Staying With Jesus Means Going Forth

by Dr. John Huynh | November 26, 2025

To stay with Jesus is to be changed by him; and to be changed is to go. The Gospels show that “staying” was never static for the Apostles; it was a lesson of movement. Jesus formed his disciples not to remain cloistered in comfort but to be drawn out of themselves into the life of God and, ultimately, into the world he loved (cf. Mk 3:14).

The call to “stay with Jesus” is first a summons to conversion. When Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, he imagined triumph instead of the cross. Jesus immediately rebuked him: “You are thinking not as God does, but as humans do” (Mk 8:33). Conversion—metanoia—means precisely that shift from human calculation to divine plan, from selfishness to self-gift. This radical re-ordering of the heart is the foundation of discipleship.

But the paradox of the Gospel is that such staying is inseparable from going. The one who abides in Christ cannot remain still because love cannot remain contained. To follow Jesus is to walk behind him on the road to Jerusalem: the road of service, suffering, and resurrection. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mk 8:34). The verbs are all dynamic. We stay by moving with him.

Mark’s Gospel traces this journey of conversion in three acts. The disciples must learn that greatness lies not in dominance but in service; that authority is measured by love; that salvation is not the preservation of life but its offering. Jesus never condemns the desire to be great; instead, he redefines it (cf. Mark 10:43–44). Staying with Jesus therefore means letting our ambitions be purified until our work, our ministry, and even our striving for holiness become service rather than self-promotion.

At Pentecost, this conversion reaches its climax. Those who once argued about rank now speak of “the mighty acts of God” (Acts 2:11). Their tongues, once divided by ego, are united in mission. The Spirit turns their staying in the upper room into a going forth to the ends of the earth. They no longer seek to make a name for themselves but to proclaim the name of Jesus.

For us, the lesson is clear: to stay with Jesus is thus to enter his movement toward the margins—toward the sick, the stranger, the poor, and the forgotten (cf. Lk 4:18-19). The conversion he asks of us is not only inward but outward: to move from indifference to solidarity, from comfort to compassion, from hoarding to giving. When we think as God thinks, we begin to see every person as our neighbor and every injustice as our concern.

Staying with Jesus, then, means making his mission our own so as to heal what is broken in the world. It means walking with him toward the cross, toward resurrection, and toward others. Staying with Jesus means our faith becomes love in action and conversion becomes justice lived out. To stay is to go, because love always moves outward, and where love moves, justice follows.