a safe distance

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion, there is a single line that the Lord has used to convict me time and time again. This line describes Peter’s response in the moments after Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane and was being taken to a place where a sham trial would take place. It’s a single sentence that packs a punch. As Jesus was being led away, Luke reports this tidbit of information: “Peter followed at a distance” (Luke 22:54).

Why? Why follow at a distance? The answer is simple. It was safe. If he followed too closely he might be caught up in the fury of the evening’s events. If they were willing to arrest Jesus, they wouldn’t think twice about taking a lowly fisherman into custody. In fact, getting too close to the fray might even prove to be fatal. So, Peter followed at a distance in order to make sure he would remain safe.

The hard truth is that sometimes we follow Jesus at a distance, too. We play it safe. We want enough of Jesus to ensure that we aren’t going to hell when we die, but we don’t want to get too close. After all, Jesus says radical things that if make us terribly uncomfortable. He said things like, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26, NIV). Whoa! Did you hear that? He was saying that if we want to be His disciples we must love Jesus so much that the love we have for our family looks like hate in comparison. In fact, if we’re to be called followers of Christ we have to love Him even more than we love our own lives. He went on to say, “Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27, NIV). The cross was an instrument of death. Jesus was saying that if we want to follow Him we have to walk to the place of execution and die to ourselves in order to live solely for Him. That’s radical. That’s hard. That’s not safe.

The truth is that getting too close to Jesus is not “safe.” If we get close to Jesus it means that we have to drop all of our dreams, desires, and goals and pick up His mission, His passion, and His calling. It means that our lives become centered solely on Him instead of us.

Getting close to Jesus will always cost us. It will cost us our idols. An idol can be money, possessions, fame, comfort, success, or a person. When we say to God, “You can have anything you want, but you can’t touch this,” an idol has been born. It can be anything, but I can assure you that getting close to Jesus always results in the destruction of idols. Jesus simplified it all when He said, “Those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples (Luke 14:33, NIV). Everything? Did He really say “everything”? In the original Greek, the word translated “everything” means “everything.” There are no loopholes and there are no exceptions. Getting close to Jesus will cost us our self rule. That scares us, so we keep a safe distance between Jesus and us.

As a result, we end up becoming satisfied with things like church attendance, doing our best to adhere to a moral code, and trying to force other people to conform to that code. We end up wearing the cloak of a Pharisee. We end up admiring Jesus from a distance without ever actually obeying Him. We end up having the appearance of life on the outside while we’re dead on the inside. We end up giving our lives to things that are temporary. We end up wasting our lives.

All the while Jesus beckons us to enter into a full life with Him. Not a safe life, but a full life. Jesus never promised following Him would be safe. He never promised that it would be easy. However, He did promise that it would be worth it. In the world of poker, when a player goes “all in” it means that he or she is willing to risk everything they have on one hand. It’s time to go “all in” and risk everything we have and all that we are on following Jesus. It’s time to stop playing it safe.