Cost of Discipleship: What is Jesus worth to you?

 

Matthew 26:14-25: Judas Iscariot sells Jesus for 30 pieces of silver

What is Jesus worth to me (you)? David Platt has an interesting and poignant take on the quality of our faith in The Radical Question: What is Jesus Worth To You. Though this book was actually very short (20-30 minute read at most), the message in it challenged me in many ways. Platt starts off describing the difficulties and sacrifices Christians in religiously suppressed nations, mainly in parts of Asia, face for choosing to live in Christ and immediately draws a comparison to the Western world. While in America people may still be spiritually fed and seeking the righteous God, we may have forgotten to cost of our faith. In reality, to live as a Christian almost surely means to live in persecution in a lot of places, sometimes leading to imprisonment and death. This puts a lot of things in perspectives as we ponder our comfortable lives in the U.S., where we seldom pay a lot more attention on frivolous things such as sound effects, beautiful buildings, and flashy praise bands in our congregations. Most importantly, we seem to have forgotten what it really means to lay down our future before Christ and allow him to not only guide us, even if it means not living a comfortable life tailored to fit the American Dream. In fact, we are much more similar to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Platt goes on to argue that while here in America a lot of us would rather serve a God who conform to our own personal goals and standards of living. Such a God does not exist. In fact, when things do not go as planned to fit the lifestyle that we feel entitled to, we grow bitter and resentful of God.

"And this is where we need to pause. We need to pause because we are redefining Christianity according to our preferences. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and begin twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind material security and would never call us to give away everything we have... We are molding Jesus into our image and making him look like us... we are worshiping ourselves" (Platt 21,22).

But Jesus is worth more than that. In fact, he is worthy of our complete devotion and much more than that. Devotion that has not come cheap at the cost of the life of Jesus Christ. Before the throne, we must surrender who we are and allow his plan to run its course in our lives. We are called to glorify God first and foremost, not live a wealthy life. Do not be lured into thinking otherwise. We were created for much more than that. Jesus call us to a much higher plane and gives us a much greater dream. We need to be conquered by a superior ambition and surrender every aspect of our lives to knowing Jesus and making his worth known in all over the world.

This is all not to say that we are called to live in poverty and throw away all our material possessions. At least not usually. God does allow us to keep these things and to live a comfortable life. Yet, we must never NEVER forget that there must be more to life, for Jesus is worthy. We were created for such much more.

"We can decide that He has created us for a much greater purpose. We can decide to die to ourselves and our dreams and our plans, and we can decide to let our hearts be conquered by a superior ambition. Ultimately, we can decide to sacrifice our lives, our gifts, our skills, our time, our families, and our resources to make the great worth of Christ known amid urgent spiritual and physical needs in all over the world" (Platt 40). 

 Is Jesus worth all our desire?