Following Jesus Is Not the Gospel
Following Jesus is not the Gospel. It is the fruit of believing the Gospel and believing the Gospel is trusting in Christ as the one who has secured salvation for you. The Gospel is basically what God in Christ graciously offers you. It is not something you do. Yes, you respond to the Gospel by trusting in Christ and it is this reception of the Gospel or your trusting in Christ that leads to your following him. Following him is costly to be sure but when it comes to the Gospel the cost falls exclusively on Jesus.
We often confuse the law, what we are to do and even what Christ calls us to do or commands us to do, like follow him and love one another, with the Gospel. For example, Jesus in Mark 8:34 (and elsewhere) said to the crowd and to his disciples: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is the call to be his disciple. Yet this is not the Gospel. To be his disciple you and I must heed what Christ’s commands here but this is still not the Gospel. Yet, without the Gospel we could not heed this command.
In this verse Jesus uses the reflexive pronoun “himself.” In verses 35, 36 and 37 he uses the word soul (psyche) but it carries the same meaning as “himself” or “his life.” If anyone would come after me (discipleship or followership language) let him deny himself (this is a command or a requirement). This is a call to repudiate oneself, to deny one’s self-rule or self-authority. He then says, “and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus had just explained to his disciples after Peter’s confession of Him as the Messiah-King that he was heading to Jerusalem and there he would die. Peter is aghast and rebukes Jesus. Peter can’t imagine that the Messiah of the Jews would be treated so poorly at the hands of the Jewish leaders, who would then put him to death. He and the others must not have heard or hearing must not have understood Jesus’ declaration that “after three days (he would) rise again.”
So, Peter by rebuking Jesus endeavors to change his thinking and prevent this from happening. Jesus will have none of this so he rebukes Peter by unveiling the true source behind Peter’s heart’s response: “Get behind me, Satan!” Now, Peter was not possessed by the Satan but like so many others was unknowingly influenced by the fiend. What Jesus says next exposes the problem we all have when it comes to hearing and receiving God’s Word. “For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." It is this mindset that Jesus is calling those who want to be his disciples to deny. We have to die to indeed is this way of thinking about ourselves. The call to take up the cross and follow Christ underscores the reality that to be his disciples (to follow him) we must die and this entails denying or repudiating all expressions of self: self-control, self-righteousness, self-indulgence, self-loathing and the list could go on. Yet it is this very hold of the self that is under the hold or rule of sin (dominion of sin, Romans chapter 6) that we cannot, apart from the Gospel, overcome. It is also what Augustine called incurvitus in se, a life turned inward on oneself rather than outward to God and to others. To this we are, outside of Christ, all enslaved.
So, where is the Gospel in this text? I find it in verse 35. It is a bit subtle but it is there. “Whoever would save his life (soul) will lose it.” Of course this is what we all do. We are experts in saving ourselves or experts in trying to save ourselves. Fallen men and women spend a great deal of energy and time in securing their own lives. We only have in mind the things of man or our minds are engaged in things that center on our present lives. This is our default setting. We are also very enamored with our plans, dreams, aspirations, successes, achievements that are all generated by a false sense of self-control or even idolatrous self-deification. Like Eve we believe the lie that living life on our own and making our own judgments about reality will make us like God. It is the age-old drama played out millions of times in millions of lives.
Yet, the more we seek to save our lives, the more we move toward the day when we will lose it. In fact in the very process of saving our self-rule we discover the losses. So, the one who is promoting his own self-righteousness is scared to death that someone might find out the truth and cancel him. The one who goes full bore into a life of self-indulgence discovers to her horror that she can’t escape the stranglehold of addiction. So, Jesus gives this stark warning: “For whoever would save his life will lose it!” Yet he does not stop there but graciously goes on to say to us: “but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Do you see the Gospel here? It is found in the expressions “for my sake and the gospel’s.” If one will lose his life for Jesus’ sake, which is the same as losing one’s life for the sake of the Gospel, he will save it. Now, “for the sake of” does not mean that you do this for Christ’s benefit. You are not doing him any favors. Rather, you come to see Him as the good news he indeed is. Unless Christ and his benefits have greater weight in your thinking than holding on to your life and what you have trusted for your support, you will not lose your life. In other words the power to lose one’s life or the stranglehold that self-rule and self-governing has on one’s life is by coming to understand and believe the Gospel. It is this that enables you to follow Christ.
Now it was to secure this very Gospel that Christ was heading to Jerusalem to suffer, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and experts in the law and be killed and after three days rise again. (Mk. 8:31). This is why he so sharply rebuked Peter. For if this was not accomplished none of us would be able to follow him because there would be no Gospel to free us from our claustrophobic selves.
A great commentary that provides insight into Mark 8:34-37 is Philippians 3:2-10. In fact the same concepts and terms are used by Paul as are found in Mark 8:34-37. Paul speaks of the folly of putting confidence in the flesh. I see this as another way of describing holding on to this earthly and passing life as one’s primary treasure. What does it mean to put confidence in the flesh? Paul gives a checklist of this kind of confidence. He lists all the things into which his sense of self was wrapped. These are the possessions that made him secure in himself, before others and even before God. Here was Paul’s life up to the time Christ met him on the road to Damascus
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Phil. 3:4-6 ESV
Now back in Mark 8:36-37 Jesus says: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” This spreadsheet of accomplishments was what Paul saw as His gain these were his profit. This was how Paul was gaining the whole world. He was not willing to forfeit or give these up. His whole identity was invested in maintaining this fleshly capital.
Yet when Christ showed up everything changed. “But whatever was to my gain (my life), these things I considered loss (forfeit) for the sake of Christ.” Now a different preposition (dia) is used here than is used in Mark 8:35 (heneken) but the meaning is the same:”for the sake of.” Here we see the reason that Paul came to consider all that he once held as gain now to be loss. The reason is Christ. However, it was not simply what he possessed when Chrsit encountered him that he counted loss but he began to see everything as loss and even as dung for the sake of Christ but what was it about Christ that enabled him to reconsider the value of his life?
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- (Phil. 3:8-9 ESV)
Notice again the language of gain and loss that Jesus used in Mark 8:36. Paul’s self-rule followed the path of pursuing self-righteousness. He sought to keep it and to promote it but then Christ encountered him and his sense of valued categories were turned on its head. Christ became the one whom he wanted to know and knowing him was of surpassing worth. Again Paul did not do Christ any favors but rather he came to see that union with Christ by faith was what was of inestimable value. He had no difficulty, when he perceived Christ and the righteousness that he provides, to lose his life for the sake of Christ so as to gain Christ and to be found clothed in Christ’s righteousness.
The life of which Christ is pointing in the Mark passage is the same life that Paul points to in Philippians and that is the resurrection life (Phil. 3:11). We will realize that life ultimately as we deny self, take up our cross and follow Christ. Yet, that resurrection life, like the righteousness that justifies us, are benefits secured for us by Christ’s obedience: his life, penal death and resurrection. These benefits of life and righteousness are offered to us by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. This is the Gospel.
We need to keep the Gospel always in view. Part of the reason is that our following Christ is never perfect. That is why we must distinguish between the Gospel (for the sake of Christ) and following Christ (denying self and taking up our cross and following Christ). They can never be separated but we do not want to confuse them. Following Christ is something that Christ commands of us and that we are to do. The Gospel is what God provides for us in Christ that we are to trust and rest in daily. It is by looking in faith to Christ as our righteousness and life that we find both the motivation and the ability to follow him. However, following Jesus is not the Gospel. Following Christ is the evident fruit of the Gospel. Jesus Christ is there for you as you take those steps of following him as his disciple. Your following him will never be perfect but He is there in front of you, beside you and in back of you to help you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him so that you might gain that resurrection life!