Faithful to Jesus
Matthew 10: 32-39
32 ‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
To say we have faith in Jesus is a call to be faithful to Jesus. And as Jesus bluntly states in vs. 34, the path of following Jesus is going to be difficult. In many parts of the world acknowledging that Jesus is Lord, stating that you are a follower of Jesus, are grounds to be thrown into prison, to lose one’s job, to be ostracized by family. The decision to be a follower of Jesus, and to publicly declare that truth is to have made a stand with and for Jesus, and Jesus is the most controversial person in human history. This passage confronts us with the question – where do our loyalties lie? With Jesus, or with other people or things.
Vs. 37 feels offensive to us, how can Jesus demand a loyalty, a love, from us that is greater than our love and loyalty to our families. Such a demand sounds scandalous. But Jesus is saying exactly that, that Jesus comes before any other loyalty in our lives.
While vs. 37 feels scandalous – vs. 38 is even more demanding. Not only is our loyalty to Jesus to be placed above our family – our desire for self-preservation, our desire to protect ourselves, is to be set aside in favour of living for Jesus. Because the line, “take up the cross” as Dietrich Bonhoffer so famously said, is an invitation to come and die. To die to self and one’s own agendas in order to live for Jesus and Jesus’ agenda in the world.
In vs. 39, Jesus remarkably claims that it is only as we lose our lives for his sake, for his purposes, that we will keep our lives. Those who are faithful to Jesus to the end, will find that Jesus is faithful to them to the end.
PRAYER:
O Lord, we read this passage with fear and trembling, because the cost of being faithful seems too much, too demanding. Strengthen us, calm our anxious souls, so we can be formed into people who put you first above all else. Faithful to you, first, foremost and always. In Jesus’ name. Amen.