A Call to Radical Discipleship

The following is an excerpt taken from the book Unchristian.

If we belong to Jesus Christ, we have a double calling in relation to the world. On the one hand, we are to live, serve, and witness in the world and not try to escape from it. On the other hand, we are to avoid being contaminated by the world. So we have no liberty either to preserve our holiness by escaping from the world or to sacrifice our holiness by conforming to the world.

Escapism and comformism are both forbidden to us. This is one of the major themes of the whole Bible, namely that God is calling out a people for himself and is summoning us to be different from everybody else. "Be holy as I am holy".

The foundational theme recurs in all sections of scripture. Let me give you an example from each. God said the people through Moses: "You must not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you used to live, nor as they do in the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the Lord your God" (Lev. 18:3-4) Similarly God says through Ezekiel, "You have not followed my decrees, but have conformed to the standards of the nations around you" (Ezekiel 11:12).

It is similar in the New Testament. Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of the hypocrites, "Do not be like them......(Matt. 6:8). Finally the apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians: "Do not conform any longer any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed" (Romans 12:2).

Here then is God's call to a radical discipleship, to a radical nonconformism to the surrounding culture. It is a call to develop a Christian counterculture. The followers of Jesus, for example, are not to give in to pluralism, which denies the uniqueness and lordship of Jesus, nor be sucked into materialism or become led astray into ethical relativism, which says there are no moral absolutes.

This is God's call to his people to be different. We are not to be like reeds shaken by the wind, as Jesus said, but to be like rocks in a mountain stream; to be like fish floating with the stream, but to swim against the stream - even cultural mainstream.

We are faced, in fact, with two cultures, two value systems, two standards, and two lifestyles. Which shall we choose? If we are not to be like chameleons, changing color to suit our surroundings, what are we to be like? The answer is that we are to be like CHRIST!! The eternal and ulitmate purpose of God by his Spirit is to make us like Christ.

- John Stott