What does it mean to be a Jesus-Follower?

• The Call – Jesus gives me an invitation to come to him.
• The Community – Jesus unites me to his people.
• The Change – Jesus transforms me to be like him.
• The Commission – Jesus sends me out to invite others.

THE CALL

God the Father desires a loving relationship with you. No matter who you are, what you have done, or what you have gone through, the Father loves you even if you are still going through it. God designed this world to show his love and provision to you and all men and women he created in his image. The problem is that you, like me and everyone else, have rejected God’s perfect design and started pursuing what you thought was best. The Bible has a word for our rejection of God’s design, which is “sin.” Sin, leaving the Father’s design, leads to brokenness.

We all experience this brokenness resulting from sin. The brokenness, pain, dysfunction, racism, addiction, disease, abuse, exploitation, greed, death, and all the evils of this world are the natural consequence of leaving the Father’s loving plan and following our ways. As we try to fix our brokenness, we try to lessen, numb, or escape it with things like education, religion, relationships, sex, drugs, pornography, elicit entertainment, and intoxication. But these things only lead to more and more brokenness. But brokenness can be a good thing if it causes us to realize our ways do not work and causes us to look for help. Help is available. That help is good news, and it is where the real Jesus comes in.

The biblical term for good news is “gospel.” The good news is that God the Father does not want to be separated from you or anyone else. He made you for you to love him and enjoy him. To forgive our rebellious sins, heal our brokenness, and bring us back to him, he sent his only son, Jesus, to pay for our sins with his own life.

Jesus lived a perfect life, following the Father’s design in every way. Sinful men rejected and killed Jesus on the cross; however, God used Jesus’ death to substitute for your sin and bring you back to the life he planned for you. After his death, Jesus was buried in a tomb and rose back to life on the third day. His resurrection proves he is God’s Son; everything he says is true; he can forgive sins, has power over death, and has won the victory over evil, rebellious powers.

Jesus said if you believe that he became your substitute to pay for your sins, and you turn from your ways and follow him, he will forgive your sins and send his Holy Spirit to help you live for him. Jesus calls it being Born Again. If you sense the Father impressing upon your conscience that this good news is true, you believe it is true, and you are ready to surrender your ways to follow his, he says, be baptized and start following, be born again.

Public baptism symbolizes dying to your old life and letting Jesus raise you to begin your new forgiven life following him. Between now and your baptism, you can express your desire to follow him by asking the Father for forgiveness based on Jesus’ death and resurrection and turning to follow Jesus’ way of life.

When you accept Jesus, you are not only forgiven but empowered by his Holy Spirit to pursue God’s original design for your life, and Jesus gives you a new spiritual family. Jesus also says that even though you will one day die physically, you will be spared eternal condemnation, and separation from him and have eternal life with him in heaven and on a new earth where there is no more sin and no more brokenness. 

THE COMMUNITY

Jesus invites you to join his community of people who are following and representing him to this world. This community is your spiritual family. Accepting Jesus’ forgiveness and following him makes you automatically a part of his community of people. The only name given to his community of people in the Bible is ‘Called Out Ones.’ The Called Out Ones are a new kingdom of people who follow their Lord (King) Jesus. The Called Out Ones are not perfect people, but they become more like Jesus as they help one another follow him.

Typically, the community gathers in groups weekly to read Scripture, sing praises to God, observe the Lord’s Supper, perform baptisms, encourage one another, and train one another to follow Jesus and make more disciples. The Lord’s Supper commemorates the last supper Jesus had with his disciples when he explained the promise that the Father makes with you to forgive your sins and save you through the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus.

Over time, people have unfortunately substituted the term “church” for the biblical term “Called Out Ones.” Initially, the term “church” referred to a building used for religious purposes. Today, however, people use the term “church” for both a building used for religious purposes and the community of Called Out Ones. The subtle difference in words and definitions has changed the emphasis from what was originally Called Out People to represent him, and his interest, and to invite other people to follow him into what is now mostly attending regular religious events in a building. The result is that Jesus’ followers view following Jesus as going to a building for a religious event rather than being the Called Out Ones of Jesus in this world.

It is okay to use the term “church” today, but we must understand Jesus’ definition of what he started after his resurrection. Jesus began something that has nothing to do with going to a building and everything to do with launching a movement of his people into this broken world with acts of love and a message of hope and forgiveness through faith in him. 

After Jesus rose from the grave, he appeared to his followers over forty days and then ascended to heaven. Before he ascended, Jesus said he would give his followers his Holy Spirit and power enabling them to follow his ways and reach others with his good news. The job of the Called Out Ones, the church, is to be transformed by Jesus to represent him and make more disciples.  

THE CHANGE

Jesus said if you believe that he became your substitute to pay for your sins, you turn from your sinful ways, and you follow him, he will forgive your sins and send his Holy Spirit (his invisible Presence) to help you live for him. The Bible uses the word “repent,” meaning to turn away from sins and toward Jesus. Repent is a turning of the mind, a change of mind, to agree with Jesus about what is good and bad, righteous and evil. It is a change in how you think that will begin to change your lifestyle and how you behave. It is a change from believing that God is ruining your life, unfair, and mean to begin believing that you are ruining your life and there is a loving Father God who cares for you, wants to forgive you, and wants to help you enjoy his love and design for your life and his people.

The biblical word for this transformation is “sanctification.” It means to become increasingly more like Jesus and less like our previous rebellious selves. This change is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit to work in your life and empower you, your church family to love and show you how to live like Jesus, and yours to actively participate in the process and follow Jesus. After you are born again, the Holy Spirit’s responsibility is to influence your conscience and show you the Father’s preference for your actions and attitudes. It is your responsibility to obey the Holy Spirit and follow his influence. You will please the Father and become more like Jesus as you obey. You can learn more about following his way of life in scripture, the Bible. I suggest you begin by reading the book of John first, and then Matthew or Luke.

The Holy Spirit helps you understand the Bible and apply Jesus’s teachings to your life. The Holy Spirit helps you pray and listen to the Father. The Holy Spirit gives you special abilities to serve others, volunteer in your church and community, and accomplish the Father’s purposes in your life.

While no one is perfect like Jesus, we aim to please him. While Jesus’ followers will never be condemned to eternal life separated from the Father and his blessings, they will be judged on how they followed the Holy Spirit, represented Jesus, and loved others selflessly as Jesus loves and forgives us. The point of following Jesus is actually imitating him in every area of life. Following Jesus results in becoming like him to honor the Father and reach others with his good news.

THE COMMISSION

Jesus says that following him results in finding other people and helping them do the same. Before Jesus ascended to the Father, he left instructions to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and training them in everything Jesus had taught them. Those instructions are called The Great Commission.

Jesus commissions his followers to become “fishers of men”. Many people believe that following Jesus means going to church on Sundays, giving some money to charity, and being a nice person. Those things are important and a small part of following Jesus. But many Christians stop at personal moral transformation and never make it commission-living. Christ-followers are transformed to multiply what Jesus is doing in them to others. Jesus calls this multiplication making disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

Instead of becoming multiplying disciples, many Christians have substituted the commission for learning more about Jesus in lectures and classroom settings. Learning more about Jesus both personally and in groups is vitally important, but if that is all a person does, it is significantly incomplete and leaves people spiritually sterile.

Teachers and pastors, while their motives may be good, have amassed several followers who gather around them weekly to listen, learn, and be better morally. Church leaders encourage people to use their time, talent, and treasure building more buildings, running more programs, and gathering more people into weekly events to listen, learn, and run programs. That is the model they were given as ‘church’ and that is the model they are doing their best to follow. The weekly church gathering, the collective gathering of Jesus followers, the public reading of scripture, the proclamation of the good news, sharing the Lord’s Supper, baptizing new believers, singing songs, cheerfully giving financially, correcting one another’s errors, and encouraging one another are vitally important for following Jesus, but it is significantly incomplete.

Hosting, attending, and participating in weekly church gathering events is a small part of what Jesus had in mind when he gave his followers their commission. If the following-Jesus experience was primarily concerned with gathering everyone around a central figure, teacher, or preacher, Jesus would have stayed on earth and been that central person. But he did not. He sends his Holy Spirit into every one of his followers so that when they leave their weekly gathering, they can be multiplying disciples in the places where they live, work, learn, play, and worship. Jesus invites, enables, and expects his followers to represent him and his good news. Most of the things Christ-followers rely on their pastors and churches for are things they should be doing with other people outside the church gathering.

This website is devoted to helping us become multiplying disciples of Jesus and launching multiplying communities of Christ-followers where we live, work, learn, play, and worship.

Conclusion

Again, if you sense God’s Presence impressing upon your conscious that this good news message of Jesus is true, you believe God the Father loves you, that he will accept and forgive you based on Jesus’ substitutionary death for you, then you are invited to repent of your sins and follow him. We call this point in your life salvation. Jesus calls it being born again. It is the beginning of your new life following the Jesus way of life!

The next thing for you to do is to talk to God the Father (pray) reiterating your surrender to him, your acceptance of his forgiveness, your desire to live a repented life, and your trust in him to help you follow Jesus in faith. Share your good news with someone who will be glad to hear it, and be baptized.