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You are here: Home / 3 Christian Living / b Church and Ministry / Discipleship / Jesus is Not Customizable

Jesus is Not Customizable

February 17, 2015 by mattperman

Well said by David Platt in Follow Me:

In Matthew 7, Jesus expose our dangerous tendency to gravitate toward that which is easy and popular. Hear his warning: Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

In other words, there is a broad road that is inviting and inclusive. This nice, comfortable, ever-so-crowded path is attractive and accommodating. The only thing that’s required of you on this path is a one-time decision for Christ, and you don’t have to worry about his commands, his standards, or his glory after making that decision. You now have a ticket to heaven, and your sin, whether manifested in self-righteousness or self-indulgence, will be tolerated along the way.

But this is not the way of Jesus. He beckons us down a hard road, and the word Jesus uses for this is associated in other parts of the Bible with pain, pressure, tribulation, and persecution. The way of Jesus is hard to follow, and it’s hated by many.

Almost unknowingly, we shrink back from this cost, choosing to redefine Christianity according to our personal preferences, church traditions, and cultural norms. Slowly, subtly, we take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into someone with whom we are a little more comfortable.

We dilute what he says about the cost of following him, we disregard what he says about those who choose not to follow him, we practically ignore what he says about materialism, and we functionally miss what he says about mission. We pick and choose what we like and don’t like from Jesus’ teachings.

In the end, we create a nice, non-offensive, politically correct, middle-class, American Jesus who looks just like us and thinks just like us.

But Jesus is not customizable. He has not left himself open to interpretation, adaptation, innovation, or alteration. He has revealed himself clearly through his Word, and we have no right to personalize him. Instead, he revolutionizes us. As we follow Jesus, we believe Jesus, even when his Word confronts (and often contradicts) the deeply held assumptions, beliefs, and convictions of our lives, our families, our friends, our culture, and sometimes even our churches. And such belief in Jesus transforms everything about what we desire and how we live.

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About Matt Perman

 

I am the director of career development at The King’s College NYC, co-founder of What’s Best Next, and the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done. This is my personal website where I blog on four of my favorite topics: theology, apologetics, culture, and living in New York City.

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