The cost of following Christ

My friend J. is attractive, intelligent, personable, kind, a homeowner, gainfully employed as a physician’s assistant—and unmarried. The reason she is unmarried is because she chose not to wed the man she loved years ago because he was not a Christian. She has subsequently fended off liaisons with other pursuers who were not believers in Christ. Ask J. how it has felt to obey God’s command to not be unequally yoked and she will tell you that it feels like dying.

Dying to one’s desires for the sake of Christ is what we are called to do, and yet who does that? How radical is that? Which is more common to find: people who cut off their right arm, as it were (Matthew 5:29), rather than sin against the God they love, or people who sin then confess, sin then confess, sin then confess? Is it possible that many who profess the name of Christ have never even experienced what it is to die that kind of death? Is the true cost of discipleship foreign to many?

The Apostle Paul said:

“I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day!” (1 Corinthians 15:31, ESV)

Now we know that Paul was imprisoned sometimes, beaten often, stoned, shipwrecked, adrift at sea, sleepless, without food, and in cold and exposure (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). But these events, as formidable as they were, do not account for his claim to “die every day.” Paul died every day—even on uneventful days—because every day the flesh or the devil tempted him, and every day he had to say no. Where there is no saying no, there is no dying. We are talking about the little temptations to say a deliciously retaliatory word, or to lose our temper.

Paul was a man of like nature to ourselves. Not only that, he also told us to be imitators of him, indicating that we are no less called or able to die.

J. is past childbearing years now and has yet to fall in love and marry a Christian man. She is good with children and would like to have had them. But her life is full and fruitful, and she is thankful to God for the things He has taught her on her journey of obedience. “No amount of money can buy that,” she said.