Reflecting on John 8:31-47“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” (John 8:31)
How can we know if a person is a Jesus follower?
According to Jesus, they will hold to His teaching.
The teaching of Jesus is primarily ethical, a life focused on loving God and people.
Those who are committed to doing such ‘works’ belong to Jesus as His disciples.
Belonging to the right group (whatever tribe we claim to belong to) is not the key.
Christians today are just as tribal as the Jews were in Jesus’s day.
We claim Calvin, or Wesley, or Luther, or whatever spiritual leader as our ‘father’.
We find comfort in being evangelical, or reformed, or protestant, or whatever.
But none of these tribes means anything if we do not follow Jesus.
It is Jesus’s teaching – not Moses, not Paul, not Calvin, etc., that I want to hold to.
A disciple is a student, someone that is learning from their teacher.
I do not claim to be right, I claim to be a student of the One that is right.
I do not perfectly live the right way, but I look to the One that does.
I want to do the works that Jesus did, and to serve His desires.
My tribal confidence has been shattered, and my only confidence is in Jesus!
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, forgive me for spending so much of my life trying to be reformed, and failing to make You and Your teaching my only priority. The only designation I desire for myself is to be a Jesus following disciple!
Folllowing Jesus means that I am always practicing the Way, to become more like Him. Others need to see Christ living in me by my words and deeds. I needto be like Christ unto them. He is my Rabbi and I, His disciple.