In my last post, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men" ... , I asked: "How are we to follow Jesus?" I was emphasizing that apart from our following and walking in Christ's example of full reliance on the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing at all, much less desire to do anything at all for the cause of Christ.

I read John Baillie's "Memoir of the Rev. W.H. Hewitson, Late Minister of the Free Church of Scotland, at Direlton [1852]"  last year and have been continuing to dabble in it on and off. Along with reading of Scripture, I cannot commend to you enough the reading of good Christian biography so we might begin to see the "glorious possibilities" of the Christian life, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it. (Please see my other posts on Hewitson here, here, here, here, and here.) Reading Christian history and Christian biography is one of God's blessed means to put into our hearts a desire to see His church reformed and revived ~ though not equivalent to Scripture, we must agree this great cloud of witnesses is indeed set forth as warnings and examples to us for our instruction and strengthening and encouragement to run the race set before us.

I recently came across this excerpt in Chapter VII (pp. 105-106) in Hewitson's Memoir. In it we find testimony to the vital necessity of the power of the Holy Ghost.

Though not all Christians are called by God to the pastoral office, we are all new creations who are all called to be ministers of reconciliation and ambassadors for Christ (II Corinthians 5). The Church in the book of Acts "went about every where preaching the word" (Acts 8:4, KJV). Let us pray our Lord might open our eyes to see that it is NOT by might, NOR by power, by but His Spirit – for it is only then that we will seek in earnest to be baptized afresh (or for the first time) with the Holy Spirit of God and ordained by the Spirit of Christ, so we might not trifle with our own souls and the souls of hundreds.

O, Lord God, forgive us our sinfulness as we have turned away from You, we have taken our eyes off You, we have dispensed of Your blessed Holy Spirit and have turned our eyes on self and have tried to rely on ourselves, and now we are in a sad state, as we are reaping what we have sown!

Show us the depth of our poverty, open our eyes to see our vital need of Your blessed Holy Spirit, this indispensable element which we have so tragically dispensed of! Our lands are dry. Our churches are a ruin and a reproach. Our people are lukewarm. Have mercy upon us. Hear our cries. Give us a thirst for You alone, and pour our Your Spirit upon Your seed once again, ordain us by the Holy Spirit of Christ, so we might be zealous once again for You and Your Kingdom and be sent out to preach Your glorious Gospel and bless the nations to Your glory.

A note on today's post... One vital need at this period of time for the Church is for us to see our insufficiency, so we might see and embrace Christ's sufficiency. Unless we are praying for supplies of the Holy Spirit as we ought, we cannot walk in the works God has ordained for us, and we will not give due glory to God.

Matthew 4:18  While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19  And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20  Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21  And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22  Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Mark 1:16  Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 17  And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18  And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19  And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20  And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

How are we to follow Jesus?

A grave and deadly error that has been perpetuated for years in the Church is that we are only to follow Jesus' example.

Now, please don't get me wrong – Jesus is our blessed example, He was the Lamb without spot or blemish! –We are to be holy as He is holy! However, let us not stop with that. If we stop there, we make Christianity to be a moral code. Jesus' example is lifted up for us to aspire to, and we can't ignore it – but apart from the power of God working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, we can never follow Jesus' example.  Jesus Christ is not only our example but He is also our life and our power and energy to live the Christian life. We serve a risen and living Savior, a God who is seated at the right hand of the Father and indwelling believers today through His Holy Spirit. We can't even begin to follow His example apart from His resurrection life! How often do we forget that? Do we really understand our need of His life? How can we expect to live the Christian life apart from His life imparted to us?

Jesus Himself told us that without Him we can do nothing (John 15). Apart from His Holy Spirit at work in us, our hearts remain hardened and our minds enmity against Him and our wills unchanged and defiant. As the apostle Paul reminds us, "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out" (see Romans 7). In and of ourselves, we have neither a desire for Christ nor a desire to follow Christ nor an ability to obey Christ – apart from the power of the resurrected Christ working in us.

The man-centered theology of "Just do it" or "What would Jesus do" is a dangerous one. Though it sounds good on the surface, it can often serve to undermine the Biblical teaching that we are wholly dependent on God to follow Jesus and to fish for men. It often pushes us to focus on ourselves and to muster up supplies in our own strength to obey God. Such teaching minimizes the glorious doctrine of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. One thing is clear: we can never pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps! Having begun in the Spirit, God forbid we regress to relying on and walking in the flesh!  Apart from the quickening of the Holy Spirit, apart from receiving a new heart with new affections, and apart from the persevering grace of God at work in us through His Spirit to uphold us and equip us and increase our desires for Christ and Christ's Kingdom, we can do nothing. As Robert Robinson's great hymn reminds us: "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love..." Jesus is the Author as well as the Finisher of our faith!

I would like to call attention to the incident that happened prior to Jesus' calling His disciples: Jesus Himself was baptized and had the Holy Spirit descend upon Him (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 4 and John 1). For example, we read these words in Matthew's gospel:

When Jesus says to us, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," here is the example we must be following first and foremost: to see our utter and complete need for His blessed Holy Spirit from first to last: not only at our conversion (we must be born again) – but our continuing need of Him all the days of our life. Apart from Christ, we have no life. We can never expect to work the works of God apart from the power of God working in us.

So often we read and we take up the commandments from the Bible, and we begin to do, do, do – in our own flesh. We try to start to fish for men. We try to live a Christ-like life. We feed the hungry. We clothe the poor. We visit the sick and imprisoned. And so on. But what glory does God get from works done in the flesh? How different is our good behavior than the moralistic atheist or the kindly Buddhist?

To be clear here: Yes, our Lord was fully God and fully man, but as God incarnate, having been born in our likeness through the virgin Mary, that meant our Lord would live His life on earth through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, when our Lord says, "Follow me..."   here is the way we follow Him – to live our lives in the very same way He did: by relying on the power of His Holy Spirit, or, perhaps better said, using Paul's words from Galatians 2: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Having been raised by the resurrection power of God to new life, we continue to walk in that new life day by day by the power of God. Without fresh supplies of His Spirit we can do nothing. We must continue to abide in Christ and let Him abide in us. Each and every one of us is utterly dependent on the power of the same Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus that day in the Jordan almost 2000 years ago. We look at Jesus and we see the good deeds, the wisdom, the love, the humility, the kindnesses, and so on – but let us never forget that the blessed Holy Spirit was at the root of it all!

Notice Jesus' words to His disciples:

How can a fish make himself a fisher? Can a leopard can change its spots?

Jesus Christ makes His disciples fishers of men through the workings of His Holy Spirit. it is then our responsibility to obey the promptings of His Spirit, and not to grieve, quench or limit Him – in even the smallest thing.

The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus Himself to work in and through Jesus so He might fulfill the mission for which His Father had sent Him into the world:

And in the same way we must continue to ask for God for new supplies of His Spirit so we might fulfill the mission for which we are sent: to preach the Gospel to all nations and to make disciples of all nations. It is ludicrous for us to think we can fulfill the divine mission for which Christ is sending us into the world without relying on the divine power by which Jesus Himself fulfilled His mission!

Lord Jesus, teach us more and more what it means to follow You, to live by You, to rely more and more on Your Holy Spirit each and every day. We confess how we have grieved You by relying on our selves and our own supplies. Forgive us, Lord Jesus. We are Your people and we are foolish to seek to live by our flesh rather than asking You for Your Spirit, whom You so want to give us and pour out upon us!

Lord God, we are Your people, purchased with the precious blood of Christ. For Jesus' sake, be merciful, gracious and longsuffering toward us. We confess we are all like sheep who have gone astray. May Your Spirit strive with us. Open our ears to hear Him. We are so much like the Laodicean Church. We are often quite competent in the flesh, but as a result, we end up neglecting to ask for the one thing necessary: Your Holy Spirit. Show us our poverty, blindness and nakedness, so we might come to You and be rich, so we might receive your garments to cover our shameful behavior of trusting in ourselves, and Your salve to anoint our eyes, so that you might see You as we ought and to see ourselves through Your eyes: that we might see that in and of ourselves, we are poorer and needier than we can even imagine – and without You we are nothing, we have nothing and we can do nothing at all pleasing in Your sight.

Holy Spirit, soften our hearts so we might bow to Your promptings and not grieve, quench or limit You. Be gracious to us and continue the work You have begun in us. Work in us to humble us, to break us of our prideful arrogance and self-righteousness and fleshly confidence, so we might see ourselves as poor and needy for it is only then we will continue to come importunately as beggars before Your throne of grace to ask You to pour out upon us fresh supplies of Your Holy Spirit. Work in us so we might follow You, to rely on Your Spirit as You did, and at that point, You will make us fishers of men, to Your glory alone. Amen.