In this passage we see Jesus calling His first disciples: Peter, Andrew, James and John. All four were in the midst of working, Peter and Andrew throwing their nets, James and John repairing theirs. But as Jesus walks along the shore He calls both pairs of brothers. They immediately leave their work and families behind them and head off to follow Jesus. Whether they believed this was a temporary or permanent venture is of no consequence. He called and they followed. He called and they dropped what they were doing and went after Him. In this passage I think we notice two aspects of what it means to be a disciple. First, we notice those who follow Jesus undergo the transformation of a disciple.
I. The Transformation of a Disciple
A. The call to follow Jesus
I want to divide this idea of the transformation of a disciple into two parts. The first is the call to follow Jesus. Your transformation as a disciple of Jesus Christ begins when you answer the call to follow Jesus. It is distinct from your call to salvation. Your transformation as a disciple does not begin at conversion, that is, at your salvation. It begins when you start to understand what it means that Jesus is Lord and when one who has believed in Jesus Christ picks up His mantle and recognizes, “I am a servant of Jesus Christ.”
Matthew doesn’t give us the picture of Simon, Andrew, James and John first meeting Jesus. There is every indication in the other gospels that they had already come to a place of faith in Him as the Messiah. The other gospels show us events relating to these disciples before this passage in Matthew. Please understand that though the Lord calls every believer to be a devoted follower of Himself, the terms “disciple” and “believer” are not synonymous. But mark it well that since the Lord Jesus calls every one who has called upon Him to follow Him, every believer who is not seeking to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is disobedient.
This call to follow the Lord Jesus is not a call from Him for us to sum up our abilities or gifts and decide where we might want to serve Him. It is not a call for us to consider whether we are worthy to serve Him. It is not even a call to compare ourselves to others who also have been called to follow Him. This is a call to simply follow. It is a call, not to look at others, but to look to the one you are following. I can remember a simple prayer that I prayed when I first became a disciple of the Lord Jesus. I said something like, “Lord, let me hold onto your garment that I might not lose my way in following you.” I think it is a simple enough prayer, but one that is profound enough for the most seasoned disciple to pray. Jesus’s call to follow is a call to allow Him to transform you by following. It is a call to let Him direct you in this calling.
There are some who say this passage does not apply any longer because it refers to the time when Jesus was here on earth. He was the king, and He was calling people as His servants. They say that Jesus no longer calls us to forsake everything. I say, certainly He is not physically here on the earth any longer. Certainly He doesn’t call everyone to leave everything behind. But He is here in the heart of everyone who has called upon Him as Savior. And He may call some to leave everything behind, and He has done so, even to the point of calling some to give up their very lives. Yet in another sense He calls us all to give up our lives to Him, so that we allow Him to live through us. He does call each one of us to place everything into His hands to use as He sees fit, since He is our owner by virtue of the fact that He shed His blood to ransom our lives. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “You are not your own[.] For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
So this call from Jesus to follow Him may mean different things in the lives of each one of us, but it all means the same thing at its core. Follow Him. Go after Him. Pursue Him.
Too often many look at what they cannot do, how they are not prepared, or how they are not worthy, and focus on the excuses to prevent them from doing what the Lord Jesus has called them to do rather than doing it in the strength that He supplies. This is what our transformation is about. This is where God calls us.
The transformation begins when you obey the call to follow. When you say, “Follow, follow, I will follow Jesus.” Jesus said, “Follow Me and I will make you…” Here is the key, this is why the excuses must not hinder us because Jesus’s promise is, “Follow Me and I will make you…”
Do you think these untrained fishermen had the ability to carry out a worldwide gospel ministry? Do you think these men had the mental capability to work this out? They simply believed His promise. They simply obeyed His voice. They left the transformation part up to Him. And Jesus did it. By His Holy Spirit He did it. In Acts 4, Peter and John are standing before the very men who crucified the Lord Jesus. Instead of being frightened, Peter boldly answers them with the gospel that there is no name under heaven except Jesus whereby we must be saved. And Luke notes that the Sanhedrin, observing the confidence of Peter and John, recognized that they had been with Jesus. The transformation means that it is God who has to do a work in and through an individual. The promise is “Follow Me and I WILL MAKE YOU.” Jesus said in Matthew 10:25, “It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher.” Jesus’s promise is that He will do the work through us, but we must first commit to follow after Him.
There is a transformation in our hearts that must take place as we seek to follow Jesus Christ. This is where you and I must follow Him if He is going to transform us into those who will carry out His work for Him. Paul describes this follow/transform pattern in Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
We are to present ourselves, set apart for Him as a living and holy sacrifice. This is the act of following Jesus. Paul starts this verse with the word “therefore.” He is alluding to what had come previously. This command to present ourselves as a sacrifice comes out of the context of Romans 9-11. In that section, Paul reminds his readers that Israel had been given the privilege to bring the gospel to the world, but they refused to do it and so God removed that privilege from them and gave it to the Gentiles. So Paul says that we should not allow the same thing to happen to us that happened to Israel. God hardened their hearts so they missed the opportunity to be His ambassadors. So present yourself to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him (through the Lord Jesus Christ).
And when you have done that, when you answer the call to follow Jesus and make this decision to pursue Him, now comes the time for transformation. Now comes the time for Jesus to make of you what He wants you to be. We see the same progression in Romans 12. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” We are to give our bodies over to the Lord for His service, and in doing so we are to give our minds over to be renewed by Him.
Paul reminds us here that the renewing of our mind must be taking place or we will be “being conformed” to this world. Our mind will continue to be conformed to this world if we are not renewing our minds. And if we are not renewing our minds, we may even be deceived into thinking that our minds are not conformed to this world because we are still thinking about the work of God. But we are trying to carry it out in our flesh rather than through the power of God.
This conforming to the world can be a slow and deceptive process. It can be as unnoticeable as a ship adrift at anchor, as imperceptible as the changing tide. As you are not renewing your mind, then you are opening yourself to being conformed. The reason is that the world system does not rest. It is set on course by the devil and it does not stop. Before you know it you are much farther along then you have thought you might go.
This is why we need to be so very dependent upon the Holy Spirit and the Holy Word of God.
Then how are you going to be transformed in your mind in opposition to the conforming influence of the world? By renewing it. The Word of God and the Holy Spirit must be daily washing our minds.
1) Let the Word take first place in your day. Don’t go through your day without having some portion of the Word to guide you and direct you. Don’t rush through it, but take your time to listen to what God has to say to you.
2) When you get ready to read the Scripture, ask God to allow His Spirit to apply the Word to your heart and mind that day. “Give us this day our daily bread.”
3) As you encounter temptation, ask the Lord to continually renew your mind through His Word.
Remember that the purpose of the renewing of your mind to be transformed is to prove the will of God in your life. What is the will of God according to this passage in Romans 12? That the transformation of your life results in the proclamation of the gospel so that we don’t become hardened against God’s will for us as the Israelites did. In Romans 10:21, the Lord says of Israel, “All the day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
We don’t want the Lord to say this about us. Therefore it is necessary for us to continue to be renewed in our minds as to God’s purpose for us, otherwise we will be conformed to the world.
Sometimes you’re hindered from following Jesus because you want to know why your neighbor isn’t doing what you’ve been called to do. Sometimes you think the path to which you’ve been called is too grievous to be borne and so you look around and wonder why so-and-so isn’t called to such a difficult ministry. Peter did this. In John 21, Jesus let him know that he would one day be crucified for the sake of the gospel, and so Peter turned to John who happened to be following and asked, “Lord what about him?” The Lord Jesus replies, “What is that to you? You follow Me!”
The Lord brought an interesting thought to my mind as I was reading through Numbers. Those whom the Lord called to serve Him didn’t get to choose what they wanted to do. Aaron and his sons served as priests. The Levites served in their capacity to help the priests according to the family line in which they were born. The Kohathites didn’t do the work that was given to the Gershonites or vice versa. King David was called to be king. He didn’t tell the Lord, “I don’t feel like being king; I really enjoy being a shepherd instead.” Samuel didn’t say, “Lord, I don’t want to be a prophet, that’s a big responsibility. But he said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”
It is the same way today in His church. God has given you various gifts to serve Him as He chooses. First Corinthians 12:11 says, “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.” How God gifts you to serve in the church is not up to you. It is up to the Holy Spirit. God has called you to serve Him through the various gifts He has given you. You can’t say, “Lord, that’s too much responsibility. I don’t want to do that.” If you are refusing to serve Him in the church with your spiritual gifts, then you are being disobedient to Him and you are crippling the body of Christ.
And if you don’t know what gifts you have then you are being negligent. After all, why does the Spirit give them? First Corinthians 12:7 says, “To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” That is for the benefit of the church, so that the church can function properly. How can a body function properly if the members of the body do not work correctly? How can the church function properly if people whom God has gifted don’t want to serve? How can the body of Christ at Plainville function properly if people don’t want to sacrifice their time for the One who sacrificed His life for them? We, as a church, must be Word- and Spirit-driven. We must surrender ourselves to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit of God if we are going to be effective in reaching people with the gospel of God.
Perhaps you are thinking, “I’m not ready to serve.” “I don’t have any ability to serve.” Surrendering to follow Jesus is the beginning. The first part of the call to follow Jesus is that you must be willing to follow. You must say, “I will go with You.” Unless you do this, unless you surrender to Him as Lord, you cannot enter into that transformation in which Jesus says, “You follow Me and I will make you…”
It is only after we surrender to follow Him that He makes it evident. It is like when the Israelites were commanded by the Lord to cross the Jordan River at flood stage. Until you say, “I will follow,” you won’t see Him work. And perhaps the very next thing to pray is, “Lord, show me how to follow.”