involves membership in a society, but throughout it is governed by loyalty to Jesus Christ. It is a personal relationship; the idea of friendship comes into it—my personality interpenetrated by His personality; obedience by me to Him.
There is a double relation in this discipleship. There is the relation of the disciple to the Master, and there is the relation of the Master to the disciple. Let us begin by thinking of the relation of the disciple to the Master. ‘Follow Me’ comes the call to each one of us. What does it mean? Clearly it means something much more than putting ourselves on a register as professed Christians, or saying that we believe Christian facts and doctrines to be true. Remember in the Gospel we are told of some who say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and yet to them the answer is made, ‘I never knew you.’
The Christian way is overshadowed by a Figure, and that Figure moves in and out among the pilgrims who throng the way. They keep Him before their minds as their standard and inspiration. He is the Way for them just in proportion as they try to catch His spirit and breathe His atmosphere. Every disciple ought to be able to look back over the road and say, ‘I have grown a little more like Jesus and my inner life is stronger; I see spiritual things more clearly; the grip of sin on me is loosening; Jesus Christ is more to me now than He was in the past.’
Then there is the other side of the relationship, the relation of the Master to the disciple. Human friendships present a varying aspect. You may have a friendship between two people where the give-and-take on either side is more or less equal; or you may have a friendship where one of the two is far in advance of the other; he is a much stronger character, a more attractive and inspiring personality, and the other leans on him and learns from him, and is drawn to him by strong invisible ties. Quite clearly the relationship between ourselves and Jesus is of this latter kind. He is so incomparably above us that the initiative, so to put it, lies with Him. In this friendship He is the Giver and we are, in the main, receivers.
Now here we reach the deepest meaning of Christian discipleship. That discipleship is far more than a following of Jesus; it is a receiving from Jesus of a communicated life. How, indeed, could we hope to follow Him if He were not drawing us and enabling us to follow Him? Christian discipleship is the union of the disciple with the Master in an intimacy so close that the forces of the Master’s life flow into the life of the disciple, until the climax is reached in those words of St Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’
That is the other side of the relationship, and clearly it is the more important side, for what Christ gives us is that which enables us to follow Him and that which alone enables us. How rich is this thought of a universal Person sharing His life with man! We all differ from each other; no two human beings are alike; and yet He is broad enough to meet all our needs, and He can give us that life which will help us to develop our individuality.
What Christ gives is far more than anything that we can give; but there is one thing we can give and must give, if we are to receive anything at all from Him—we must give ourselves. A worthless gift? Yes. A character shot through and through with the sin which is abhorrent to His pure soul? Yes. Masses of neglected opportunities, willful wrongdoing, utter disloyalty to God? Yes. But those are the very things He wants—the sinner and the wastrel and the careless. He wants their wills, their faintest resolves after goodness, their discontents and their unrests. He wants the man in all his wretchedness that He may redeem him and make him better. Why, that is just His work, to transform the sinner into the saint. That is what He came for, and today He is just as loving and gracious as He was when He made friends with the outcasts of Jewish society.
First, then, a call, ‘Follow Me,’ heard first long ago by a lakeside in Galilee, but repeated all down the centuries to every soul of man, the voice of One speaking to us, claiming our loyalty. Then a following which on our part means an initial act of self-committal to Him who calls, and then a patient daily treading of the way. And that way is the Via Crucis. It means self-sacrifice, the losing of the narrower life in the service of the larger life. On the other side we have a companionship which brings with it not only a love which pardons, but a power which transforms. Old habits disappear, new habits take their place, and all the while the ties are multiplying which bind him ever closer and closer to this divine-human Friend and Saviour. ‘Follow Me.’ It is the story of Christian pilgrimage on earth. Will the story of eternity be any other? Can it be any other? seeing that He whom we follow here is Lord of earth and heaven, God’s supreme purpose, humanity’s King and everlasting Redeemer.
J.HASTINGS
Speaker's Bible
Matthew Vol.2
