WHAT’S KEEPING YOU?

If everyone you loved and knew as a Christ-follower all at once denounced their faith, or, if they simply rejected the Gospel and never decided to come to Christ to begin with, would their decision to reject Jesus cause you to turn away from your faith as well?

We can’t casually allow ourselves to fall into the trap of only having a faith as strong as our best friend or family. Our faith must be founded in Christ. Anything less than this, and our faith could be swayed into myths, lies, and deception, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about here.

A WARNING NOT TO LET GOD BECOME SECOND

Jesus warned us to consider the cost of following Him so we would spiritually endure when our closest friends, family, and their less-than-godly ways of living became our resistance to following Him:

Luke 14:26 NIV
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.“

Notice, however, the AMP version of this same verse adds a bit more context to the meaning behind the “hate”:

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life [in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God]—he cannot be My disciple.”

DISTINCTION, AND ENCOURAGEMENT

Jesus isn’t telling us to hate our family, otherwise it would contradict His teaching in Matthew 22:39, which reads:

“And the second (Greatest Commandment) is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Therefore, Jesus is not teaching his followers to hate their families, but rather is revealing to them that they need to be spiritually mature enough to comprehend the severity of following Him, especially since it could very well mean denying their family for the sake of remaining obedient and loyal. But there is hope, for Jesus also encourages us:

“Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30 ESV)

CULTURE CANNOT REPLACE THE LIVING CHRIST

We are susceptible to naively placing the traditional and cultural values of family, as well as secular norms (carnal living), above obedience to Christ, and that is what can turn into sin (through idolatry). When people start to worship the ideology of family, earthly relationships, and pleasure-seeking lifestyles that distance us from intimacy with God, we end up placing loyalty to Christ in second place. And it is this, Jesus is saying, that we must hate enough to reject. We must be willing to reject anything that stops us from following Christ towards righteousness, holiness, sanctification, and loving others the way He loved us.

REAL LOVE DOESN’T ACCEPT SIN

To be clear, this isn’t the type of all-accepting love that allows, enables, or leads others to sin. Instead, this is the type of love that acknowledges God’s standard is higher than ours, and it admonishes the acceptance of others’ sinful life choices in light of believing with conviction that it is those very types of sinful choices which leads anyone who allows themselves to be carried away by them, down the wide gate ending in destruction (Matthew 7:13).

REJECTING JESUS OR REJECTING SIN

Simply put, this means hating evil and loving righteousness. If family and friends cannot spiritually discern the danger of what they’re worshiping in this life, they may very well blindly pull other spiritually blind people in the direction of hell (unknowingly) under the guise of social/societal/peer pressure or conformity. The human heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), and when a person is unwilling to view their idolization for what it is under the light of Scripture, and if they won’t listen to biblical correction (2 Timothy 3:16-17), then we must firmly (not passively) reject the invitation to partake in their sin, and continue in righteousness even if it looks (to a spiritually blind world) like the rejection of family and friends. Ultimately, they are rejecting Jesus, and we are rejecting sin.

REMAIN IN THE WORD AND KEEP ALERT

If we aren’t in our Bible, then we don’t know the Word. And if we don’t know the Word, how can we discern if a person is using Scripture in the way God intended for it to be used? How can we properly, lovingly—and with conviction—correct another person with Scripture if we don’t read it for ourselves? The answer is, we cannot. Let that be a reason (one of several) that we return to Scripture with persistence and humility, trembling for the sake of working out our salvation (Philippians 2:12), and carefully avoid subtle deception placed along our path in a world brewing in corruption.

FRUITS AND WORKS-BASED SALVATION

Family and friends are gifts from God, and they are blessings in our lives, let us not be mistaken. We love our families and friends, particularly those who draw near to us as fellow-worshipers of the one true God in Christ. This means we need to be careful and alert, searching for and examining the fruits of the Christians we allow into our lives. Many will claim or profess Christianity without any evidence of a reborn spirit, a radical sense of grace and mercy, nor an understanding of the differentiation between fruits, and works-based salvation (meaning, some will show fruits of already receiving salvation by faith, while others will show that they are working hard to earn salvation, which is impossible). Many will claim to believe in Jesus but live like He’s still in the grave.

WE CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS

We must be ready to say no to those who are willing to put Christ second for the purpose of idolization under the facade of personal life choices and selfish ambition. We must be willing to reject the ways of those who do not take faith in Christ seriously, and not partake in what caters to the minimization of God’s authority, because this leads to spiritual death. We cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). We cannot be ready for the Kingdom if we miss the pleasures of this world so much that we are making excuses to be our own god, while not denying ourselves before the holiness of the one true God. Yeshua, Jesus the risen Lord, is coming back from Heaven. Let no one and nothing cause you to stumble and fall away from faith; not even your family or friends.

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