When I got done with grad school there was one author I really wanted to dig into: A.W. Tozer. I have not been disappointed.

Tozer on walking in righteousness
“Just let me ask: Who said that you can be a Christian without being a disciple? I don’t think you can. The idea that I can come to the Lord and by grace have all of my sins forgiven and have my name written in heaven, and have the Carpenter go to work on a mansion in my Father’s house, and at the same time raise hell on my way to heaven is impossible and unscriptural. It cannot be found in the Bible.

We are never saved by our good works, but we are not saved apart from our good works. Out of our saving faith in Jesus Christ, there springs immediately goodness and righteousness. Spring is not brought by flowers, but you cannot have spring without flowers. It isn’t my righteousness that saves, but the salvation I have received brings righteousness. I think we must face up to this now—that we must walk in righteousness if we are going on to know the Lord. The man who is not ready to live right is not saved, and he will not be saved, and he will be deceived in that great day.

I cannot believe that a man is on the road to heaven when he is habitually performing the kind of deeds that would logically indicate that he ought to be on his way to hell.” (The Counselor pgs. 127-28)

I love that Tozer went & still goes against the grain of popular Christianity. “Who said you can be a Christian without being a disciple?” “It cannot be found in the Bible.”

Apparently people in Tozer’s day were saying you could be a Christian without being a disciple. Tozer wrote another book called “I Call it Heresy", in the first chapter he says,
“The scriptures do not teach that the Person of Jesus Christ nor any of the important offices which God has given Him can be divided or ignored according to the whims of men.

Therefore, I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles - the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Savior and we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to!

This concept has sprung naturally from a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually says about Christian discipleship and obedience. It is now found in nearly all of our full gospel literature. I confess that I was among those who preached it before I began to pray earnestly, to study diligently and meditate with anguish over the whole matter. I think the following is a fair statement of what I was taught in my early Christian experience and it certainly needs a lot of modifying and a great many qualifiers to save us from being in error. "We are saved by accepting Christ as our Savior; we are sanctified by accepting Christ as our Lord; we may do the first without doing the second!"

Tozer hits it home. Let us follow Him.