To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God.
Paul followed Jesus by living as He lived. And how did he do that? Through activities and ways of living that would train his whole personality to depend upon the risen Christ as Christ trained Himself to depend upon the Father.
I support Christ and following Him, and that's what I support.
Struggling against the legalism of simple obedience, we end by setting up the most dangerous law of all, the law of the world and the law of grace. In our effort to combat legalism we land ourselves in the worst kind of legalism. The only way of overcoming this legalism is by real obedience to Christ when he calls us to follow him; for in Jesus the law is at once fulfilled and cancelled.
If we are leading but not closely following Christ, we are misleading.
The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the sermon on the mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this.
Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.
There is harm not only in trying to gain wealth but also in excessive concern with even the most necessary things. It is not enough to despise wealth, but you must also feed the poor and, more importantly, you must follow Christ.
The rediscovery of the value of one's own Baptism is at the root of every Christian's missionary commitment, because as we see in the Gospel, those who allow themselves to be fascinated by Christ cannot fail to witness to the joy of following in his footsteps... We understand ever more that it is precisely in virtue of Baptism that we possess a co-natural missionary vocation.
