“Is Christianity hard or easy?” C. S. Lewis asks in Mere Christianity. He then answers the question with a resounding “both.” It is easy because it rests on grace: not on our own hectic efforts—like the proverbial frog in the well who climbs up two feet and then slides back three—but on a divine work that has already been accomplished by Christ. Yet it is also hard because it means a total surrender of all we have and all we are.
And yet, ironically, it is the very hardness that makes it easy. Much religious angst comes from our stress-inducing attempts to give a little bit of this and a little bit of that to God. We yield those little bits with trembling hands, trying to hold on even as we strive to let go. In the end, it is far easier just to give it all.
In Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live, David Platt simultaneously convicts, challenges, and beckons his readers to surrender their lives to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Savior who calls us both to die and to live. The pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, flatly (and unapologetically) rejects the belief, coveted by American evangelicals like myself, that a person will be saved at death if, at some point in his life, he uttered the Jesus prayer.
Adopted as Sons
Though casual readers may at first suspect Platt of advocating a religion of works, he is fully Reformed in his theology. Not only does he make it clear that salvation is by grace alone through the redeeming work of Christ; he also reminds his readers, and backs it up with Scripture, that we were dead in our sins before Jesus called us. It is not we who invite Christ into our lives, but Christ who invites us to participate in his death and resurrection. Just as the baby boy from Kazakhstan whom Platt and his wife adopted did not seek parents but was sought by them, so also God the Pursuer initiated our salvation and adopted us as sons.
Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
David Platt
Salvation, then, is by grace alone through faith alone, but that does not mean we can say the prayer and be done with it. When God redeems us, he gives us a new heart and spirit; he transforms us into disciples that we may in turn disciple others. Platt would have us move beyond a “superficial religion” that “consists of nothing more than truths to believe and things to do” to a “supernatural regeneration” that “involves an authentic Christian life that has been awakened by the Spirit, truth, love, passion, power, and purpose of Jesus.”
Sacred Cows
Follow Me is a politically incorrect book with a twist; it does not hold back from skewering the sacred cows of both liberals and conservatives. Platt forces those on the left to face squarely Jesus’ teachings on hell and on his exclusivity as the only way to God. In a lukewarm age of spiritual wishful thinking it comes as quite a shock to hear Platt unambiguously affirm that those who die apart from Christ—whether they be “good” Muslims or Hindus or “good” church people who said a prayer when they were 9 years old but have never truly surrendered their lives to Christ as Lord of the cosmos—will spend eternity in hell.
As for those on the right, Platt issues a wake-up call to churches that concentrate all their energy on building programs, apologetical conferences, and entertaining services while neglecting the Great Commission. Platt shares stories of believers in non-Christian countries who have given all they have to follow Christ. Compelled to make disciples as a natural overflow of their new life in Christ, these brave martyrs count their possessions and even their lives as expendable.
For Christians on both sides of the aisle, Platt offers a vision of the local church that flies in the face of modern individualism. A church is not somewhere we go to feel good about ourselves but “a community of Christians who care for one another enough to discipline one another in sin and restore one another in Christ.” Even though half the times Jesus mentions the word “church” he is presenting a process for church discipline, we resist the notion that the local church might have the authority to expose sin. “We’re independent, self-reliant, self-sufficient people, and the thought of mutual submission, accountability, and interdependence seems foreign, if not outright frightening.”
And yet, only such a church can produce disciples who will themselves make disciples. And if we are not making disciples, then we are not bearing the kind of fruit we should be bearing if our salvation is authentic. Platt does not mince words on this subject: he calls his comfortable, middle-class readers to consider seriously whether they should leave their safe homes and move overseas. But even if that is not our calling, we must do what we can to proclaim the gospel in our sphere.
Gospel Threads
In the book of Acts, Platt reminds us, the gospel was primarily spread “not through extravagant preachers, but through everyday people whose lives had been transformed by the power of Christ.” That does not necessarily mean we should stand up in our workplaces and preach the gospel until security comes to remove us. But it does mean we should take every opportunity to sew what Platt calls “gospel threads” into our conversations with nonbelievers. And, of course, we must live with such integrity and joy that others will be drawn to us and ask us to give an account of the hope within us.
Follow Me is a well-written book that mingles good storytelling with close readings of key Scriptures. Though it is sure to offend many readers, that is not its intent. It seeks only to remind us of what it means to accept Christ’s call to die and live with him, a call that will bring suffering but even more joy. It is a book that will, I believe, galvanize people (especially young people) much like John Piper’s Desiring God did a decade ago.
