Follow Me!

Many today grow up believing that the main purpose of Christianity is to offer people the opportunity to “receive Jesus as one’s personal Savior.” Now this often used  phrase among American Evangelicals is both popular and misleading.

Most Evangelicals accept this kind of language as standard Biblical fare. This is what “getting saved” means you see. It’s all about what happens after a person dies. This is why Jesus came in the first place, to ensure that we have an afterlife once we leave this physical life. Getting saved is the single most important dimension of the Christian experience. Nothing else is as important as having a personal Savior, so to speak.

Now many Evangelicals today accept this line of thinking without much thought simply because this is what they have been taught in church all their lives. It is the core narrative behind much of Evangelical theology today. But there is a huge problem with this line of thinking: It’s not Biblical.

That’s right! Nowhere in the Bible is the phrase “personal Lord and Savior” found. Nada. Not one place. You see we use so many words to express our Christian beliefs, many of which are not found in the Bible. For example one will not find the words “inerrant” or “rapture” or “Second Coming” in the Bible but Evangelicals use such words with great frequency.

Now certainly one could argue that these words reflect certain core beliefs that are implied in the Scriptures. That may very well be true. “Trinity” is an excellent example of this. But I believe there is a danger in assuming that all the language we use to talk about our faith is straight out of the Bible and the phrase “Jesus as my personal Savior “ is a good example.

Please take note that Jesus never referred to himself as a “personal Lord and Savior” of anyone. No New Testament writer used this phrase. It is a foreign phrase to the Biblical authors. The idea of a “personal Savior” is not found anywhere in the New Testament. In fact, the Apostle Paul would have cringed at the idea that salvation could be reduced to a personal experience of gaining heaven and escaping hell.

Why is this so important? Well simply because Jesus never said to anyone that taking him as a personal Savior was a major part of the Christian experience. What he did demand however was that we “follow him.” He didn’t say to Peter or Andrew or James or John: “Take me as your personal Savior guys!” No, he simply said: “Follow me!” There is a huge difference between following Jesus and simply receiving him as one’s personal Lord and Savior. So what is that difference?

I’m happy you asked because this is the crucial point of this post: To follow Jesus is much more challenging, difficult, dangerous and subversive than merely receiving him as a personal Savior with heaven as a reward. So many Evangelicals today are comforted in knowing that they have life after death all locked up because they have received Jesus as their personal Savior.

Yet following him into this present world is rarely considered simply because the shift in focus from the afterlife to the present life is too costly, too demanding, and lot more dangerous. This was the major premise of Dietrich Bonheoffer’s classic book, The Cost of Discipleship, which remains relevant in today’s world.

Evangelicalism has become a version of Christianity that is too easy, too safe, and a lot less risky than what either Jesus or Paul or even the early Christians would have recognized. May we all embrace the words of Jesus that actually do come straight out of the New Testament: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). This is the Biblical language we need to rediscover.