As Aalders says, ‘Their readiness to follow Jesus immediately would be incomprehensible had they known nothing about Him’, nevertheless Matthew draws attention to the decisiveness of this step. This was a huge change in their lives.
Even though this was a call to full time service, it is still a true picture of the call of the gospel to every unsaved person. The sinner’s response to Christ should be to repent and believe, to forsake all for the sake of Christ. He may not be called to leave current secular employment, but he is called to forsake all known sin, and to yield his entire life into Christ’s hands. Christ must be made Lord, and in future he may ask of us anything he wills and we must be ready to obey. But certainly the world must be forsaken from the start. There is an exchange here. We cannot serve God and mammon. We cannot belong to the world and to Christ at the same time. There is a choice to be made and whichever choice we make, we will have to grasp hold of something and forsake something else. For the disciple of Christ what must be forsaken is ambition, lust, personal opinion. ‘Lord teach me about life, about human beings, about yourself.’ We say to him, ‘Lord, I cannot do this by myself. Help me to let go of the old life. I give myself to you. I am ready to leave all behind for your sake.’