Come, follow Jesus!
(the real Jesus)
ONLINE EDITION
The Gospel
in simple terms
for nonbelievers
and new believers
view/save as PDF
also available as a
paperback book
Home
Jesus said, "Come, follow me."
How can you follow Jesus?
"But I'm a sinful person, not fit to be a follower of Jesus!"
Your new life as a follower of Jesus
Find fellowship with other followers of Jesus
Your prayer life
Know your Bible
Your service to God
"Jezebel" in the churches
"If we deliberately keep on sinning . . ."
Why believe the Bible?
Who is Jesus?
What did Jesus teach?
What is life really all about
Angels and demons
Gray areas, mysteries and religious authorities
What Jesus revealed about life after death
'But my relatives won't like it if I follow Jesus!'
Watching for Christ's return
How I came to follow Jesus: the testimony of David A. Reed
Why this book?
Dedication, copyright, ISBN & Scripture references
Contact
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online edition of the book by David A. Reed The Gospel in simple terms for nonbelievers and new believers. How to become a follower of Jesus Christ, and live as Jesus commanded Home | Jesus said, "Come, follow me." | How can you follow Jesus? | "But I'm a sinful person, not fit to be a follower of Jesus!" | Your new life as a follower of Jesus | Find fellowship with other followers of Jesus | Your prayer life | Know your Bible | Your service to God | "Jezebel" in the churches | "If we deliberately keep on sinning . . ." | Why believe the Bible? | Who is Jesus? | What did Jesus teach? | What is life really all about | Angels and demons | Gray areas, mysteries and religious authorities | What Jesus revealed about life after death | 'But my relatives won't like it if I follow Jesus!' | Watching for Christ's return | How I came to follow Jesus: the testimony of David A. Reed | Why this book? | Dedication, copyright, ISBN & Scripture references < PREVIOUS — NEXT > Jesus himself spelled out what people in the future would need to do to follow him. Appearing alive to his first followers after rising from the dead, Jesus said to them: “‘All power in heaven and on earth is given to me. So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything that I have taught you, and I will be with you always, even until the end of this age.’” —Matthew 28:18-20 NCV These instructions make it clear that we are really following Jesus when we are baptized in the manner Jesus outlined, and when we then go on to learn and to obey everything that Jesus taught. What did Jesus teach? It would be impossible to present here a better picture of what he taught than the understanding you will gain by reading the four Gospels for yourself. So, I will not be offended at all if you now put this book aside for a while and pick up the Bible instead to read what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote about Jesus’ life, ministry and teachings. In fact, I would encourage you to do that. As you read the Gospels, you will notice that Jesus started out his ministry with a call to “Repent!” This is not a familiar word for most people today, but the dictionary tells us that “repent” means to feel sorry for past conduct, to regret or be conscience-stricken about past actions and attitudes—with such sorrow as to want to change one's life for the better. This call for people to change their hearts and lives was such an important theme of Jesus’ preaching that he began his work on earth with this call for people to “Repent!” and ended his work on earth with the same message. Matthew says this about how Jesus began his ministry: “Jesus began to preach, and to say, ‘Repent!’” —Matthew 4:17 And Luke shows that Jesus concluded his ministry on earth with the same message: “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his
name to all the nations.” —Luke
24:47 Moreover, decades later when the Gospel message had already spread throughout the Mediterranean area, resulting in the formation of many Christian churches, the risen Christ appeared to the then aged Apostle John in a vision in which Jesus commanded John to send messages to seven major Christian churches, and the messages to most of those churches included a call for their members to “Repent!”—even though they were already Christians: To the church in the city of “. . . Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your . . .” —Revelation 2:5 NIV To the church in the city of “. . .
Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon
come to you and will fight . . .” —Revelation
To the church in the city of “. . . Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. . . .” —Revelation 3:3 To the church in city of “. . .
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.
So, be earnest, and repent. . .
.” —Revelation (I purposely quoted just a few words from the messages to these churches—enough to show that Jesus was calling their members to repent—but you would benefit from reading these messages in their completeness in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.) So, Jesus calls on us to “Repent!”—change our hearts and lives—when we first turn to him to as our Savior and Lord. And he repeatedly calls Christians to “Repent!” even later during our walk with him as his followers. When we regularly read the Bible and prayerfully think about the things it says and how those words apply to our lives, God’s Holy Spirit shows us the changes we need to make to grow up as God’s adopted children and to become more like Jesus. When we first turn to Christ, asking him to forgive our sins and expressing our desire to follow him, we typically need to repent of major sins—to change our hearts and lives in major ways. For example, in the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in ancient “Or don’t you know that the unrighteous
will not inherit the “Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.” —1 Corinthians 6:9-11 If you open your Bible and read the context of this passage, you will see that Paul was reminding those in the Corinthian church that they had left these practices behind when they became followers of Jesus. But the thrust of Paul’s message was that some in the church were continuing to practice these sins, or were falling back into such practices—and that this was totally unacceptable. First Paul pointed out that some in the church “do wrong and cheat, and you do this to other believers” (1 Cor. 6:8 NCV), then he wrote the passage above, and then he went on to say, “Surely you know that your bodies are parts of Christ himself. So I must never take the parts of Christ and join them to a prostitute!” (1 Cor. How could that happen in the Christian church in ancient Church leaders today can similarly be affected by the corrupt and sinful world that surrounds us, and can be influenced to water-down the call to repent, or even to omit it entirely from their preaching. In fact, the invitation to follow Jesus is often presented today as if it were another one of the various competing self-help or self-improvement programs offered on television, in magazines and on the internet: ‘Follow Jesus, and you will be happy!’ or ‘Solve all your problems by following Jesus!’ or something to that effect. Beautiful smiling people sit in front of the TV camera and tell how Jesus brought them happiness. There is some truth to that: Jesus is the only way to real, lasting happiness. But that was not the main focus of Jesus’ message, and not the main focus of the New Testament. As we just read above, the focus was on salvation from sins, repenting of those sins, and changing hearts and minds by learning to obey and follow Jesus. Moreover, Jesus told his early followers they would be hated and persecuted, and would suffer just as he suffered: “‘If the
world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love
you as its own. As it is, you do not
belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: “No servant
is greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you
also. ’” —John
15:18-20 NIV “‘. . . you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers.’” —Matthew 24:9 NLT Jesus’ first followers experienced this persecution and hatred in ancient So, the visible benefits of following Jesus may not always outweigh the visible disadvantages—in this life, before we go to our heavenly reward. The Apostle Paul wrote that he himself had been “in prison . . . flogged . . . beaten with rods . . . stoned” and had faced many other dangers as a result of his ministry (1 Cor. “If only
for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” —1 Corinthians But our hope in Christ goes beyond this life. As Jesus said, “‘Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’” —Matthew 5:11-12 NIV Our persecution for following Jesus may not be violent, but we may face opposition, ridicule or contempt from friends or relatives. If our repentance from sin involves quitting certain practices or activities that we used to share with friends, those friends may react with hostility toward us and toward the Gospel message. As the Apostle Peter wrote, “Strengthen yourselves so that you will live here on earth doing what God wants, and not the evil things people want. In the past you wasted too much time doing what nonbelievers enjoy. You were guilty of sexual sins, evil desires, drunkenness, wild and drunken parties, and hateful idol worship. Nonbelievers think it is strange that you do not do the many wild and wasteful things they do, so they insult you.” —1 Peter 4:2-4 NCV We may encounter such verbal persecution from friends and associates, from workmates, or even from close relatives. And that may prove to be a test for us. Jesus said, “‘He who
loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of
Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Jesus’ first followers were all Jews, and they preached the message about Jesus at first to mainly Jewish audiences. For centuries Jews had heard the Old Testament read aloud each week in their synagogues, so they already knew that the true God created the world and everything in it, and they were already familiar with the Bible’s history of mankind’s rebellion against God. Jews already knew how God wanted people to live, because their Scriptures contained laws from God declaring what was bad and what was good. And Jews were already familiar with the passages in their Scriptures promising a coming Messiah or Christ—a savior and king appointed by God. So, it was only necessary to explain to them that Jesus was the one foretold, to provide evidence to convince them of that fact, and then to acquaint them with Jesus’ life and teachings. So, to such a Jewish audience in “Peter
said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit. For the promise is to you, and
to your children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God
will call to himself.’ With many other
words he testified, and exhorted them, saying, ‘Save
yourselves from this crooked generation!’” —Acts
Notice that Peter’s call was for his listeners to “repent” or turn their lives around and follow Jesus, and that thus they would receive “forgiveness of sins”—which Jews understood because they already knew God’s requirements for living right, and each one knew his or her own failure to live up to those requirements. Back in the first century when the Apostles Peter and Paul began preaching, the Jews were the only people on earth who were in the habit of reading the Old Testament—the part of the Bible that had already been written and circulated during the centuries before Jesus was born. Most people on earth had no knowledge of the true God or his inspired Bible. The non-Jewish audiences Jesus’ disciples began preaching to in Africa, Asia and Europe were descended from ancestors who had long ago abandoned and forgotten the Creator, and who had now been worshiping idols for as long as they could remember—statues of wood, stone or metal representing many different imaginary gods and goddesses. So, it was necessary to take a different approach when sharing with them the Good News about Jesus. But it was still necessary to call them to “repent.” For example, the Apostle Paul took this approach when speaking to an audience of educated and scholarly men in “‘You men of “‘The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth . . . made from one blood every nation of men . . . “‘. . . we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold,
or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. The times of ignorance therefore God
overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which
he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.’” —Acts
Notice that Peter speaking to a Jewish audience and Paul speaking to non-Jews both told their listeners to “repent” in order to follow Jesus, or as the New Century Version of the Bible interprets that word, “change your hearts and lives.” What sort of changes must you make when you repent and choose to follow Jesus? This book will point out some passages from Scripture that specify those changes, but in order to be sure you are obeying all the things Jesus commanded, you really need to prayerfully read the Bible for yourself. As you read, ask God for understanding, for insight, for faith to believe, and for strength to walk in his ways. |