Did Jesus ask us to worship him, or to follow him?

The short answer

Both are in the Gospels. People knelt before him, and he let them. But when he called someone, the words he used were “Follow me.” He asked for people to walk with him and live the way he lived.

What the record says

The Gospels show people worshiping him. After he walked on the water, “those who were in the boat came and worshiped him, saying, ‘You are truly the Son of God’” (Matthew 14:33). On the morning he rose, the women “took hold of his feet, and worshiped him” (Matthew 28:9).

But when he called people, he asked them to come along. He found two fishermen at their nets:

Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you into fishers for men.”

Mark 1:17

He said the same two words to a tax collector at his booth, “Follow me” (Mark 2:14). He said them to Philip (John 1:43). Later he said them to everyone:

If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Matthew 16:24

On his last night he washed his friends’ feet, then told them why:

For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

John 13:15

He asked one question of people who praised him but didn’t change. “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

And when a woman asked him the right place to worship, he pointed her past every mountain and building, to the Father. “The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,” he said (John 4:23).

How The Narrow Gate tells it

The Narrow Gate is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter four, “The Fishermen,” he is heading north to Galilee and calls men one at a time on the road. Philip asks whether he should go on to John the Baptist or go with his friends.

“Follow me.”

Philip drops his bag and catches it by the strap before it hits the dust. Then he runs to get his friend Nathanael, who isn’t impressed by a man from Nazareth. Yeshua says the same two words to him. Nathanael picks up his bag and joins them on the road north.