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The road Jesus described and the experience most modern believers expect are two very different things |
There is a version of Christianity being sold in the modern church that Jesus never preached, the apostles never modelled and the martyrs of church history never experienced. It is Christianity without cost. Faith without friction. A relationship with God that fits neatly into the schedule of a comfortable life and asks nothing of you that you were not already planning to give.
It
promises you the presence of God without the pursuit of God. The blessings of
the kingdom without the demands of the kingdom. The benefits of following Jesus
without the cross He said every follower must carry. And it is producing,
across the modern church, a generation of believers whose faith is wide,
shallow and desperately fragile.
The
most dangerous thing about comfortable Christianity is not that it is obviously
false. It is that it contains just enough truth to be convincing. God does
bless. God does comfort. God does provide. God does love you deeply and
unconditionally. All of that is real. The danger is in what gets left out. In
what is quietly removed from the gospel to make it more palatable, more
attractive, more suited to a culture that has made comfort its highest value.
What
gets left out is the cross. And a Christianity without the cross is not
Christianity. It is a self-help programme with religious branding.
What Jesus Actually Said About Following Him
Before
we diagnose the modern problem, we need to hear what Jesus actually said. Not
the edited version. Not the version that fits on a motivational poster. The
full statement, in context, with nothing softened.
"And
he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save
it." — Luke 9:23-24 (KJV)
Three
commands. Three non-negotiables. Three things that every person who wants to
follow Jesus must do.
First:
deny himself. Not improve himself. Not express himself. Not discover himself.
Deny himself. The Greek word is aparneomai, which means to utterly deny, to
disown, to refuse to acknowledge any longer. Jesus is calling for a fundamental
reorientation of the self away from its own desires, preferences and agenda and
toward something and Someone else entirely.
Second:
take up his cross. The cross in Jesus's day was not a piece of jewellery. It
was not a decorative symbol. It was an instrument of public, shameful, painful
execution. When Jesus told His followers to take up their cross, every person
listening knew exactly what a cross meant. It meant suffering. It meant
rejection. It meant being willing to be publicly identified with something that
the comfortable and the respectable would rather not be associated with.
Third:
follow me. Not follow the crowd. Not follow the cultural consensus on what
Christianity should look like. Follow Jesus. Wherever He goes. At whatever cost
that following demands.
And
then He adds the paradox that dismantles every version of comfortable
Christianity in a single sentence: whosoever will save his life shall lose it,
but whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it. The person who
makes comfort, safety and self-preservation their primary concern in the
Christian life will ultimately lose the very thing they were trying to protect.
The person who is willing to lose everything in the pursuit of genuine
discipleship will find that they have saved the only thing that ultimately
matters.
Jesus did not promise His followers a comfortable life.
He promised them a cross. The modern church has spent enormous energy trying to
make the cross optional. Jesus said it was non-negotiable.
The Fair-Weather Believer: Serving God Only When It Is Convenient
There
is a type of believer that the modern church has produced in abundance and that
the New Testament consistently warns against. They are committed, enthusiastic
and vocal about their faith when life is going well. When the job is good, the
family is stable, the finances are healthy and the circumstances are
favourable, their love for God is genuine and their witness is visible.
But
let the circumstances change. Let the job disappear, the relationship break,
the diagnosis arrive, the persecution begin, the unanswered prayer stretch into
months and then years. And suddenly this believer is a different person
entirely. The enthusiasm evaporates. The commitment becomes conditional. The
God who was being praised loudly in the sunshine is being questioned bitterly
in the storm.
This
is the fair-weather believer. Not a hypocrite in the sense of consciously
performing a false faith. But a believer whose faith was never deep enough to
survive contact with real difficulty. A believer who received the gospel as
good news about a better life rather than as the call to a different kind of
life. A believer who signed up for the blessings and was never told about, or
never accepted, the cross.
There
is a song that captures exactly what genuine faith looks like in contrast to
this: the God of the mountain is still God in the valley. When the sun is
shining and everything is working, praising God is easy. When the valley is
dark and the way is not clear and the prayers seem to be going nowhere, the God
of the mountain is still God. He has not changed. His character has not
shifted. His love has not withdrawn. His purposes have not been disrupted. The
valley is not evidence of His absence. It is often the place where His presence
becomes most real.
But
the fair-weather believer has never settled this question in the sunshine. They
have never made the decision that their commitment to God is unconditional,
that their love for Him does not depend on His performance in their life, that
they will serve Him whether or not the circumstances cooperate. And so when the
valley comes, and it always comes, they have no anchor to hold them.
The God of the mountain is still God in the valley. But
the fair-weather believer has never settled that truth before the storm
arrives. And decisions made in the middle of a storm are the most dangerous
decisions a believer can make.
Case Study One: The Disciples in the Storm
Mark
4:35-41 gives us one of the most revealing portraits of fair-weather faith in
the entire gospel record. And it involves the disciples themselves, the men who
had left everything to follow Jesus, who had witnessed miracles and heard
teachings that had never been given to any other generation.
"And
there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it
was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow:
and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And
the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye
so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"
— Mark 4:37-40 (KJV)
Consider
the full weight of this scene. These men had just spent an extended period in
the sunshine of ministry. They had watched Jesus heal the sick, cast out
demons, preach with authority that left the crowds breathless. They had been on
the inside of the most extraordinary spiritual movement in human history. They
had heard the Sermon on the Mount. They had seen the feeding of thousands. They
had been chosen and commissioned and sent.
And
then the storm came. And the men who had praised God over miracles panicked
over a storm. The men who had witnessed supernatural power in the sunshine were
consumed by natural fear in the dark. The question they asked Jesus is one of
the most heartbreaking in the entire New Testament: Master, carest thou not
that we perish?
Do
you not care? This is what comfortable Christianity produces when it hits
difficulty. Not trust. Not the settled confidence that the God who was present
in the sunshine is still present in the storm. But accusation. An anxious,
desperate, fear-driven accusation that God has somehow abandoned the situation.
Jesus's
response is instructive on two levels. First He deals with the storm: Peace, be
still. He commands the chaos and the chaos obeys. But then He deals with the
real problem, not the external storm but the internal condition of the
disciples: Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?
He
does not rebuke them for being afraid of the storm. He rebukes them for the
absence of faith in the storm. Fear is a natural human response to danger. But
faith is the supernatural counterweight to fear that every genuine disciple is
supposed to carry with them into the dangerous places. They had been with Jesus
long enough to know who He was. They had seen enough to trust Him in the dark.
The storm simply revealed that they had not yet made the transition from
sunshine faith to valley faith.
The
storm did not create their problem. It revealed it. And that is precisely what
difficulty does to comfortable Christianity. It does not cause the problem. It
exposes what was already there.
Case Study Two: Job and the God of the Valley
If
the disciples in the storm represent the fair-weather believer caught off guard
by difficulty, Job represents the opposite. The absolute polar opposite. A man
who had every conceivable reason to abandon his faith and who refused to do so
with a stubbornness that is one of the most theologically significant postures
in the entire Old Testament.
Job
1:1-3 establishes his context. He was blameless and upright. He feared God and
shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. He owned seven thousand
sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys
and a very large household of servants. He was the greatest man among all the
people of the East. By any measurable standard, Job was a man whom God had
blessed enormously and who had responded to those blessings with genuine
devotion.
And
then, in the space of a single day, he lost everything. The oxen and donkeys
were stolen. The sheep and servants were killed by fire. The camels were
raided. And then a wind struck the house where his children were feasting and
all ten of them died. Job received four consecutive messages of devastation in
a single afternoon.
Job's
immediate response is one of the most powerful statements of genuine faith in
all of Scripture:
"And
said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither:
the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the
LORD." — Job 1:21 (KJV)
The
LORD gave and the LORD hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD. Not:
where has God gone? Not: why has God abandoned me? Not: I served God faithfully
and look what it got me. Blessed be the name of the LORD. In the single worst
day of his life, Job blessed the name of God.
But
it does not end there. Satan appears before God a second time and God again
points to Job. Satan argues that Job has maintained his integrity because he
still has his health. Take that away and he will curse you to your face. God
permits it. Job is struck with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the
crown of his head. He sits in ashes, scraping himself with broken pottery.
His
wife, watching her husband suffer, says to him: Dost thou still retain thine
integrity? Curse God, and die (Job 2:9). This is the voice of comfortable Christianity
speaking. Why serve a God who allows this? What is the point of faith if this
is what faith produces? Curse God and be done with it.
And
then come his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who spend chapter
after chapter telling Job that his suffering is his own fault. That he must
have sinned. That God does not allow the righteous to suffer this way. That if
he would just repent of whatever he had done, the comfort would return. This is
the prosperity gospel in its most ancient form. The assumption that suffering
is always the consequence of sin and that faithfulness always produces visible
blessing. It is comfortable Christianity trying to make theological sense of an
uncomfortable reality by blaming the sufferer.
And
Job, in the midst of all of this, says something that stops every
comfort-seeking, fair-weather believer in their tracks:
"Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before
him." — Job 13:15 (KJV)
Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him. This is not the language of a man whose
faith depends on his circumstances. This is the language of a man who has
settled the question before the storm arrived. Whose trust in God is not
contingent on God's performance in his life. Whose love for God does not
require God to make things comfortable before he will give it.
Job
did not understand why he was suffering. He never received a theological
explanation. God never told him about the conversation in the heavenly court.
What Job had was not an answer. What Job had was a relationship with God that
was real enough, deep enough and genuinely unconditional enough to survive the
worst that life and the enemy could throw at it.
That
is not comfortable Christianity. That is the kind of faith Jesus was calling
for in Luke 9:23. That is what it looks like to deny yourself, take up your
cross daily and follow Him even when following Him costs you everything.
What Comfortable Christianity Actually Produces
Let
us be honest about the fruit of a comfortable, cost-free, cross-less
Christianity. Because Jesus said you know a tree by its fruit. And the fruit of
comfortable Christianity is visible, measurable and deeply troubling.
It
Produces Faith That Cannot Survive Difficulty
Faith
that has never been tested is not necessarily genuine faith. It may simply be
religious enthusiasm that has not yet been exposed to the conditions that would
reveal its actual depth. Comfortable Christianity produces believers whose
faith looks vibrant in the sunshine and collapses in the storm. Not because
they are bad people but because they were given a version of the gospel that
never prepared them for what genuine discipleship actually involves.
It
Produces Believers Who Cannot Be Trusted With Suffering
One
of the most important things a mature believer learns is how to suffer well.
How to maintain joy, peace, faith and genuine worship in the midst of
circumstances that by every natural measure should produce despair. This is one
of the most powerful witnesses a Christian can give to the watching world. But
comfortable Christianity does not produce this. It produces believers who are
indistinguishable from unbelievers when difficulty arrives because they were
never taught to expect difficulty or equipped to navigate it with faith.
It
Produces a Conditional Love for God
Perhaps
the most spiritually dangerous fruit of comfortable Christianity is that it
produces a love for God that is fundamentally conditional. I will love you,
serve you and follow you as long as you are blessing me, healing me, prospering
me and keeping my life reasonably comfortable. The moment that changes, my
commitment is negotiable. This is not love. Not even by the standards of human
relationships. And it is certainly not the love that Jesus described in John
14:15: if ye love me, keep my commandments. Not: if ye love me, keep my
commandments as long as keeping them is convenient.
It
Produces Easy Targets for Apostasy
The
believer whose faith is built on comfort is the easiest target for the enemy
when difficulty arrives. Because the enemy does not need to argue them out of
their faith. He simply needs to make their circumstances uncomfortable enough
that their conditional faith no longer has the conditions it requires to
survive. Persecution, extended illness, financial ruin, relational devastation,
unanswered prayer stretching into years: these are not extraordinary
experiences for believers throughout history. They are normal. And a faith that
cannot survive them is not equipped for the actual Christian life.
It
Produces Membership Without Discipleship
The
comfortable church is full of members. People who attend, who give
occasionally, who participate in the social community of the church and who
identify as Christians in every census and social context. But members are not
the same as disciples. Jesus did not commission His followers to make members.
He commissioned them to make disciples. A disciple is not someone who agrees
with the teachings of a teacher. A disciple is someone who has so thoroughly
committed to the teacher's way of life that their own life is being
fundamentally shaped by that commitment. Comfortable Christianity produces the
former in enormous numbers. It rarely produces the latter.
The Early Church Knew Nothing of This
Acts
14:22 is not a verse you will hear quoted from many prosperity gospel pulpits:
"Confirming
the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and
that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."
— Acts 14:22 (KJV)
We
must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. Paul and Barnabas
are not preaching this in a moment of pessimism or pastoral failure. They are
confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the
faith. And the content of that confirmation and that exhortation includes the
plain statement that tribulation is not an aberration in the Christian life. It
is the road.
The
early church understood this experientially. They had no megachurches, no
political protection, no cultural respectability and no promise that following
Jesus would make their lives easier. What they had was a resurrection, a Holy
Spirit and the words of a Saviour who had told them plainly that the world
would hate them because it had hated Him first (John 15:18).
And
they turned the world upside down. Not despite their suffering but in many ways
through it. Their willingness to suffer with joy was itself one of the most
powerful testimonies to the reality of the resurrection. A faith that makes
people willing to die rather than deny it is a faith that the watching world
cannot dismiss as mere social habit or cultural tradition.
The
modern church's obsession with comfort has produced the opposite. A faith that
the watching world can easily dismiss because it is indistinguishable from a
positive thinking club with better music. When Christians live, speak and
respond to difficulty in exactly the same way as everyone around them, there is
nothing for the world to notice. Nothing to raise the question: what do these
people have that enables them to face this with that kind of peace?
"Beloved,
think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though
some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers
of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad
also with exceeding joy." — 1 Peter 4:12-13 (KJV)
Think
it not strange. Peter is writing to believers facing real persecution and he
tells them not to be surprised by it. Not to treat the fiery trial as an
anomaly or an evidence of God's absence. The suffering of the believer is
described as participation in the sufferings of Christ Himself. It is not a
sign that something has gone wrong. It is often a sign that something is going
deeply right.
The Prosperity Gospel: Comfortable Christianity in Its Most Dangerous Form
No
treatment of comfortable Christianity is complete without addressing the
prosperity gospel, which is the most theologically sophisticated and most
spiritually damaging version of comfort-seeking Christianity currently
operating in the body of Christ.
The
prosperity gospel teaches that physical health and material wealth are the
normative will of God for every believer, that suffering and poverty are
evidence of weak faith or unconfessed sin, and that the primary purpose of
faith is to access God's provision for a comfortable and successful life. Jesus
becomes a divine financial advisor. The cross becomes an investment strategy.
And the entire narrative of Scripture is bent to serve the purpose of making
the believer's earthly life as comfortable and successful as possible.
The
problem is not that God never blesses financially. He does. The problem is not
that physical healing is impossible. It is not. The problem is the systematic
removal of the cross from the gospel, the reframing of suffering as always the
result of insufficient faith, and the production of believers who are entirely
unprepared for the normal Christian experience of difficulty, loss and
unanswered prayer.
When
the prosperity gospel believer gets a devastating diagnosis and the confession
and the giving and the declarations do not produce healing, they have one of
two options. Either they conclude that God is not real or reliable. Or they
conclude that their faith was insufficient and add self-condemnation to their
physical suffering. Neither outcome is acceptable. Both are the direct result
of a gospel that removed the cross.
Paul
wrote in Philippians 4:11-12:
"Not
that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to
abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be
hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."
— Philippians 4:11-12 (KJV)
I
have learned to be content. Contentment is something Paul learned. Through
experience. Through both abundance and need. Through both comfort and
suffering. He was not born content and he was not supernaturally zapped into
contentment. He learned it through the full range of human experience,
including the difficult end of that range. That is not the testimony of a
prosperity gospel believer. That is the testimony of a man who had decided that
his contentment was not dependent on his circumstances.
What Genuine Discipleship Actually Looks Like
Having
named the problem in all its expressions, what does the alternative actually
look like? What does it mean to follow Jesus with the kind of genuine,
all-weather, cross-carrying discipleship He described?
It Means
Settling the Question Before the Storm
The
most important decision a believer can make is not the decision made in the
middle of a crisis. It is the decision made before the crisis arrives. The
decision that says: I have settled this. Whether God heals me or not, I will
trust Him. Whether the job comes back or not, I will serve Him. Whether the
prayer is answered the way I hoped or not, I will follow Him. This decision,
made in the sunshine with clear eyes and full deliberation, is what produces
the faith that holds in the storm.
It Means
Letting Difficulty Do Its Work
Romans
5:3-4 says: we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh
patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope. Tribulation works
something. It produces patience, which produces experience, which produces
hope. The believer who avoids every difficulty at the cost of their faith
misses the very process that produces the depth of character that genuine
discipleship requires. Difficulty is not the enemy of faith. It is often the
forge in which genuine faith is produced.
It Means
Worshipping God for Who He Is, Not What He Does
The
foundation of genuine all-weather faith is a worship of God that is rooted in
His character and not in His conduct toward you at any given moment. God is
good whether or not your circumstances confirm it. God is faithful whether or
not your prayers have been answered yet. God is present whether or not His
presence is currently felt. The believer who has anchored their faith in the
unchanging character of God, rather than in the changing circumstances of their
life, has built on rock rather than sand.
It Means
Embracing the Cross as a Gift
This
is perhaps the most counter-cultural statement in all of Christian theology.
The cross is not a burden to be minimised, negotiated around or avoided
wherever possible. It is the means by which the believer participates in the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Galatians 2:20 says: I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
The crucifixion of self, the carrying of the daily cross, the dying to personal
comfort and agenda and preference, is not the price of the Christian life. It
is the doorway into the fullness of it.
A Direct Challenge to the Fair-Weather Believer
You
know who you are. You have read this post and something in it has named a
pattern in your own faith that you have perhaps been aware of but have not yet
honestly addressed. You love God when things are good. You praise Him in the
sunshine. But when the clouds come, your faith changes. Your commitment becomes
negotiable. Your worship becomes conditional.
I am
not writing this to condemn you. The disciples panicked in the storm too and
Jesus did not abandon them. He rebuked the storm and He rebuked their fear and
then He got back in the boat with them and they went to the other side
together. He did not leave them because their faith was shallow. He stayed with
them and taught them.
But
here is what I want to say to you directly and without softening it: the storm
is coming. If it has not arrived yet, it is coming. Every believer without
exception will face seasons of darkness, difficulty, loss, unanswered prayer
and the kind of circumstances that put their faith under genuine pressure. The
question is not whether the storm will come. The question is whether you will
have made the decision before it arrives.
The
God of the mountain is still God in the valley. He does not change when your
circumstances change. His love does not withdraw when your life becomes
difficult. His purposes are not disrupted by the storms that feel like they are
disrupting everything. But you need to have settled this before the waves start
breaking over the boat. Because the middle of a storm is the worst possible
time to be working out the theology of God's faithfulness.
Settle it now, in the sunshine, while you have the
clarity and the peace to think straight. Decide today that your love for God is
not conditional on His performance in your life. That your commitment does not
depend on your circumstances. That you will follow Him whether or not the road
is comfortable. Make that decision now. Before the storm arrives to make it for
you.
"And
he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow me."
— Luke 9:23 (KJV)
Back to the Text. Every Time.
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this post named something in your own faith that you recognise? Have you
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