Christ’s teachings are hard to understand. Example: “Eat My flesh, drink My blood or else you will have no life in you” (John 6:53, free trans.). Did He say this purposefully? Never mind the “stumbling in the dark” Pharisees, Jesus had disciples who were just as spiritually insensitive and unseeing. He had to put them to the test. The test is always this—at what point do I refuse to accept what Jesus is saying and take offense at Him? That’s the point at which I drawback and walk no more with Him.
Like it or not, Jesus will constantly make Himself an offense to me. To take offense is the mark of an untrue disciple, to take no offense the mark of a true one. The antagonist relationship is always necessary when the training of minds, souls, or lives is at stake. The classroom teacher is an antagonist, the drill sergeant is an antagonist, the developer of Olympic champions is an antagonist. Where love enters the picture the antagonism is greater because love desires the greatest growth for the loved one.
I will never have a more demanding taskmaster than Jesus Christ. The voices of the world, the flesh, and the devil are soft and wooing. They beg me to indulge myself: “Take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” That’s why the wise preacher says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting” (Ecclesiastes 7:2, KJV). The house of feasting is the self-indulgent, easy, soft, no-sacrifice way of living that results in death even while the person is still alive (1 Timothy 6:6). The house of mourning is the way of life hammered and shaped into His image by ceaseless discipline, hardness, and endurance. Every Christian has a choice; I can keep my life only to lose it, or lose it for Christ’s sake only to find it again. How glad I am for God’s help here—He both wills and works His good pur- poses in me (Philippians 2:13).
“Jesus said therefore to the twelve, ‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life’” (John 6:67–68).
Daily with the King 