“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they are following Me” (John 10:27).
Two points need to be made here; firstly, you cannot hear the voice of Christ Jesus unless you are listening for Him; He is speaking, but are we listening? That is the vital question. “The one having ears to hear, let him hear!” was the point that Jesus was making in the parable of the Sower (Matthew 11, Mark 4, Luke 8) and in His message to the Churches in the Revelation. We live in a noisome world and if we are to hear God speaking we must needs withdraw from that world’s distractions and seek the still, quiet place of communion with the Divine Kingdom. It is the promise of God to speak; it is the duty of man to listen.
Secondly, the phrase “they are following Me” is most often translated as “they follow Me”, but since the verb “follow” is in the present indicative active, “they are following Me” more accurately conveys the sense of what Jesus was, and is, saying. Following is not a position, but an activity that is a continual process. It is not “did follow Me”, or “were following Me”, but “are following Me”. So the fundamental identification of the sheep that belong to the “Great Shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20) is that they are listening to Him and following Him.
Those who are following Christ Jesus are conscious that we inhabit two worlds; the natural world and the supernatural world, or the physical world and the spiritual world. Indeed, a consciousness of this duality in our personality is essential if we are to make the right choices that are asked of us every moment of every day.
We live our earthly lives in this material realm, subject to human limitations imposed upon our fleshly nature, and our inherent susceptibility to demonic temptation.
That is part, at least, of the consequence of being children of the first Adam; it is the fruit of the human frailty to which all of Adam’s children are heir.
But there is another Adam; the Last Adam; ‘So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit”’ (1 Corinthians 15:45).
There is an understandable tendency to conceptualise our lives along two separate and distinct paths; indeed, it is one of the besetting problems facing the believer when he comes to Christ. One path is the path of life in this world; the other, the path of life in the newly begotten spirit. The habits of a lifetime before conversion tend to lead us into following that worldly, or secular path; the demands of Spirit pull us in another direction altogether.
The young believer, in committing his life to following Christ Jesus, is frequently surprised and caught unawares by the conflict in which he finds himself engaged. He will discover that, contrary to what he has been informed by the preachers of “easy grace”, he is involved in a life and death struggle. He will find, for example, that the ways of God and the ways of men, including Christian men, are quite different; the skills and talents that made him successful in Adam’s world will avail him not at all in the realm of Christ’s kingdom; this new Adam will not yield to the old Adam, whose sovereignty has been undisturbed since birth.
We tend to try and resolve this spiritual/secular dichotomy by walking the tightrope between the two; having a foot in both camps as it were, and picking our way carefully to offend neither camp. But this is truly impossible; these realms are totally opposed to each other, and all it means is that we will find no peace in either the spiritual or the secular.
As always, the answer is to be found in the example of Christ Jesus whose path, when walking this earth, was guided by one overarching principle;
“I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8:29).
Always, not sometimes; there’s the rub!
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