During His personal ministry on earth, a large number of people had believed on Christ, especially by seeing His mighty and wonderful works. However, there were many who no longer went about with Him because they could not make the complete surrender of themselves in an obedient faith – so they turned back. They were offended at His teaching and said, “This is a hard saying who can understand it? …from that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more” (John 6:60, 66). They walked with Him no more because His teaching did not find an abiding place in their hearts. Jesus attached a condition to being truly His disciples. “If you continue in my word,” he told them, “then indeed you are My disciples” (John 8:31). The point is, it is not enough to just accept Jesus and believe in Him, as many do today. Instead, the true disciple is obedient to His Word. “But why do you call Me Lord, Lord,” Christ said in one place, “and not do the things I say?” A disciple is a follower of Christ, a learner who has believed, obeyed and continues to follow and abide in His teaching.
To those who had believed in Him, He did not say, “You have believed in Me and therefore you are saved.” Rather He said in effect, “Now that you have believed, if you really want to be my disciples, do what I have commanded.” In John 15:14 He told them, “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” The ultimate salvation of believers depended then, as it does today, upon obeying His commandments.
Far too many people today are just believers and not doers of what the Lord says through His Bible. Christianity of too many people today has shrunk to celebrations of a few manmade yearly festivals and engaging in occasional prayers and reading of the Bible. Yet, Christ taught, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Are you listening? Christ taught, if we want to enter heaven we better listen to God and do what He asks us to do. How do I know what God requires of me to do? The Bible is the answer. Through the Bible, and only the Bible, God speaks to man today (Hebrews 1:1-2), and He speaks to all the same thing. He is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), which prevails today amongst the believers of Christ who are divided into thousands of sects and denominations. The apostle Paul said that even if an angel from heaven preaches to you any other gospel, let him be accursed, that is, do not listen to him (Galatians 1:6-9). At another place he asked to avoid such who teach contrary to the doctrine of Christ (Romans 16:17). The beloved apostle John wrote, “Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive Him into your house nor greet him” (2 John 9-10). So, when we have one Bible, one teaching, then why is there division? Jesus taught that “the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). Every seed produces after its own kind. Evidently then there have been different seeds sown through the years, which produced a kind of Christianity that is very different than the Christianity of the Bible. Why in the first century, in the beginning of Christ’s Christianity, was there only one church, and all congregations of that one church were called “churches of Christ” (Romans 16:16; Matthew 16:18)? Why were they all known only as “Christians” (Acts 11:26; 1 Peter 4:16)? Why did they all worship in the same way (Acts 20:7; 2:42)? The answer is, they all followed God’s will as revealed to them through the apostles of Christ, which will we have today in the written form of the New Testament of the Bible. Now, if we all put away today from us all kinds of human doctrines and teachings, cease to believe and practice them, and return to what God tells us to do in the Bible, then we all too will be the same as they were in the beginning, Christians and united in one church, worshipping in the same way. To be a true disciple of Christ one must pass the test of abiding in His teaching.
