September 28, 2009 THE “GO” OF UNCONDITIONAL IDENTIFICATION

Mark 10:21 - And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

A wealthy young man approaches Jesus and asks Him “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus starts with the basics; the commandments well known to all observant Jews of the day. The rich man indicates that he has followed all of them since his youth. And then Jesus tells him that he lacks only one thing: He should sell all of his belongings, give to the poor, and follow Him. But this was just too much for the rich man – he departs from Jesus disappointed and disheartened because, we are told, “he had great possessions.”

What kind of an answer did this man expect? Did he consider himself an exemplary citizen and assume that Christ would say “Yep, you’re on your way – just keep doin’ what your doin’.” I think a lot of us look at ourselves and assume that this is the case. We figure, “Hey, yeah, I’ve accepted Jesus, I’m nice, I go to church. I do pretty well with the 10 commandments. What more could I possibly need to do? I just need to keep doin’ what I’m doin’.” But even with all that, we lack one thing.

Chambers reminds us:
Our Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple; He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself – a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship. Luke 14:26 has nothing to do with salvation or sanctification, but with unconditional identification with Jesus Christ. Very few of us know the absolute “go” of abandonment to Jesus.
Without unconditional identification with Jesus and absolute abandonment to Him we are missing what we are truly called to as Christians. WE ARE MISSING IT!!! And sadly, I think many of us are. We can look nice and shiny, we can go to church and say the right things to the right people and sound Holy when we pray, we can even be saved, but if we’ve not given ourselves over to absolute abandonment to Jesus, we are missing a huge part of why we bother with the thing at all! It’s a little like going to the movies, but not getting popcorn. You still see the movie, but you miss the best part of the experience.

Chambers continues:
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” The look of Jesus will mean a heart broken forever from allegiance to any other person or thing. Has Jesus ever looked at you? The look of Jesus transforms and transfixes. Where you are “soft” with God is where the Lord has looked at you. If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze.
I think it is significant that after the rich man assures Jesus that he has dutifully obeyed the Ten Commandments throughout his life, Jesus looks at him in love. Significant not because Jesus was proud of the man for his successful obedience, but rather because Jesus, as the Son of God, undoubtedly could see before him every instance where the young man had failed at the obedience he had so earnestly attested to. And yet, He loved him. He didn’t chastise him in front of everyone. He didn’t recite all the instances where the young man had failed. He loved him, and then called him to something higher. When we begin to feel a little full of ourselves because we think we are doing an awfully good job of following the rules, remember that Christ sees all of our lapses and our failures – big and small – and he looks at us in love in spite of them. When we feel that look of love from Christ, are we transformed? How can we not be?

For most of us the issue of our transformation rests solely on our willingness to give up that which stands in the way of unconditional identification with Christ. The rich man left Jesus devastated because his love of his possessions was so strong, he couldn’t give them up. The issue wasn’t that he was rich, but that he was dependant on his money, his possessions and perhaps even his position rather than Christ.

We all have something that we struggle to lay down for Christ. It can be money, things, an attitude, a mindset, a hobby, an addiction – whatever we depend upon when we should be depending on the Savior, that is what we are called to give up for Him. It is only when we’ve freed ourselves of those fetters that we can truly answer Christ’s call to “Come, follow me.”