How can you follow Yahshua when He gives a command that doesn’t agree with you? Certainly it is possible to deceive ourselves as being followers when He gives a command that agrees with us. Some may relate to the analogy: I really liked eating grandma’s cooking when it was <favorite flavor> pie; it’s the lima beans that gave me trouble!
Our trouble - the human condition - is a divided heart. Partiality. Insincerity. Incredulity. Dubiety. For all intensive purposes it is really a lack of heart, or rather a lack of being wholehearted. The best we’ve done in walking this way is to blaspheme His set-apart name and prove our own hypocrisy. Better to be hot or cold than lukewarm1. Yet if we really aim to do what is right, “to be perfect therefore as your Father in Heaven is perfect,”2 we’ll walk wholehearted toward Yahweh.
This troublesome condition does not find remedy through religious exercise - contrary to all self-righteousness. I’m no medical professional, though it seems to me any serious heart condition is resolved one of two ways: surgery or electrically stimulated restart. I’ve never heard of anyone performing their own heart surgery either - though some of us have often tried. These attempts we’ll term works of the flesh or dead works. Dead works ultimately lack in regenerative or sustaining power - imagine trying to stay warm using a box of matches and huddling around event driven temporal flames. Exciting perhaps, though dissatisfying in brevity and honestly useless. There’s a reason good and warm fires start with diligence done despite the darkness.
Yahshua didn’t try to bait people into following Him (so why are Wall-Street methods used to evangelize and build church houses?). He said, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me”3. Consider with me that someone carrying a cross is on their way to be nailed to and hung up to suffer and die on that cross. It isn’t a question, it is an inevitability. To be sure He continued, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it”4. Some young in faith have strived against the Holy Spirit to go and do great things in the name of God while building earthly treasures and holding fast to perishing things - not recognizing the only thing we have to offer is our daily death, not remembering the daily prayer, “Thy will (not my will) be done”.
Consider also that crucifixions in the time of their popularity were no private matter. These were public events. The carrying of a cross to the execution stake had witnesses (whether sympathetic or loathsome). Messiah said, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others I will disown before my Father in heaven”5. We need not stand on a soapbox casting pearls to acknowledge Him, carrying our cross is acknowledgement enough. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly6.
Being wholehearted towards the Father in all that He did, hearing and obeying the Father’s voice, walking according to the Father’s standard of righteousness, having a pure heart, bearing good fruit, led by the Holy Spirit… by these it was said, “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”7. For those who walk in like manner is also reserved the declaration, “Well done good and faithful servant”8.
This is what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one true God, had to say about His Beloved Son and what He has to say for His faithful servants.
Were we to dwell on the things man had to say, those who, “considered him punished by God, stricken by God, and afflicted by God”9, those who also, “considered Him worthy of death.. spit in His face.. struck Him with their fists.. slapped Him.. mocked Him”10, we may do a recount in our counting of the cost to be His disciples. Good. He doesn’t want the lukewarm anyway. He wants passionate lovers who will, “Hear O Israel [those of you who would be followers of Yahshua], the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love Adonai your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your strength.”11
The great commission is a call to discipleship. To go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey all that He has commanded of His disciples. From Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses, and on down the line - He who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His word abides forever. His word is our second witness and tutor in what we teach as His disciples - all that He has commanded.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation and walked faithfully with God (Genesis 6:9). Abraham believed God and it was counted as righteousness. He listened to God’s voice, and obeyed God’s commands (Genesis 26:5). Moses was the humblest man in his time on the face of the whole earth (Numbers 12:3) and the servant of God.
All these patriarchs and Yahshua the Messiah were considered righteous because they submitted to God’s righteousness and did not seek to establish their own righteousness. That is being a disciple. Listening to God’s voice, and doing according to His instructions. Wholeheartedly.
Revelation 3:16
Matthew 5:48
Matthew 10:38
Matthew 10:39
Matthew 10:32, 33
Micah 6:8
Matthew 3:17
Matthew 25:23
Isaiah 53:4
Matthew 26:66-68
Deuteronomy 6:4, 5
Thanks for sharing your heart on the Good Word!