Making Sense of the Structure........................................119

minimum, we must not work against the gospel. To put this in the positive, to answer the call we have to agree with the gospel.

e Call Is an Invitation to Follow a Person (v. 24)

In verse 24, the broader context of discipleship, or more generally a call to minister in Jesus’s authority, is set. Jesus used the opportunity in Caesarea Philippi and the discussion of the gospel to transition into a de nition or description of costly discipleship: “ en Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come a er Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’”

To understand the implications of what Jesus was calling his disciples to, a consideration of his terms may be helpful. Why did Jesus use two terms that seem synonymous in this call, and what signi cance is highlighted by the di erence in these words? e word for come a er holds the emphasis “to go on a course (presumably of someone speci cally who had walked it before).”5 e term for follow does carry the same meaning, generally, but with a slightly di erent nuance: “to move behind someone in the same direction” or “to follow or accompany someone who takes the lead.”6 Perhaps the truth Jesus intended is that if anyone wants to live like he has lived, walk like he has walked, do that which he has been seen doing, in other words, “come a er me,” then naturally this one must follow or walk closely behind him. Conceptually this makes sense. Jesus’s statement is not complicated; it is logical.

5 Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick William Danker, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 394. is lexicon will herea er be referred to as BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich). 6 BDAG, 36.