The Cost of Discipleship

The great twentieth-century martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”^[1] He was merely paraphrasing Jesus’ words, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25).

Jesus was not describing some kind of advanced level of discipleship for super-Christians who would become missionaries and martyrs. He made it clear that if anyone wanted to follow Him, it would cost him or her everything:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26-33).

The Hidden Treasure

Jesus soundly warns us to count the cost before we claim Him as our Lord and Savior. If this is so, how in the world can we still maintain that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone? It appears that He offers free salvation in one hand and takes it back with the other. Perhaps God is just playing “tit for tat” after all. Christ’s call to surrender everything sounds a whole lot like “works salvation,” doesn’t it?

Only if we don’t read all of Scripture.

When we realize the nature of Jesus’ promise and begin to taste the joy of all He offers, any thought of surrender being a “work” vanishes. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44).

Trading my sin and self-will for the life and joy found in Christ is no more a work or sacrifice to me than it was for the man in this story who sold his two-bit farm in order to purchase the field in which the ten-million-dollar treasure was buried. When you trade monopoly money for real gold, it’s hardly an equal trade.

The call to follow Christ is not a call to work for Him but to rest in Him. Christ says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).

Bonhoeffer went on to say, “The yoke and the burden of Christ are his cross. To go one’s way under the sign of the cross is not misery and desperation, but peace and refreshment for the soul; it is the highest joy.”^[2]

Understanding the joy of following Jesus turns our entire perspective on life and death and on sin and suffering upside down; or rather, right side up. Suddenly we see sin for what it really is—a broken cistern which can hold no water—and we see Jesus, not as a hard taskmaster but as a gentle Savior who rescues us from the guilt and grip of sin’s suicidal pleasures. Jesus saves us from pleasures that kill so that we can enjoy pleasures that eternally satisfy the soul.

Christian Hedonism

John Piper calls this radical perspective “Christian Hedonism.” A hedonist seeks pleasure, while a  Christian hedonist seeks pleasure in Christ. He is a person who heeds Jeremiah’s warning and believes Isaiah’s promise:

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:12-13).

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food (Isa. 55:1-2).

A Christian hedonist really believes that “in [God’s] presence there is fullness of joy, and at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psa. 16:11). And from the depths of his heart he says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psa. 73:25-26).

The conviction that true life, joy, peace, rest, and satisfaction are found in Jesus alone is what compelled the early disciples to give up everything to follow Jesus. They died to sin and self, but they became alive to a joy greater than they had ever known.

The apostle John tells about a group of people who forsook Jesus when they became offended at His teaching. Jesus asked His disciples if they would leave Him too. Listen to Peter’s response: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69).

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” That is the heart-cry of every true follower of Jesus. Have you found in Jesus your source of life?

 

Object of my first desire,
Jesus crucified for me;
All to happiness aspire,
Only to be found in thee.

Thee to praise, and thee to know,
Constitute my bliss below;
Thee to see, thee to love,
Constitute my bliss above.

Whilst I feel thy love to me,
Every object teems with joy;
May I ever walk with thee,
For ’tis bliss without alloy.

Let me but thyself possess,
Total sum of happiness:
Perfect peace I then shall prove,
Heaven below and heaven above.[3]

Endnotes

---