“Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. He didn’t even call people to become Christians (keep reading…); he invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of life. To be transformed.”
Practicing the Way, John Mark Comer. SPCK 2024 p xvi
When I was a teenager growing up in a small seaside town on the north coast of Kent, I fell foul of a teenage gang of boys slightly older than me. For some reason -perhaps because I played in a pioneering Christian band (this was the sixties) – they decided that as a follower of Jesus I deserved to be persecuted; sometimes the persecution was painfully physical, most often it was vocal ( I realise that compared to the persecution many followers of Jesus suffer in some parts of the world this was fairly minor hardship!)..
One of their favourite activities was to follow me along the street chanting, “Hey, Jesus!” In my small town, where lots of people knew my family, this caused me quite an elevated level of adolescent embarrassment.
My teenage self came to terms with all this in a couple of ways:
I wondered if they somehow knew about the Bible verse I was given at my baptism: “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!” (Philippians 3:10-11 NLT) I was suffering for being a follower of Jesus…and didn’t he say that his followers should expect that…so I must be doing something right!
Alternatively, I naively hoped that what they shouted meant that they recognised something of Jesus in me…after all, wasn’t “being like Jesus” what it was all about.
As I’ve read my friends’ blog posts the common thread that seems to emerge is that of the tension between a label and our identity, the tension between identifying with Jesus and identifying with others who, even on a casual reading of the gospels, seem nothing like him. It is the tension between a faith that seems to be based on tick-box belief (believe the right things and you’re in) and a faith where doing the right things is what really counts, although we should beware setting up a false dichotomy: belief and behaviour both matter (see the story of the wise and foolish builders in context in the gospels (Matthew 7: 15-27; Luke 6:43-49).
In one sense what we call ourselves is not the issue. To be honest I prefer to refer to myself as a follower of Jesus, although I’m happy to use the word Christian in some contexts.
To return to the quote from John Mark Comer, with which I began this article, what is this transformation Jesus calls us to and what does ‘apprenticing’ under Jesus entail? It’s often expressed as ‘becoming more like Jesus,’ and scripture suggests that being transformed into the likeness of Jesus is God’s plan or goal for our lives (Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 4:14-16; 2 Corinthians3:18; 1John 3:2)
It’s always been God’s desire to see humans transformed into Jesus’s likeness, the Holy Spirit is doing the transforming work in our lives now and one day we’ll see Jesus face to face and, hopefully, recognise his likeness in us.
I think it’s important to recognise that being like Jesus isn’t about having a case of the feel-good fuzzies. Let’s re-visit how the gospels portray the life and work of Jesus.
- He was friends with all the wrong kinds of people – ‘bad’ people, outsiders and marginalised people. He tended to not get on so well with religious people and the ruling elite. Most times he went to ‘church’ he caused trouble. (See my personal blog: https://pilgrimtraveller.com/2024/03/28/jesus-goes-to-church/ )
- He was humble and selfless and didn’t demand the status that was rightfully his. His whole life conflicted with the status quo and the values of his culture and society
- He taught and practised generosity, poverty and service to others, especially the poor.
- He embodied self-giving, unconditional love even towards his enemies.
- He took a tough line on hypocrisy…saying you believe something and doing something different or finding loopholes to get out of living it.
In short, it seems that living like Jesus challenges societal and cultural norms and requires a life dedicated to loving God and serving others. Right from the start Jesus was on a collision course with the guardians of convention and the keepers of power. It could only end one way.
And for most of Jesus’ first apprentices (or disciples), and many others who followed them in the early days of the Christian community, it ended the same way.
A number of years ago the band I sang in was invited by Youth for Christ (YFC) to work with the local centre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. As part of what we did we went into schools, factories and churches in the Black townships (areas that local white Christians seldom visited) working alongside a native Zimbabwean evangelist. Sometimes, as well as singing, we were invited to preach or tell our faith stories in those places and encouraged to invite people to become followers of Jesus. When we did, we could almost guarantee that almost everyone would respond. It took a lesson from our African companion to alert us to the fact that these were people who wanted to please the visitors, so if we said stand up, stand up they would. So, we started preaching sermons of two halves: the first focussing on the life and work of Jesus and the second focussing on the cost of following Jesus. The ‘conversion’ rate went down, but I like to think the sincerity of new apprentices of Jesus went up.
Receiving the transforming life that Jesus brings us is all about grace…what he did…but if we choose to accept that gift, and the Holy Spirit gets to work we are very quickly faced with dilemmas as our new lives run into society’s expectations and priorities. If we choose Jesus’ way over the conventions of family, friends, politicians and guardians of the status quo, life can become a bit rocky!
Are we certain we want to be more like Jesus? So often we want the glory without the cost, the kudos without the lifestyle, the resurrection without the cross. It’s not just some right-wing Christians in the world who get this so wrong…if I’m honest, I still have a long way to go, but if the faith I profess means anything at all, I long to be more like Jesus.
Then (Jesus) said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?
Luke 9:23-25 NLT
