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Bible Studies Faith & Spiritual Growth
Following Jesus
What Jesus actually asked of the people who followed him — and what he promised them.
Jesus’ invitations are unusually blunt about the cost and unusually generous about the terms. Both halves belong in the same study.
What you’ll explore
- 01 The call: “Follow me”
- 02 Counting the cost honestly
- 03 Taking up a cross
- 04 Abiding: the vine and the branches
- 05 Obedience as love, not as earning
- 06 Rest for the weary
- 07 Following in the ordinary week
The call: “Follow me”
Read Mark 1:16-20; Mark 2:13-14
The call is issued to working men in the middle of their working day, and what it asks for is not agreement but movement. Nobody is examined on doctrine first. Following, in the gospels, precedes understanding by a long way.
Counting the cost honestly
Read Luke 14:25-33; Luke 9:57-62
Jesus tells large crowds to count the cost, and gives two illustrations of people who started something they could not finish. He also turns away three would-be followers with reasons that sound entirely reasonable. He is not recruiting on easy terms.
Taking up a cross
Read Mark 8:34-38
To a first-century audience the image was an execution, not an inconvenience — the condemned carried their own crossbeam. The paradox that follows is the point: whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will save it. This is the sentence around which everything else in this study turns.
Abiding: the vine and the branches
Read John 15:1-11
The picture is not effort but connection — a branch does not strain to produce fruit, it stays attached. "Apart from me you can do nothing" is stated flatly. The word translated abide simply means remain, which is a lower bar than most people set for themselves.
Obedience as love, not as earning
Read John 14:15, 23-24; 1 John 5:3
Jesus links keeping his commandments to loving him, in that order. John says his commandments are not burdensome. The New Testament nowhere presents obedience as the price of acceptance; it presents it as what love does.
Rest for the weary
Read Matthew 11:28-30
The invitation is addressed specifically to those who are labouring and heavy-laden, and what is offered is rest. A yoke is still work, but Jesus calls his easy and his burden light. Any account of following him that has no rest in it has lost something he said explicitly.
Following in the ordinary week
Read Micah 6:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
Micah’s summary — do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God — is not a special calling. Paul tells the Thessalonians to aspire to live quietly, mind their own affairs, and work with their hands. Most discipleship is carried out at this altitude.
Questions to sit with
- What has following Jesus actually cost you? If nothing, is that worth sitting with?
- Are you straining to produce fruit, or staying attached?
- Where does "rest" belong in how you understand the Christian life?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.