We talk a lot about the “conversion process” as Christians, but it seems Christ spends just as much time talking about following Him and how that would look.
Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? Luke 9:23-25.
In no way do I want to ignore the concept of coming to Christ, but I’ve heard many conversations on “assurance of salvation” (especially through youth groups), hypothesizing about potential situations of potentially lost souls. A friend of mine started the process of shaking up my thinking on these concerns when he said his response to people asking about these things was always, “Are you following Jesus?”.
“Follow Me” is a phrase Christ repeated over and over again during his time on earth. What does it mean to follow Him? It means to do what He did, live how He lived, and be who He was, right? That’s how a rabbi and his disciples worked as I understand it. Not sitting around drawing lines in the sand about who is in an who is out. In fact, within the inner twelve disciples was His eventual betrayer, Judas. Christ, who knew all of their hearts, intentions, and futures, didn’t reject or seperate out Judas or try to label him as a non-disciple. (don’t misunderstand me as trying to reject labels of any type.)
The questions get thrown around all of the time about salvation and sin. What if someone did X unmentionable sin, could they still be saved? Really, what does asking and answering that question help? Wouldn’t Christ’s response to such a situation be to call it sin, and challenge the person to turn from it and follow Him. I’m thinking of the woman at the well, Zacheus, and several others, who were obviously in sin, and Christ isn’t afraid to confront it.
A friend who claims to be a Christian, and is doing X, doesn’t need his salvation questioned, but a true friend who will call him to follow and pursue Christ, and through that to see how his life contains things aren’t right (sin). Christ makes it clear that salvation is a necessary part of following him, and if that’s the step that my friend felt he needed to do in order to follow Christ then great. If he felt that he had already accepted Christ, then great, repent from your sin and follow him.
Please don’t get offended by what is quite possibly my mind’s oversimplification of a complex topic, I’m simply trying to help myself and others follow Him.
