Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.

by John Mark Comer

The word Christian is used only three times in the New Testament. To put that in perspective, the word disciple (or apprentice) is used 269 times, which comes as no surprise since the New Testament was written by apprentices of Jesus, for apprentices of Jesus.[26]

The Bible clearly teaches we are saved by grace alone through faith alone: Sola fide.

Actually Jesus is looking for his sheep, and he finds every one of them and nobody can pluck them out of the Father’s hand.

it makes sense that we’d need some serious training in how to access this extraordinary new society and enter the inner life of God that’s

The “inner life of god” is a Catholic / mystic idea. Heresy.

This takes a clear teaching about heaven and hell and reduces it to something entirely different. I don’t think this author believes that hell exists. He never warns of it in this book that I can recall. Ironically, the verses right after this quote are warnings against false prophets who are ravenous wolves.

Before they believed in Jesus, he believed in them.

Hogwash. Jesus knew our complete inability and that’s why he was incarnated, lived perfectly on our behalf, died to receive our punishment, and rose again to defeat death.

We talk a lot about the call to believe in Jesus—to put your trust and confidence in him to lead you to life. This is good and fitting. But it must also be said that Jesus believes in you. He believes that you can become his apprentice.

Hogwash

Years ago, a Jesuit priest named Father Rick was kind enough to offer me spiritual direction.

So is Comer a Protestant Christian or a Jesuit priest?

This may sound way too mystical for your persuasion, but to put all my cards on the table, I’m with the theologian Karl Rahner, who said, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”[44] You know why I think he’s right? Because the Christian of the past was a mystic. And if we don’t recapture contemplation, we “will not exist at all” in the corrosive soil of the secular West.

Mystic: a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect

Formation isn’t a Christianized version of project self; it’s a process of salvation. Of being saved by Jesus.

Salvation is accomplished and finished. Sanctification is a process.

This is the gospel: God has drawn near to us in Jesus—us, we who are sinful, broken, wounded, mortal, dying, and incapable of self-saving, with many of us completely uninterested in God or even enemies of God—to draw us into his inner life, to heal us by immersing us within the fold of his Trinitarian love, and then to send us out into the world as agents of his love.

That is NOT the full gospel

Jesus’ invitation to apprentice under him isn’t just a chance to become people of love who are like God; it’s a chance to enter the inner life of God himself.

Hogwash

Here’s Kallistos Ware: The doctrine of original sin means…that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider.[35]

Nope. The doctrine of original sin teaches that we all “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3) and “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. … There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans‬ ‭3‬:‭10‬-‭12‬, ‭18‬

A saint is just an ordinary apprentice who stayed at it with Jesus.

Nope. All believers are called saints.

But you can change, you can grow, you can get free, and you can find healing. Or as Jesus would say, you can be saved.

Actually the Scriptures teach that you can do all of those things BECAUSE you have been saved.

And “when we act like God, we get to feel like God,”[30]

BARF.

As I said earlier, the gospel is not “If you believe in Jesus, you can go to the Good Place when you die.” Mark summarizes the gospel as “The kingdom of God has come near.”[33] Paul’s one-line summary is “Jesus is Lord”[34] (another way of saying the same thing). The gospel is that Jesus is the ultimate power in the universe and that life with him is now available to all. Through his birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit, Jesus has saved, is saving, and will save all creation. And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into this kingdom and into the inner life of God himself. We can receive and give and share in Love Loving.

That is NOT the true gospel. This sounds like a blend of universalism and work-based salvation

God’s heart is universal, literally—it’s for all of the universe.

I hope he doesn’t mean what I think he means here. Universalism is heresy.

Surely Jesus intended us to weigh both options. I have no doubt he would encourage you to run a cost-benefit analysis on both possible futures: one where you follow the Way and the other where you follow your own path. When you do the math, you may conclude that, yes, following Jesus will cost you—a lot. But here’s the thing: Not following Jesus will cost you even more. It will cost you life with God, the very purpose for which you were created. It will cost you access to the inner life of the Trinity, the “peace…which transcends all understanding,” and the “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.”[17] It will cost you freedom from the bondage of sin, healing from the wounding of sin, forgiveness from the guilt and shame of sin, and adoption into the family of God out of the isolation of sin. People often complain about how hard the spiritual life is. And the honest truth is, yes, it is. But what’s missing from this diagnosis is that the unspiritual life is even harder.

Nowhere does Comer warn that not following Jesus will end in eternal separation from the Father, ie. hell.

Saint Benedict and many others saw salvation as an ongoing process that begins at baptism but does not end until we cross the threshold of death. Or possibly never ends.

Again, this is not the teaching of the Bible or Protestantism.

Day by day, fill your heart with the wonder of the person, gospel, and life of Jesus. Read and reread the Gospels, pore over each story, turn your mind to him in prayer. Gaze on the Son of God.

Why just the gospels? Throughout his book, Comer pulls heavily from the gospels, lightly from the New Testament, and just 4 times from the Old Testament. Worth noting.

Much more could be said about this. I would invite you to listen to two teachings on the subject I did here: www.practicingtheway.org/​practices/​naming.

This page talks about a process of purgation to illumination to union, and other concerning ideas.