To Be a Disciple of Christ: An “Either…Or…” Choice

By Kelvin Yao

Most of us are famil­iar with the sto­ry of the rich young man (Matt. 19:16–29) who asked Jesus what good things he should do to earn eter­nal life. This rich young man seemed to have no trou­ble observ­ing the com­mand­ments. But when Jesus said to him, “If you want to be per­fect, go, sell your pos­ses­sions and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.” He went away sad because he could not let go of his pos­ses­sions. Jesus then taught His dis­ci­ples say­ing, “Every­one who has left hous­es or broth­ers or sis­ters or father or moth­er or chil­dren or fields for my sake will receive a hun­dred times as much, and will inher­it eter­nal life” (Mat. 19:29).

This sto­ry inti­mates what being a dis­ci­ple of Christ is all about: one must unre­served­ly turn the focus of one’s life from seek­ing world­ly rich­es, pres­tige, and hap­pi­ness to fol­low­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing God. A true dis­ci­ple of Christ thor­ough­ly, unmis­tak­ably and devo­tion­al­ly for­sakes world­ly enjoy­ment but remains faith­ful to God. There is absolute­ly no neu­tral ground, no pos­si­bil­i­ty of accom­plish­ing both of them, when it comes to choos­ing between seek­ing world­ly plea­sures and serv­ing God.

Such a choice is of the nature of “Either…or…” and not of “Both…and…” That is the rea­son why Jesus said, “No one can serve two mas­ters. Either he will hate the one and love the oth­er, or he will be devot­ed to the one and despise the oth­er. You can­not serve both God and Mon­ey” (Matt. 6:24).

This is the steep price that a dis­ci­ple of Christ must pay; this is the way of tak­ing up the cross of Christ and fol­low­ing Him; this is the only path that leads to eter­nal life, there is no oth­er way.

What an ulti­mate require­ment! What rig­or­ous stan­dards! A fun­da­men­tal change in a per­son­’s direc­tions of life is demand­ed. So dif­fi­cult to achieve for the weak-willed! Yet “With man this is impos­si­ble, but with God all things are pos­si­ble” (Matt. 19:26). Through­out his­to­ry, numer­ous saints of Chi­na and abroad have been liv­ing tes­ti­monies of the majes­tic pow­er of God and exam­ples of a dis­ci­ple’s walk.

Recall the years of “the Cam­bridge Sev­en,” every­one a schol­ar of excel­lence at a famous insti­tu­tion, full of a promis­ing future; they left their fame and for­tune in their home­land to join the Chi­na Inland Mis­sion. They came qui­et­ly spread­ing the Gospel among the poor­est vil­lages and remotest regions of Chi­na. What they chose to do touched the hearts of many zeal­ous youth in Amer­i­ca and Europe, and prompt­ed them to also ded­i­cate them­selves to the task of evan­ge­lism.

Dr. John Sung con­sid­ered high aca­d­e­m­ic degrees and high income as rub­bish, and returned to his native land with deter­mi­na­tion; a Bible in his hand, and a coarse shirt on his back. His foot­steps were all over Chi­na, lead­ing mul­ti­tudes to Christ.

In these peo­ple, we see the whole-heart­ed fol­low­ers of Christ who offered up in total, who nev­er for a moment lin­gered upon world­ly hap­pi­ness and mer­ry-mak­ing. These were the true dis­ci­ples of Christ.

Nev­er­the­less, in today’s church­es, we often hear tes­ti­monies of the sort of how God pro­vid­ed and blessed the lives of so and so with world­ly things. For exam­ple, through prayer and God work­ing, some loved ones were able to come to the Unit­ed States for a fam­i­ly reunion. So and so was able to improve in school; anoth­er had now a sat­is­fy­ing job; yet anoth­er was blessed with a har­mo­nious fam­i­ly. Food and cloth­ing became abun­dant for some­one; the career coast­ed smooth­ly for anoth­er; even cars and hous­es were ful­ly pro­vid­ed, etc. Anoth­er type of tes­ti­mo­ny seem­ing­ly more spir­i­tu­al goes like this. A cer­tain per­son has already been blessed with a hap­py fam­i­ly and a suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion; but more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, he and his house­hold devout­ly love the Lord and serve God zeal­ous­ly. As a result, they now have an even hap­pi­er life.

Tes­ti­monies such as these seem inno­cent at first glance; their pop­u­lar recep­tion, how­ev­er, may lead to mis­lead­ing impres­sions that one’s ded­i­ca­tion to the Lord direct­ly ties in with one’s suc­cess in the world. Believ­ing Jesus helps you obtain sat­is­fac­to­ry work, a hap­py fam­i­ly, and so on. The under­gird­ing log­ic is, there is no con­flict between world­ly suc­cess or hap­pi­ness and fol­low­ing Christ. On the con­trary, the lat­ter may even enhance the for­mer. It is well and good to gain world­ly posi­tion and for­tune, putting the label “Chris­t­ian” on top of it fur­ther refines the whole deal.

Exist­ing in the sub­con­scious of many, the ide­al Chris­t­ian is no longer one who would give up his life and be a mar­tyr for the name of Christ, but is a well-groomed, suc­cess­ful, and devout upper mid­dle-class believ­er. The way of the cross is no longer thorny all over, but is a smooth high­way filled with wealth, pres­tige, and aus­pi­cious­ness. Christ has fall­en from His sov­er­eign posi­tion of rul­ing the uni­verse to become the helper of our careers, the pro­tec­tor of our chil­dren, the rec­on­cil­er of our mar­riages.

Indeed, Christ sus­tains and pro­tects us in our dai­ly lives; but if Christ’s posi­tion is con­strained as such, then the cen­ter of our lives is not God but our­selves. God becomes noth­ing but an idol we tri­fle with on our hands accord­ing to what our needs dic­tate. Those hav­ing such an atti­tude take the mean­ing of dis­ci­ple­ship as “Both…and …” They want to fol­low Christ on the one hand, but at the same time they are unwill­ing to let go of the desires for world­ly plea­sures. They wish to har­mo­nize the two, dream­ing to have the cake and eat it too, in real­i­ty repeat­ing the mis­take of the rich young man.

With­out a doubt, when a per­son accepts Christ as his Lord and Sav­ior, there must be changes in his val­ue sys­tem and his eth­i­cal behav­ior. His life will under­go fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tions. For some, cir­cum­stances war­rant their expe­ri­enc­ing steady career advance­ments and their fam­i­ly life becom­ing more har­mo­nious. But oth­ers may suf­fer mock­ery and dis­crim­i­na­tion from their boss­es and co-work­ers because of their tes­ti­monies of Jesus Christ, even to the point of los­ing their jobs. Some may have fric­tions with their fam­i­ly mem­bers, lead­ing to expul­sion from their homes. Hav­ing faced such every­day occur­rences around us, how can we con­fi­dent­ly say that being a Chris­t­ian will def­i­nite­ly bring us improve­ments and bless­ings in this world?

To Chris­tians, the essen­tial issue is not whether fol­low­ing Christ would bring favor­able or unfa­vor­able influ­ences on our world­ly liv­ing. Nor is it what we will or will not encounter in this life, nor for­tunes and sta­tus quo per se; but whether we love the Lord over world­ly accom­plish­ments at all times. Whether we keep our eyes upon Christ, putting our heart and soul on the com­mands of Christ, sub­mit­ting our whole life to the sov­er­eign­ty of God.

If we car­ry out the above, we are no longer con­cerned with per­son­al gains and loss­es in life, but will cast our cares com­plete­ly upon the hand of God. We must firm­ly believe, that God alone knows what is best for us, and He alone deter­mines our por­tions in life. On the one hand, God will pro­vide His chil­dren with the mate­r­i­al neces­si­ties and sus­tain our fam­i­ly life accord­ing to His will. On the oth­er hand, He uses tri­als and tribu­la­tions in life to train us up. Both are with­in His grace and bless­ing, we must accept them joy­ful­ly and peace­ably.

If we inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly place a sol­id link between the life of abun­dant mate­ri­al­ism and that of fol­low­ing Christ, our faith becomes a tow­er built upon sand. It will not pass the tests of the winds and rains of life.

For the Chris­tians liv­ing in mod­ern afflu­ent soci­eties, become aware all the more remind­ing our­selves con­stant­ly of a sim­ple yet solemn truth: being a dis­ci­ple of Christ is to take up the cross, ever ready to pay any price for Christ’s sake. If we have whole-heart­ed­ly accept­ed Christ as our Lord, the val­ues and lifestyles of the world mean noth­ing to us, and the world may hate us for this rea­son. If we sur­ren­der to the Lord­ship of God com­plete­ly, then occu­pa­tion and fam­i­ly are no longer the cen­ter of our lives. We can sac­ri­fice all for the sake of Truth.

There­fore Jesus said, “A man’s ene­mies will be the mem­bers of his own house­hold. Any­one who loves his father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me; any­one who loves his son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me” (Matt. 10:36–37). Being a dis­ci­ple of Christ does not mean prop­a­gat­ing and per­fect­ing the lifestyle we have in this world, but negat­ing and demol­ish­ing it.

There­fore, Jesus requires that we thor­ough­ly break away from our old men­tal­i­ty and habits of life as we fol­low Him. As a con­se­quence, accept­ing Christ may not bring peace and tran­quil­i­ty to our fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty; on the con­trary, it often caus­es sharp con­trasts and strug­gles between light and dark­ness, truth and illu­sion. As Jesus had said, “Do not sup­pose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daugh­ter against her moth­er, a daugh­ter-in-law against her moth­er-in-law” (Matt. 10:34–35). Such a posi­tion appears to be dif­fi­cult for the Chi­nese peo­ple to grasp and com­pre­hend, for they have high­ly regard­ed the impor­tance of fam­i­ly life and social rela­tion­ships. Nonethe­less, have there not been many Chi­nese Chris­tians who were dis­dained by their fam­i­ly clan for refus­ing to burn incense and kneel before their ances­tral tablets because of their faith? Have there not been many whose par­ents of old rev­o­lu­tion­ary tra­di­tion sev­ered their fam­i­ly ties just because they sought the truth?

Yes, indeed, to be a dis­ci­ple of Christ, one must pay the price. True Chris­tians will lose much of world­ly hap­pi­ness, hav­ing to live in pover­ty, endure hard­ship, even be for­sak­en by their loved ones and dear friends. In the eyes of the sec­u­lar, Chris­tians might just be con­sid­ered total fail­ures and utter fools. But Chris­tians pos­sess pecu­liar views of suc­cess. They lay it all before God and from this gain heav­en­ly joy.

In the 1930s, a young Cana­di­an lady mis­sion­ary con­tract­ed a dis­ease in Chi­na and died. Her father made a sim­ple remark upon receiv­ing the news, “I have offered my best to Jesus.” Such is the broad-mind­ed­ness of a dis­ci­ple of Christ!

On that day, Jesus left the rich young man no room for com­pro­mise but gave him a choice of “Either…or;” he must for­sake all and fol­low Him. Today, Jesus is still ask­ing us to make the “Either…or…” choice. One can­not fol­low Christ and refuse to part with the old way of life.

Need­ing God’s bless­ing and pro­tec­tion can­not be used as an excuse to ratio­nal­ize or make sacro­sanct the seek­ing of world­ly joys, thus allow­ing the world­ly val­ue sys­tem to uncon­scious­ly per­me­ate our faith. Hap­py days and sweet times, and smooth sails at work or busi­ness do not ade­quate­ly reflect whether a per­son is faith­ful to Christ. It is when one needs to sac­ri­fice one’s bot­tom-line prof­its for the Lord’s sake that one shows one’s true col­or of gen­uine dis­ci­ple­ship. In God’s care and keep­ing, we give thanks for all His pro­vi­sions; and for His sake, we ought to will­ing­ly offer up all that He has endowed upon us.

Main­tain­ing that fame and pres­tige are good with the top­ping of a Chris­t­ian label is an infe­ri­or atti­tude; the utmost is to be will­ing to for­sake all fame and pres­tige for the name of Christ. That rich young man was able to devout­ly abide by the com­mand­ments of the law, but failed to shoul­der the great­est chal­lenge offered to him by Jesus. He was unwill­ing to offer up his most trea­sured, thus los­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a pre­cious dis­ci­ple of Christ. Rem­i­nisc­ing upon the tragedy of this rich young man, we ought to exam­ine our­selves as well. What actions would we take if we face this chal­lenge? Do we have the courage to say to God, “Please go ahead and crash my old life of secu­ri­ty and peace, and let me offer my all to You?”

-Kelvin Yao, came from Main­land Chi­na, is cur­rent­ly study­ing in a sem­i­nary. This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly Vol. 2 No. 3, 1998 Sep­tem­ber, pp.13–1.