The Road to Jerusalem

The Road to Jerusalem
By Anna Boberg

Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.
Luke 9:51

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The road into Jerusalem was not an easy road. It climbed upward through rocky terrain and barren hills, exposed to sun and wind. Those who traveled it knew they were ascending—the city sat high on its mount, and every step carried the pilgrim closer to the house of God. It was this road that Jesus set His face toward when He knew what awaited Him. And it was this road that He invited His disciples to walk with Him.

That invitation has never been withdrawn. As Oswald Chambers wrote, “In our Christian life, the goal is given to us at the beginning: we start with Christ and we end with him; the beginning and the end are the same. Disciples live this out in their willingness to follow Jesus wherever he leads. The aim of the Christian life is to do the will of God by following Jesus when he says, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem.’” The path is not metaphorical. It is daily and real—a life walked step by step in the company of Christ. George Whitefield put it simply: “Following Christ means following him through life, following him in every word and gesture.” Not only to Gethsemane and Calvary, but along dusty roads, in storm-tossed ships, and into pressing crowds. C.S. Lewis observed that “our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.” The covenant path is walked in ordinary shoes, on ordinary ground.

And we do not walk it perfectly. We stumble. We lose sight of the road. But as Michelle D. Craig testified, “When I stumble, I will keep getting up, relying on the grace and enabling power of Jesus Christ. I will stay in my covenant with Him … and seek His Spirit every day by doing the small and simple things.” The beauty of the covenant path is not that it demands perfection but that it provides a companion. Emily Belle Freeman promised, “He will meet us where we are as we walk with Him.” Every time we turn back toward Jerusalem—toward the temple, toward our covenants, toward Him—we find that He has not gone ahead without us. He is there beside us, waiting to accompany us.

Russell M. Nelson taught that the doctrine of Christ “helps us find and stay on the covenant path. Staying on that narrow but well-defined path will ultimately qualify us to receive all that God has.” The road to Jerusalem always ascends. It asks something of us with every step. But the Psalmist’s ancient question carries its own quiet promise: “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalms 24:3–4). The road is open. The Lord walks it still. And He asks only that we walk with Him: “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us” (Ephesians 5:2).

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