Discipleship is one of the most important themes in the New Testament.
The New Testament is comprised of books about disciples, written by disciples, for other disciples of Jesus.
The word "disciple" occurs 269 times in the New Testament, while the word "Christian" is used only 3 times. In fact, the word "Christian" was first introduced to describe Jesus' disciples. "And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11.26).
Why the language of "Christian" has come to dominate our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I cannot answer (perhaps it has to do with the institutionalization of the Christian religion?). Whatever the reason, I am most concerned with the reality to which our language points. In the words of Dallas Willard, the truth is:
"For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American [and Canadian] churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership - either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or local church...So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional" (The Great Omission, 4).
The view that discipleship is optional is foreign to the New Testament. The model of life that Jesus demanded of his followers is the way of discipleship - the way of sacrifice, the way of suffering love, the way of the cross and resurrection.
My reflections that follow are a small effort to challenge today's church to return to both the New Testament's language and way of discipleship.
The making of disciples, with a view to enroll people as Christ's students, was at the core of the early churches missionary vision. The goal that Jesus set for his earliest disciples was that they use his power and authority (manifest through the living presence of the Holy Spirit) to make disciples from all nations. This would include baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28.19-20).
So, a follower of Jesus is a special type of person. A disciple is someone who has encountered the Spirit of God and, thus, has been transformed at the core of their being. A disciple has looked, in faith, to the Faithful One - Jesus of Nazareth, who is both the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. And a disciple is someone who is committed to a life of faithfulness and fidelity to Jesus, which includes an ongoing humble devotion to live out Jesus' teachings about discipleship.
What does this look like you ask? Nothing less than a pattern of dying and raising again.
"If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a person, to gain the whole world, and to lose or forfeit his life" (Luke 9.23-25).
And in Romans 6, the apostle Paul says, "For if we have become united with Christ in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin...Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in the Messiah Jesus...present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."
This is the New Testament's picture of a disciple of Jesus (ie. a Christian). A disciple is someone who follows the way of the cross and experiences the power of Jesus' resurrection, all the while looking to the future resurrection of the body. Sacrifice, obedience, suffering, and hope apply to Jesus' disciples no less than to himself.
"For Christ's sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3.8-11).
Consider now, these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross" (The Cost of Discipleship, 87).
What I have described here (in the words of Scripture and the testimony of the later church), is not the deluxe, first rate model of the Christian. This IS the Christian. Surely much more, but no less!
