Jesus Doesn't Want You to Be a Good Person

"Jesus doesn't want you to be a good person.

When he calls you to follow him, he isn't asking you to become nice and do your best at helping others.  He didn't die so you can feel good about the things you've screwed-up or so you could carry a sentimental hope of being re-united beyond the grave with the people you love but who have died.

His call is a command for you to comprehensively and absolutely walk away from the way you do life now so you can follow him down an exclusive path through the narrow gate that leads to the kingdom of heaven....

...Like a frog in kettle, we do not see that when our relationship with Jesus is replaced by rules, the rules then take on an inordinate and unnatural heaviness.  We end up making the rules the main thing when the main thing has always been Jesus...

...The sooner you understand this and stop trying to impress Jesus, the sooner you can follow Jesus into the realm of costly grace."

- Jon Walker, Costly Grace: A Contemporary View o Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, pages 35-36, (italics in the original)