Following Christ
John Nelson Darby
Table of Contents
Following Christ
“Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps” (1 Peter 2:21).
O Father, Thy care is not to make
The desert a waste no more,
But to keep our feet lest we lose the track
Where His feet went before.
If you are really going to take such a step as that of following Christ, you must count the cost. . . . Friends must be given up for Christ. A man may have to leave everything else, but the question is, Am I to leave God? . . . “You cannot have two hearts — a heart for the world and a heart for Me,” Christ would say. I tremble when I see people who have not counted the cost, setting out in the profession of following Christ. It is God’s way to put the barrier at the start. If you can leap, that you will do.
“He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” He knows His Father’s will and He does it. He sets His face there, where His Father’s will is to be done, not looking to this side or to that, but there — Jerusalem. We, according to the measure we have of the single eye, shall be following in the same course, going to the cross steadily, with one purpose, and in proportion as we do, so will those who do not so set their face oppose us. But the Lord says, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.” Service is not doing a great deal, but following the Master, and the world and halfhearted Christians do not like that. There is plenty of doing in the world, but “if any man serve Me, let him follow Me.”
“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily.” “Daily” — this is the trial. A man might heroically do it once for all, and he would have plenty of people to honor him and books written about him, but it is terribly difficult to go on every day denying oneself and no one knowing anything about it.
People do not like to do the things that Jesus did when He was down here. Why is there so much argument about that one passage, “Resist not evil”? It is because you like to resist evil. . . . It is given you as matter-of-fact exhortation, but you do not like it, and you will get rid of it if you can.
At whatever cost to self, show love as Christ did. . . . “Love ye your enemies.” . . . It must cost us something; it cost the life of Christ. His love was a stream which, if it met with hindrances in its way, only went on flowing over and leaving them behind till it reached the cross.
“If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” If it is so with you, there is sure to be light in the path — light not for ten years hence but for this one step that is before you, and then for the next.
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