MUSINGS

“FOLLOW THOU ME” As the last book of the Bible to be written. John’s gospel has a special voice to us. It contains the last recorded words of Jesus to His own before He ascended. What were those words? “Follow thou me” (John 21: 22). Coming from the lips of Jesus, this closing appeal should be treasured by every lover of His. It is an all-sufficient guide through the dangers and temptations of this dark world, and through the complications of a Christendom which has so largely turned from simple obedience to the Lord. If in every choice and decision we were to heed His invitation simply to follow Him, our path would be His path, and our feet would not stray into danger, evil, and worldliness.

Following Him would never take me into the world; it would keep me from it, my life being linked with Him where He is. The disciples had followed the Lord in His pathway here, but when He said, “Follow thou me” it meant that they were to follow a Man whose life was no longer here. The Ethiopian eunuch grasped this immediately in Acts 8 when Philip quoted from Isaiah 53, “His life is taken from the earth”. He saw the point and urgently wanted to be baptised, accepting death here so that his life might be associated with Christ where He is.

We do not wonder that “he went on his way rejoicing”. What a privilege that we should have part in His life, finding our joy in what pleases Him and in company with Him.

We constantly have to face the choice between our natural life and tastes and His life and His interests. Is it to be this world, or His world for me? If I am tempted by the world in its many aspects—its social life, its habits, its fashions—let me ask myself, Would He lead me there? Can I go there, and be in that kind of environment and company, without going right against His own appeal, “Follow thou me”?

He has an infinitely better, purer, sphere of life and enjoyment for me than that! It is what He speaks of in John 13: 8 as “part with me”. And the Lord unfolds what that means in the following four wonderful chapters which show the intimate relationships into which we are brought with the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

FCM