In the early years of my Christian journey, I was much more concerned about what I was supposed to believe than I was about how I showed the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed in my daily life.
That is perhaps understandable. When we first encounter Christian faith, there seems to be so much to learn. What do Christians believe about God? Who is Jesus? What does the Bible teach? What should I believe about salvation, prayer, the Church, heaven, and all the other questions that soon begin to emerge?
Belief matters. What we believe about God inevitably shapes the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. But over the years I found myself increasingly drawn to another question.
What difference does following Jesus actually make to the way I live?
I couldn’t simply believe certain things without also believing that Jesus expected those beliefs to change me — the way I lived, the way I thought about things, and perhaps most importantly, the way I thought about and treated other people.
Jesus said, “Follow me”
It is striking that when Jesus called his first disciples, he did not begin by handing them a list of doctrines and asking whether they agreed with them.
He said, “Follow me.”
It was an invitation into a journey.
They would listen to his teaching, certainly, but they would also watch him. They would see the people he noticed and the people he welcomed. They would see him touch those whom others avoided, eat with those whom respectable society regarded with suspicion, forgive people, challenge hypocrisy and repeatedly cross the boundaries that human beings had constructed between one another.
And slowly they would discover what the Kingdom of God looked like.
That seems important to me because Christianity can so easily become primarily a matter of believing the correct things. Faith can become a test in which we ask whether someone believes A, B and C before deciding whether they belong.
Yet the Gospels continually bring us back to Jesus’ invitation:
Follow me.
A faith that can be seen
Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God, but he did more than speak about it. He embodied it.
When people were hungry, he fed them. When people were excluded, he welcomed them. When people were burdened by guilt, he spoke of forgiveness. When religious rules were used without compassion, he challenged them. When people were treated as though they mattered less than others, Jesus restored their dignity.
Perhaps this is why Jesus could say that a tree is known by its fruit.
The question is not only what we say we believe. What kind of fruit does our faith produce?
Does following Jesus make us more compassionate?
More forgiving?
More willing to listen?
More concerned about injustice?
More attentive to people who are overlooked?
More careful about the way our choices affect other people and the world we share?
These questions can be uncomfortable, because they move faith from the safety of ideas into the reality of everyday life.
The tension within faith
During my years in Christian ministry, I have seen this tension lived out in many people’s journeys.
There are those for whom Christianity is primarily defined by what a Christian must believe. Certain doctrines become boundaries: unless you believe this or that in precisely the right way, your faith is regarded with suspicion.
There are others who understand faith more as a community learning together how to live faithfully in the world today.
Of course, these do not have to be opposites. Belief and practice belong together. What we believe shapes how we live, while the experience of trying to follow Jesus can deepen — and sometimes challenge — what we thought we believed.
Perhaps the difficulty comes when belief becomes detached from discipleship.
Jesus did not simply invite people to agree with him.
He invited them to follow him.
Following Jesus here and now
And that brings the question into our own lives.
What does following Jesus look like on an ordinary Monday morning?
It may be found in the patience we show to someone who irritates us. In whether we really listen to someone whose experience is different from our own. In how we speak about people with whom we disagree. In what we buy and consume. In how we use our money. In whether we notice loneliness, injustice or suffering around us.
It may be found in our willingness to forgive — and sometimes in our willingness to ask forgiveness.
These things may seem a long way from the great theological questions of Christian faith, but perhaps they are where theology becomes real.
The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed was not simply about another world or a future heaven. Jesus spoke of God’s reign breaking into human life now — wherever love overcomes hatred, forgiveness interrupts resentment, generosity challenges selfishness, and those pushed to the margins are welcomed back into community.
Following Jesus means learning to recognise that Kingdom — and choosing to participate in it.
A journey rather than an achievement
None of us does this perfectly.
The disciples certainly didn’t. They misunderstood Jesus, argued among themselves, sought status, lost courage and sometimes failed spectacularly.
And yet Jesus continued to call them.
That gives me hope.
Christian discipleship is not about reaching a point where we can say that we have finally mastered the Christian life. It is a continuing journey of becoming — learning, questioning, failing, discovering grace, beginning again.
Perhaps that is part of what a wider faith means.
Not a faith with no convictions, but a faith spacious enough to keep listening to Jesus and asking where he might be leading us next.
And perhaps one question is worth carrying with us into the coming week:
If I am following Jesus, where might that become visible in the way I live today?
