“Follow Me, And I Will Make You ...”

Feature 3 – April 2011 — Grace & Truth Magazine

“Follow Me,
And I Will Make You ...”

When Christ calls us by His grace we should not only remember what we are, but we should also think of what He can make us. He says, “Follow Me, and I will make you ...” (Mt. 4:19 kjv). We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not “Follow Me, because of what you are already.” It is not “Follow Me, because you may make something of yourselves.” But it is “Follow Me, because of what I will make you.” I might say of each of us as soon as we are converted, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be ...” (1 Jn. 3:2).

It did not seem likely that lowly fishermen would develop into apostles; that men handy with the net would be at home preaching sermons and teaching converts. One would say, “How can these things be? You cannot make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee.” Yet that is exactly what Christ did. And when we are brought low in God’s sight by a sense of our unworthiness, we are encouraged to follow Jesus because of what He can make us. What did Hannah, a woman of sorrow, say when she sang, “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes” (1 Sam. 2:8; Ps. 113:7-8)?

We cannot tell what God may make of us in the new creation, since it would have been impossible to have foretold what He made of chaos in the old creation. Who could have imagined all the beautiful things that came forth from darkness and disorder by the words, “Let there be light”? Who can tell what lovely displays of everything that is divinely fair may yet appear in a man’s formerly dark life, when God’s grace has said to him, “Let there be light”? You who see in yourselves nothing that is desirable, come and follow Christ for the sake of what He can make out of you. Hear Him calling, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

By C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)