Matthew-072

Today, we continue our study in the teaching of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 19:16-30. This passage is very important and well known. It talks about a young man who appears to be rich, and is a ruler in Israel as well. So he is often called “the rich young ruler” who asked the question which we all want to know the answer to, namely, “What good must I do to inherit eternal life?” or “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” That is the big question, and man has ever been searching for eternal life and the elixir of life wherever he could find it. So this question is very close to our hearts. But let us also notice the Lord Jesus’ answer.

“What good do I need to do to inherit eternal life?”

We shall look at the Lord Jesus’ reply to the question, “What must we do to inherit eternal life?” First, I must clarify one thing if you are reading the RSV. It says, “What good deed must I do?” This is not correct. The question of the young man is not whether there is one particular deed that he must do, but “What good must I do?” The word “deed” is not in the original. He doesn’t mean that he expects there is only one good thing that he has to do, but whether it is one or many, what is the good that I need to do?

This passage also appears in Mark as well as in Luke. In Mark and Luke, this rich young ruler actually addresses Jesus as “Good teacher.” The word “good” is dropped in Matthew but appears in Mark and Luke. So the question really is, “Good teacher, what good must I do in order that I may have eternal life?”

“Keep the commandments” and “Follow me”: Two answers or one?

I wonder how the Lord Jesus’ reply to this question strikes you. I wonder if someone asked you this question, would this be the answer you would give as a Christian? The further question is this: Are these two answers, namely, “Keep the commandments,” and “Follow me” part of the same answer? Or are these two independent answers which you can choose which one you prefer? Could you either take the choice to keep the commandments, and if you like, go on also to be a disciple? Or could you simply be a disciple and forget the commandments? Are these two different answers of which you could choose one or the other at will? Or are these two answers really one answer?

These are very important questions, otherwise you can say, “Discipleship will be good enough, and we can disregard the commandments about “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and the like. So long as a person is a disciple, it doesn’t really matter whether he sins or not.” There are Christians who give that kind of answer.

Or can we say if these two answers are equally good, we might as well go for the commandments, and never mind about discipleship? “So long as I am a good person, so long as I keep the commandments, I don’t kill, I don’t commit adultery, who needs to be a disciple?” There are those who also give that answer.

You can see again, as always in the Lord Jesus’ teaching, one has to be very careful in the examination of the answer, otherwise, one may come up with all kinds of conclusions. Is it correct if we take these as two different answers to the same question, and we can choose either one of these? Then it’s up to us to take an option. The answer to this depends on accurately understanding what the Lord Jesus is saying, accurately following the exegesis of this passage.

Lord Jesus replies: “What is your understanding of the word ‘good’?”

Let us begin to look at the Lord Jesus’ answer in order to see what the rich young ruler is saying. He says, “What good must I do?” The Lord Jesus immediately questions him about the word “good,” and he says, “Why do you ask me about what is good?” What is the point of the question? It seems that the question itself is redundant seeing that the rich young ruler has already explained he asked about the good because he wants to know how to inherit eternal life. But to take it this way is to misunderstand the Lord Jesus’ intention. The Lord Jesus is questioning the rich young ruler, “Do you know what ‘good’ is if you are asking me, ‘What good do I need to do?’. What is your understanding of the word ‘good’?” Now this question is very, very relevant.

Often, when you talk to non-Christians, they say, “So long as I do good, I think that I will be all right as far as God is concerned.” At that, it is very good to ask the question, “When you say that something is ‘good,’ what is the standard of ‘good’?” Did it ever cross your mind that good enough for you may not be good enough for the other person? What is good enough for you may not be good enough for God? So he is saying to the rich young ruler, “When you ask me about doing good, do you understand what is good? How shall I ex­plain the answer to you when you don’t even have an understanding of ‘good’?”

“Good” can only be defined in terms of God’s character

The Lord Jesus doesn’t leave the question vague at that point, He goes on to tell him what is “good” in the next part of his reply: “One there is who is good.” When you compare Mark and Luke, you will see that the answer in Mark and Luke is, “There is no one good but God.” What is the meaning of this reply? The Lord Jesus doesn’t give a woolly reply, but a very precise one. What the Lord Jesus is saying to him is: “The only absolute or correct standard of ‘good’ is God himself. Only God is good. God is the standard of goodness when you say, ‘What good may I do?’” Do you understand the implication of the question? There is no work that can be defined as “good” as far as God is concerned, unless it’s a work which is in accordance with his character.

What is God’s character? His character is holy and it is love; it is holy love. Therefore, a “good” work would have to be a work which is characterized by the quality of God’s life and character, which is holy and loving. Can you do that kind of work? That is the implication of the question. You want to inherit eternal life, but can you do that kind of work that expresses the character of God, that is of the kind of standard that God requires? Do you think that just by being good or doing some kind of good you can get eternal life? Here we can see that the Lord Jesus’ answer is something which is extremely precise and which speaks to us. The question for the rich young ruler to answer is, can he do this kind of work? Can he live a life that conforms to God’s character?

If you would enter life, keep the commandments, not just believe

Then the Lord Jesus goes on in the final part of this answer, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” Now this does not go down very well with our evangelical doctrine today. We are told that we enter life simply by believing in Jesus; we are not going to enter life by keeping the commandments. So we would have expected Jesus to simply say, “Believe in me” in reply to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Strangely enough, he doesn’t give that reply, and we shall see why in a moment. He seems to say exactly the opposite, “If you would enter life, keep the command­ments.” This reply is very consistent with all that he has said so far.

Let us try to understand again what the Lord Jesus is saying, since we are not always very good at understanding spiritual things. Sometimes, we are very brilliant in physics, chemistry and mathe­matics, but we are as dumb as children who have had no mental training at all when we come to spiritual things. I have constantly found this to be true. A professor who may be brilliant in his parti­cular field has absolutely no understanding in spiritual things. You might as well be talking to an illiterate because he doesn’t have a clue!

The Lord Jesus has said that “good” can only be defined in terms of God’s character. But that leaves the question: How do I know what God is like? The Lord Jesus again doesn’t leave us in doubt. He has already anticipated each question, and answered it in advance. He says that you know God’s character by looking at the command­ments. By looking at the commandments, you will begin to realize that God is both holy and loving. He is holy – you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, bear false witness, or disrespect your parents. He is also loving because the command­ments are summed up in the words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; it is holy love. Do you want to know what God is like? Do you want to know what the standard of holiness is? Obey the commandments, and not only look at them because looking at them won’t do you much good. You asked me, “What good must I do?” I’m answering, do the commandments, and you will enter life.”

The rich young ruler is like the many people who don’t do God’s will and always have abundant excuses to say why they haven’t done it. If someone commits a sin and you challenge him on it, he will immediately have a thousand reasons to justify the sin that he has committed. When Adam sinned and he was confronted, he said, “Talk to my wife, don’t talk to me! She was the one who dragged me into the mud.” So God turned to the wife and said, “Eve, what have you done?” She said, “It’s the serpent! Don’t look at me! He tricked me.” We just keep passing the buck and God won’t have it. There’s no passing the buck. Therefore, Adam and Eve both come under the judgment of God.

When confronted by the Lord Jesus’ very plain answer about doing the commandments, the rich young ruler has to say, “Which com­mandments?” One can understand it if this comes from a Gentile who doesn’t know which commandments, because he has never been brought up in the commandments. But for a Jew to pretend that he did not understand what commandments is quite remarkable!

Jesus mentions only commandments that deal with human relationships

Yet, the Lord Jesus is very patient. He enumerates the command­ments one by one. “You haven’t heard of the commandments, my dear friend? As a Jew, you were brought up with commandments. Let me refresh your memory with the Ten Commandments: You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness (speak falsely about others), honor your parents, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is the sum of all the Ten Commandments.

I would particularly like you to notice the Lord Jesus’ reply in this part, and I wonder if it strikes you as remarkable. He did not start with the first commandment, or the second, or even the third! Have you noticed that the first commandment has to do with God, the second one has to do with God, and the third also has to do with God (Exo. 20:2-17). Yet, the Lord Jesus does not mention any of these. He only talks about those commandments that have to do with human relationships. That is very striking indeed! I think the rich young ruler should have expected him to say, “You shall honor the Lord, your God,” but the Lord Jesus doesn’t mention that at all, only the ones on human relationships. Now this point is very important.

Acid test of genuine commitment to God: love your neighbor as yourself

He said, “You asked me a question about doing, and doing has to do with relating to other people.” What can you do in relation to God? It’s very important that you set your heart right with God and worship him in your heart, but our dealings with people are very important. We must understand that our actions towards others directly reflect our true selves. We can tell the spiritual life of a person by observing the way he relates or does not relate to others.

Here the Lord Jesus does not concern himself with what you profess about your devotion to God. Neither do I. You may profess to have tremendous commitment. You might even profess that you are will­ing to give your body to be burned, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:3, but if you cannot get on with your roommate, with fellow-Christians, if you cannot get on with your husband or your wife, or your children, your spiritual life is in big trouble because your profession of faith and commitment to God doesn’t stand up to examination.

The Lord Jesus is making this very important point to the rich young ruler. He is saying, “I don’t doubt for a moment that you pray three times a day as all Jews do; go to the temple regularly and offer your sacrifices there without fail; and wash your hands before meals so that you may be ceremonially clean; so you consider yourself as having a very genuine commitment to God. But the acid test comes when you are to love a brother or sister as yourself.” There the rich young ruler begins to feel the pinch of the words of the Lord Jesus. Or else he has utterly failed to understand what the Lord Jesus is saying.

Let us impress this point of the Lord Jesus’ teaching deeply upon our minds. I don’t doubt that many or most of you don’t regard your­selves as hypocrites in that estimation of your faith. You genuinely believe that you are totally committed to God and to Christ. But here comes the acid test: Do you love your neighbor as yourself? In the message a few weeks ago, we saw that the requirement of “love your neighbor as yourself” as taught by the Lord Jesus is such that it also means “as a husband loves his wife as himself” and vice versa! He only loves his wife as himself because he considers that she is one body with him. That is a standard exceedingly high for us. You may profess to have faith but where is the evidence of that faith? The Lord Jesus tells us that it is in your relations to other people. If you cannot relate to others, if you cannot even get on with them in the way of basic courtesy or enjoy easy relationships, let alone love them to the point of laying down your life for them, then understand one thing well, your profession is hollow in the light of the Lord Jesus’ teaching.

Does it only matter how well we relate to the neighbor but not to God?

Does it mean that after all, it doesn’t matter how we relate to God so long as we relate well to the neighbor? Does it matter at all that we relate to God, seeing that the Lord Jesus has dropped the whole first part of the commandments? To ask this question shows that we don’t understand the nature of the Lord Jesus’ teaching. He omits the first part of the Ten Commandments as Paul does in Romans 13:9. He follows the Lord Jesus’ words, which omit the first part of the Ten Commandments, and says that loving the neighbor is the fulfilling of the law. Does it mean that for the Lord Jesus and Paul, whether we love God genuinely and deeply doesn’t really matter so long as we get on well with our neighbor?

I can only love others because God means so much to me

No, to think in this way is again to miss the Lord Jesus’ teaching, because you simply cannot love your neighbor as yourself, or in any spiritual sense at all, unless you love God with all your heart. The second implies the first. Without love for God, we simply are not able to love the neighbor. Our loving the neighbor derives from our love for God. I simply have no motive for loving a neighbor, especially one who I may not particularly like. I love the person because I love God. I shouldn’t love a person simply because he happens to be very nice, or very good-looking, or rich because I have a natural tendency to do so. Anyway, nice, good-looking and rich people are very small minorities in the world, so there are very few people I can love. Then how can I love my neighbor? The only way I can is because I love them for God’s sake. God means so much to me because he loves me so very deeply. We love God because he first loved us. That forms the motive why you love people whom you may not particularly like, in fact, whom you will be very glad to see the last of. I’m afraid many people strike us in this way. We are very glad to see the last of them, but we love them because God loves us. Therefore, you can see that the second part of the Ten Commandments simply cannot be implemented without the first part, namely, our commitment to God.

Are we saved by keeping the law or by discipleship?

This brings us to another question: We have been taught as Christians for the most part that the law – which is simply another word for the commandments is abolished and so we are very puzzled by the Lord’s reply. Now if you think that the spiritual law is abolished, we have not again understood the Scriptural teaching. The spiritual law is nowhere to be abolished. Paul says in Romans 7 that the law is good; it is spiritual; it is desirable. You don’t cast away what is spiritual and what is good. You cast away what is carnal but not what is spiritual. And seeing that the law is defined as spiritual, then it’s in no way to be abolished! No way!

The question then is this: Are we therefore saved by the keeping of the law as well as by grace? Or what happens? And this is where the two parallels are. The first part of the Lord’s answer to this rich, young man appears to be that we are saved by the law; and the second part appears to be that we are saved by discipleship. And so we come back to our original question: Are we then saved by the law or by discipleship? And you can take your pick which you prefer. If you think that the law is too difficult, well, try discipleship. If you think discipleship is too difficult, well, help yourself to the law. If both are no good for you, then you have to settle for the fact that eternal life is not for you. What will it be? This raises the question of the relationship of law and grace. Discipleship certainly has to do with grace, and the commandments have to do with law. Where is the relationship between the two?

Does it mean that as Christians, we are exempt from the requirement to fulfill the law? And the law is summed up in loving God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, as the Lord himself puts it here in this very passage of Matthew 19:19b, that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So is the Christian, the disciple, exempt from the fulfilling of these requirements? The answer must be “no” for anyone who even has a superficial acquaintance with the Word of God. We are not exempt from loving God with all our hearts. As well, we are not exempt from loving our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, these are the very requirements that the Lord constantly stresses to us, as does the rest of the New Testament, and as does James 2:8 – “fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Nowhere in the New Testament are we exempt from these requirements.

Then, are we therefore saved by the law? Of course not. But you will say, “You just said we keep the law and now you say we are not saved by the law. What exactly are you saying?” This is the whole point of what the apostle Paul is saying in the first part of Romans chapter 7. The law is good and we must fulfill it, but we are unable to fulfill it; we cannot live up to these requirements. We cannot do one good deed that expresses God’s holy love because we are sinful. So Paul goes on to say especially in Romans 7:12, 14-17 that the law is good, the law is spiritual, but I am weak, I am sinful. So the law that is spiritual and good, is what I, being sinful and weak, must fulfill yet I cannot do it.

We need God’s empowering grace to transform us to fulfill the law

So what’s the answer? Abolish the law so you can stay sinful? Of course not! The whole point why we speak about power in the blood, is that God’s grace coming into our lives—the power of the blood—enables us to fulfill what we in ourselves cannot do. For example, we saw already in Romans 13:9 that Paul says loving the neighbor is the fulfilling of the law, but we can’t do it. So Paul has already told us in Romans 5:5, that God has shed his love into our hearts. He has caused his love to flow into our hearts, and that is enabling grace, the grace that enables us to do what we cannot do.

Now the Lord Jesus warned already in Matthew 5:17 that if anyone tells you to put away the law, that man is in trouble. He said, “I did not come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it.” This is the whole point. God’s holy requirements which express his character are not thrown into the garbage bin. The ceremonial aspects of the law are laid aside, yes, because they are fulfilled in Christ; but the spiritual requirements of the law stand. Yet, if they stand, we cannot fulfill them.

If we cannot fulfill the spiritual requirements of the law, what can we do? First of all, we have sinned against God in the past, so how can all this long history of sin be dealt with? It is through the death of Christ that the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins. However, now that we are cleansed from sin, we still cannot keep the require­ments, we still cannot love the neighbor as ourselves. There we have the other part of the power of the blood by which God enables us to live “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Once we understand these things, we are in a good position to understand these two parts of the Lord Jesus’ reply to this rich young man in verse 19. The first part of his answer appears to be that we are saved by the law, and the second part appears to be that we are saved by discipleship (“follow me”). They are not two parts from which you can choose one or the other as you please. They are two parts of the same answer.

Notice the rich, young ruler’s reply in his pitiful ignorance. He still did not understand what the Lord Jesus is saying. When the Lord Jesus said, “Keep the commandments,” he went on to say in verse 20, “I have observed all these commandments.” Now either he still doesn’t understand what is “good,” or he is being deliberately false. It’s not for you and me to judge. Left to ourselves, we simply cannot observe all these things. Surely, if you have tried keeping the commandments, tried loving your neighbor as yourself, you would have found that you have failed endlessly along the way. I would not dare to say, “I have kept all these commandments from my youth,” if I even have the slightest inkling of what this means. Which of us dare to say, “I have kept all” (notice the word ‘all’), “all these I have observed”? All these? Is he being ignorant or is he being false? That is the question which we will have to leave to God to judge.

The point simply is this: In order to keep the commandments at all, we need to be transformed by God’s power; we need to be born anew, be regenerated. The natural man, as Paul has constantly tried to explain in Romans, simply cannot keep the law. How can you say, “I have done it all”? When a non-Christian says to me, “Well, I’m good enough. I haven’t robbed anybody. I haven’t stolen anything. I have been living a reasonably good life, at least as good as anybody else, therefore, I am bound to be saved.” To answer like this is not to understand what the Lord is saying. Whose standard of goodness are you talking about? You have observed all these things all your life? How can you do it? We cannot keep the law. This is the whole point of the New Testament. As Paul says, “If we could keep the spiritual requirements of the law, then Christ didn’t need to die; he didn’t need to give us God’s Holy Spirit.” Therefore, to say you’ll be saved so long as you are good, is not to even understand what “good” means. This is the point.

God’s empowering grace must transform us to be perfect: Follow Jesus

Notice the Lord Jesus’ patience. He did not say to him, “You ignorant man! I have been trying to explain to you half the day about how to enter the kingdom, and you tell me that you have kept these things of the law.” Perhaps we would have spoken to a person like that in our impatience. The Lord noticed that he doesn’t understand. Then, he changes his words and simply says, “Let’s forget about the details of keeping the commandments, and let me put it to you like this. If you would be perfect, if you really want to have eternal life, just go and sell your possessions. Give them to those who need it. You will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.” “What good deed must I do to have eternal life” is now answered by the words, “Come, follow me.”

Is being perfect a higher stage?

Now the question is: Is being perfect a higher stage of being a Christian? Does the Lord Jesus mean, “All right, you have kept the commandments, and in order to be perfect, come and follow me”? I suspect that on reading this, many people might assume that is what the Lord Jesus is saying. That’s not what the Lord Jesus is saying at all, because if he had truly observed all the commandments from his youth, he is already perfect. Perfection is keeping all the command­ments. What other definition is there for perfection? So is the Lord now talking about a higher stage? Maybe we can say they are two parts of the same answer, but one is the primary stage and the other is the higher stage. He might be saying to the rich, young ruler, “You’ve got through primary school, but now you should graduate to high school. So be my disciple.” If we think like this, then we look at disciples as rather “high-class Christians.” Disciples are a super strata of Christians in the church. What a thin strata they are in the church! It is as if we are looking for a few stars in the night sky! There is nothing much left to see. Is the Lord Jesus saying that? To think like this is not to understand what the word “perfect” means.

“Good” and “perfect” both define the character of God

The answer is even found in this passage. Jesus said in verse 17, “There is only One who is good.” Only God is good, as the parallel passages in Mark and Luke say, “No one is good except God alone.” In Matthew 5:48, the Lord Jesus also says only God is perfect: “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” So you can see that “good” and “perfect” are simply different words defining the character of God. Only God is perfect. Only God is good. What is the difference in the meaning of “good” and “perfect”? There may be a difference between “good” and “perfect” in our language but it’s important to notice that as the Lord Jesus has defined “good,” there is no difference between the words “good” and “perfect.” To become good is to become like God because only God is good. To become perfect is also to become like God because only God is perfect. “Good” and “perfect” are exactly the same, which shows you again these two parts of the Lord Jesus’ answer are really the same. Since the rich young ruler did not understand what the Lord Jesus had said about “good,” he now uses the word “perfect.”

Perhaps the Lord Jesus is thinking that since the rich, young ruler is still understanding “good” in the human sense, he will use the word “perfect” to force him to think in the divine sense. Surely, if he doesn’t understand that only God is good, he must understand that only God is perfect. Hence he has changed the word, “if you would be perfect” in verse 21, in order to get him to understand the meaning. “If you would become perfect” means “if you would become like God.” The answer now becomes very significant: “If you would be­come good” is to become like God. “If you would become perfect” is also to become like God.

In fact, this meaning is also brought out in comparing the parallel of Luke with Matthew. Luke 6:35-36 says, “Do good” and “Be merciful as your Father is merciful.” In other words, to do good is to be merciful, so be merciful as your Father is merciful.” Being merciful is goodness.

The parallel passage in Matthew 5:48 is “be perfect.” Therefore, to be merciful is to be perfect, and to be good is to be perfect. It’s very interesting in the way the Lord speaks. And to understand his teaching, you have to take his definition of the words. The way we think is, we regard “perfect” is better than “good.” It’s important to understand that’s not the way the Lord Jesus uses the words.

Coming back to the answer to the question: “What must I do to have eternal life?” The answer now becomes: God has eternal life, and if you want eternal life, you have to become like God. That is what the Lord Jesus said distinctly in Matthew 5:48, “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Only so will you be the sons of God.” The answer here is the same.

Cut your link with the world

Now we begin to feel a sense of terror. I’ve got to become like God! What am I going to do? How can I be like this? The Lord does not leave us in despair. He goes on to the answer: “Cut your link with the world – your love of money, your love for the things of this world, and follow me. Follow me in order to become like God who sent me.” This is the whole point of discipleship.

Follow Jesus to be perfect like God

Why do we follow Jesus? Because in following him, in fellowshipping with him, in listening to his teaching, in listening to his words of life, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, as the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is transformation! How many times I have tried to stress this. It is being transformed from one degree to another. It is becoming like God! Why do we become disciples? Because how else can we become like God except through fellowship with him when we follow Christ, who fellowships intimately with him? That is why 1 John 1:3b says, “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (Remember also that it is Christ’s forgiving and reconciling blood that has made fellowship with God possible.) And because we fellowship with God, we are living in the light, and by living in the light, you who were once in darkness have now become light in Christ, as the apostle Paul says (cf. Eph. 5:8). How did we become light? Through fellowship with God as trans­formed, new persons in Christ. This is the significance of disciple­ship.

Do you find the Lord Jesus’ teaching hard to understand? Not unless we are like the rich young ruler trying to make excuses by saying, “Lord, I don’t know what you are saying. Keep which command­ments? But I have always kept those commandments.” It’s very easy to understand if we want to understand. Otherwise, we just try not to understand.

The Lord’s answer then, to sum up, is very simple and very clear, at least to any person whose heart is open enough to want to understand. If you ask: What is the meaning of discipleship? Let me say it again as the Lord put it, “If you want to be perfect, if you want to be like God, come, follow me.” You must follow Jesus. It doesn’t mean that you become like God and show forth his beauty and glory overnight. Not at all. Discipleship is a process. You are not saved in five minutes, in the sense of being transformed in five minutes. You are forgiven in one minute because God can just forgive your sins the moment you repent. But being a Christian is not just being forgiven. There is more to the Christian life than just being forgiven. Forgiveness is the wonderful beginning of the Christian life. It is clearing away all the mess of your life so that there is a clean foundation upon which to build something new and beautiful for God.

God’s glorious task for us – shine forth God’s light, be like Christ who is like God

What is our calling in this world? Is it simply to wait around until we die so that we can get to heaven? Not at all! Many times, when you hear the gospel preached today, it is as though being “saved” is the end of the matter! The next thing you wait for is to die. So in this long, intervening, boring gap of time until we die, we just try to employ our time a little bit profitably, so that we can get to heaven.

We should not think of the Christian life in this way, because God has given us a glorious task in the world, namely, to be the light of the world, that is, to show forth his light. The only way to be light is to be like God, who is light. If we are not light in the world, then what are we? We are not Christians! And the only way to be like God is to “follow me,” says Jesus, the Christ in whom God lives. We are each one to be his disciples by God’s power of grace. There is no other way.

And it is in being Jesus’ disciples that we learn to fulfill (the spiritual requirements of) the law, the commandments. It’s not that we are saved by the commandments but we are saved by God’s grace in the power of Christ’s blood, which transforms us and enables us to live according to the commandments, to live the kind of life that God accepts, that is pleasing to him.

I would like you to ponder carefully on these points for we are dealing with teachings of the greatest importance. I wonder if you can not only understand clearly but also really fulfill the Lord Jesus’ teaching. God is most happy to forgive you freely when you repent. But remember that forgiveness is simply to prepare the way for discipleship with Christ, to transform your life into something beautiful, namely, God’s light in this world. Are you willing to be a disciple?

Therefore, unlike the notion in many churches or among many Christians, that discipleship is some kind of a higher standard of Christians, there’s no such teaching in the New Testament. In the New Testament, the disciple is simply a word for any Christian. You are either a disciple or you are not a Christian. If you are a Christian in the Biblical sense, you are a disciple. It’s not just I am a disciple, not just those in the Training Team are disciples, if you are a true Christian, then you are a disciple. And you must know your calling is to be conformed to the image of his Son, as Paul says in Romans 8:29,

This is the whole point of becoming a Christian. That is God’s pur­pose to conform you to the image of his Son, so that those who look at you will not see you but Christ, who truly and totally reflects God (2 Cor. 4:6).

So then we close on this note. Let no person here today go away and say, “I didn’t understand the answer to the question, ‘What good must I do to inherit eternal life?’” The Lord Jesus’ answer is simply this: “Follow me and I will make you the kind of person who becomes a fisher of men, the kind of person who is the light of the world. Walk with me and you will know that you are following the living God whom I follow, so that you are changed into his image, because he that has seen me has seen the Father” (Jo. 14:9).

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.