“If any man come to Me, and
hate not . . . he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26, also 27, 33
If the closest relationships of life clash with the
claims of Jesus Christ, He says it must be instant obedience to Himself.
Discipleship means personal, passionate devotion to a Person, Our Lord Jesus
Christ. There is a difference between devotion to a Person and devotion to
principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed
personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of
the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to
Jesus Christ. No man on earth has this passionate love to the Lord Jesus unless
the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him. We may admire Him, we may respect Him
and reverence Him, but we cannot love Him. The only Lover of the Lord Jesus is
the Holy Ghost, and He sheds abroad the very love of God in our hearts.
Whenever the Holy Ghost sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your
heart, your nerves, your whole personality, and simply make you blaze and glow
with devotion to Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is stamped by 'moral spontaneous
originality', consequently the disciple is open to the same charge that Jesus
Christ was, viz., that of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent
to God, and the Christian must be consistent to the life of the Son of God in
him, not consistent to hard and fast creeds. Men pour them selves into creeds,
and God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become
devoted to Jesus Christ.