How the Hard Work of Following Jesus Can Be Easy and Light
One of Jesus’s most often quoted sayings comes from Matthew 11:28–30:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
For context, a yoke is a wooden frame joining two animals together to pull heavy loads. It was often used as a metaphor for one person’s subjugation or following of another in the ancient world. This also made it an idiom in Judaism for the Law of God—the people of Israel hooked their yoke to this Law, or at least they were supposed to, anyway.
When Jesus talks about his yoke, it was both expected and yet surprising. It was normal for a religious teacher to explain what yoking oneself to God or to the teacher’s teachings would look like. What would have surprised his listeners is that he, a religious leader, would describe his yoke as easy and light. You might expect a teacher to use words like “demanding,” “sacrificing,” “rewarding” even, but not “easy” and “light.” Yet this is what Jesus says it is like to be yoked to him.
Now this sounds really good. Jesus claims he can give us rest for our souls. Who couldn’t use more rest? Who doesn’t want more weight lifted off their shoulders? This is the type of teaching from Jesus anyone could get behind.
The problem, however, is that following Jesus is hard. Jesus asks his followers to do things that go completely against our nature. Instead of saving and spending our hard-earned money on our own needs and desires, Jesus asks his followers to be radically generous to others. Instead of shouting down or fighting our enemies, Jesus asks his followers to love and pray for them. Instead of gossiping about or paying back those who deeply wound us, Jesus asks his followers always to seek to forgive.
How are we supposed to be generous when it’s hard enough to pay our own bills? How do we love and pray for people who believe and do things that repulse us? How do we forgive someone who abused and took advantage of us?
How is doing any of that easy or light?
The answer is, it’s not. It’s actually pretty hard and weighty. In fact, if you were to read Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, you would walk away thinking, “this is impossible.” What he says in the Sermon on the Mount is actually harder than not following him at all. So, in what sense is Jesus’s burden easy and light?
What makes Jesus’s burden restful, easy, and light is that the reward of faithfulness is given on the front end, not after you prove your worth. In every other ideological or religious system, the follower of that system must obey the rules, do the right things, and perform first. If you do what is asked of you, then you are allowed into the fellowship.
Yet Jesus reverses the order of these things. Jesus’s yoke is easy and light because it is him that makes us right before God. It is his performance—his sinless life, death, and resurrection—that invites us into fellowship with God. It is his ability to perfectly uphold the Law that redeems us. This means we don’t follow Jesus hoping to one day earn his love, but we follow Jesus because he has first given us his love before we have proved anything. Jesus’s yoke is not about our performance, but our living in the freedom that our acceptance is not actually based on our efforts at all.
We know living in the way of Jesus isn’t “easy,” so how can he say his yoke is easy and light?
We are loved, forgiven, and accepted first, and it is not our following that earns us God’s love (like following the Law). We are already loved, so we live out of that reality.
When you know God generously gave of his son for you in a way you could never pay back, it’s easy to be generous to others. When you know you have been forgiven, it’s a lot easier to extend forgiveness to others. When you know that Christ died for his enemies (Rom. 5:6–8), it’s a lot easier to love your own enemies. Jesus is simply inviting us into his way of living.
In Matthew 11, Jesus is talking to his disciples—those who were traveling with Jesus and learning from him—Jesus’s apprentices. And what is the goal of an apprentice to Jesus? I would submit apprenticing to Jesus involves three main things:
Being with Jesus
Becoming like Jesus (in how you live)
Doing what Jesus would do if he were you (to the best of your knowledge and ability)
What is fascinating about being an apprentice or disciple of Jesus is that for all Jesus did, for all his teaching and praying and healing and time with people, you cannot read the Gospels and see a man who was “busy.”
He lived an unhurried life, and even when he was (often) interrupted, what did he do? He still helped people. One example is found in Matthew 12. After healing a man on the Sabbath it says this in verses 14–15: “But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, how they might kill him. Jesus was aware of this and withdrew. Large crowds followed him, and he healed them all.”
Jesus did a lot during his three years of ministry, yet he wasn’t busy. His interruptions didn’t get in the way of what he was trying to accomplish—instead, he seemed to welcome and invite them.
Following Jesus is also an invitation to break one of the biggest yokes in our culture today: busyness.
Therefore, those of us who are ourselves apprentices of Jesus should consider what it looks like to live at Jesus’s pace. John Mark Comer, in his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, writes, “In America you can be a success as a pastor and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus; you can gain a church and lose your soul.”
You can be successful at your job and be a failure at what matters most. You can have a busy schedule (or due to poor practices and habits, feel like you always have a busy schedule), yet not be putting on the light and easy yoke of Jesus. Busyness isn’t faithfulness; trying to measure up isn’t faithfulness; walking with Jesus is.
Which means we do the hard things of walking with Jesus. We’re generous, we’re forgiving, and we’re loving to the difficult people in our lives. But we do this because Jesus first did it for us, not because he won’t love us if we don’t.
The Message paraphrases Matthew 11:28–30 in this way:
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
Be with Jesus. Become like Jesus. Do what he would do if he were you. And do all of these things in the free and light yoke of a savior who loves you no matter how well you perform.
Dylan Dodson is the lead pastor of New City Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the host of the Dylan Dodson Church Leadership Podcast and helps people build better habits through his weekly newsletter, The Best Minute. You can connect with him at DylanDodson.com, Twitter, and Instagram.