What Jesus means when He says sell all you have and follow Him
This biblical insight was derived from a memory of seeing a Jewish man in a Christian bookstore looking at the Jewish Messianic books, and looking furtively at all the Christians in the store. Messianic Jews recognize Jesus as Messiah, but they still don't associate themselves with Christians. They maintain a boundary there.
The insight: when Jesus tells people (Jews) to sell all that they have and follow Him it comes across as if Jesus is saying poverty is part of following Him and part of the faith.
Yet at the same time there are passages that say when you believe on Him you won't suffer worldly needs and you will have access to all God has ultimately.
So here is how to see it. That Jewish man in the Christian bookstore has derived his wealth, all he has, from his people and culture, ultimately. Jesus is saying the fount of that wealth is the Kingdom of Satan (and I'm not associating Jews particularly with the Kingdom of Satan, all who are not in the Kingdom of God are in the Kingdom of Satan, but with Jews it's a pronounced example). It is *that* that the Jew must give up. Wealth from the Kingdom of Satan. Sustenance from the Kingdom of Satan. Sell *that.*
That Jewish man though is very reluctant (scared, as we all are) to give up his wealth, or the source of his wealth (even if he's a low level accountant in his uncle's warehouse company). When you leave your family you leave what sustains you. All that you know. So he sees a necessity to maintain that boundary between him and Christians in general. He doesn't want to stop being a Jew because he doesn't want to give up what the Kingdom of Satan has given him and keeps giving him.
When you become a Christian you go through a process where you separate from even your own family.
You say: "All that is death." And you move in the direction of God.
1 Comments:
This biblical insight given to you by a street Calvinist. No seminary-educated Christian could ever bring you such an insight simply because they can't see such things. And even if one of them did stumble close to such an insight they wouldn't write it out because it is too politically-incorrect, and their fear of man would prevent them.
[I write the above with only a mild apprehension that somebody will post a passage from a commentary stating exactly the same thing that I wrote... Only because there's nothing new under the sun, but street Calvinists generally don't contribute to commentaries or other publishing ventures...so I doubt anything exists in any commentary or elsewhere...]
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