Following up the Following Jesus post
by JM · 15 June 2008

As I continue to reflect on Barth and Bonhoeffer's understanding of discipleship, I now realise there is a connexion between Eve's deception in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) and our attempts to discern the will of God apart from His command. It is commonly suggested that although God gave a clear command to avoid eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the serpent's argument lead Eve to second-guess the command in order to reach for the "higher" meaning of the command. In other words, there arose a tension between humanity's intended reflexion of God and the command that was received. After the cross we could state this tension as between "becoming like Christ" and "obeying Christ". Yet, here is the distinction: when we imagine becoming "like God" in Old Testament terms, we often think of God's all-knowing and all-powerful traits. So, becoming "like Christ" clarifies in extraordinary ways, what it truly means to become "like God". It is not that God has changed, but that Christ has clarified the reality.

So rather than focusing our attentions and energies on a goal of "becoming like Christ" it may be more critical to have a goal of "following Christ" with the implicit trust that doing so will ultimately yield our becoming like Christ.

In this age we desire to have options. So, we look at Christ's commands as options which we can selectively obey. Rather, the foundational command of "Follow me" is the first command of the disciple, and the gateway to the Kingdom, which makes our obedience to all subsequent commands essential.

 

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