The
Conditions Of Discipleship
If any man
come to Me, and hate not…,he cannot be My disciple. — Luke 14:26, see
also 27, 33
If the
closest relationships of life clash with the claims of Jesus Christ, He says it
must be instant obedience to Himself. Discipleship means personal, passionate
devotion to a Person, Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a difference between
devotion to a Person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never
proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a
disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call
ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. No man on earth has this
passionate love to the Lord Jesus unless the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him.
We may admire Him, we may respect Him and reverence Him, but we cannot love
Him. The only Lover of the Lord Jesus is the Holy Ghost, and He sheds abroad
the very love of God in our hearts. Whenever the Holy Ghost sees a chance of
glorifying Jesus, He will take your heart, your nerves, your whole personality,
and simply make you blaze and glow with devotion to Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is stamped by “moral spontaneous originality,” consequently the disciple is open to the same charge that Jesus Christ was, viz., that of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent to God, and the Christian must be consistent to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to hard and fast creeds. Men pour themselves into creeds, and God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.
