In a perfect world everyone who takes the name of
Christian would be a disciple. Being a Christian should
be synonymous with being totally devoted to our Lord
Jesus Christ. Unfortunately that is simply not the case.
This is not a new problem either. Perhaps one could
point to watered down religion or just too many choices
of things to do outside of church for the root of this
problem. The truth is though that even Jesus had people
who followed Him but were not His disciples.
In John
6, the chapter begins with thousands of people gathered
to hear Jesus speak and the feeding of the 5,000. Once
Jesus began to offer the difficult teaching about the
bread of life, many people left Him. When Jesus asked
the Twelve if they would leave Him too, Peter responds
in John 6:68-69, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you
are the Holy One of God.”
To understand who or what
a true disciple is, we must set aside semantics for a
moment and separate followers from true disciples. A
follower is like a casual fan of a sports team. They are
happy when their team wins and sad when they lose. But
win or lose, life goes on and by the next day everything
is pretty much back to normal. A fanatic’s life revolves
around their sports team though. They are ecstatic when
they win and devastated when they lose. The performance
of their favorite team will definitely affect their mood
the following day.
In terms of Christianity, God
wants fanatics, not just casual followers. Our entire
life should be invested in church so that we are very
interested in its success. The major difference between
following sports and following the Lord is that
following sports is passive. No matter what a fan does,
they won’t affect the outcome for their team. Church is
active however. What we do as Christians absolutely has
an effect on how our church performs. If our church
isn’t doing well, it should bother us enough that we
want to do something to improve the situation.
When
Jesus instructed people to follow Him, He did not want
observers who had an interest in what He was doing. He
wanted people whose lives would be totally devoted to
what He did. He didn’t just want people who would watch
what He did; He wanted people who would do what He did.
In Matthew 10, Jesus sends out His disciples to perform
miracles and to do the things that He did. This wasn’t
just reserved for the twelve men who are formally known
to us as disciples. Jesus later sent out a group of
seventy two to whom He gave similar instructions.
Jesus was never quiet about what it would take to be a
true disciple. In Conditions of Discipleship there are
numerous verses that tell us that a person must be
completely devoted to Jesus if they are to be a
disciple. Nothing is to come before Jesus, including
personal possessions and even family. Moreover a person
must take up their cross daily and hold fast to the
teachings of Jesus. Being a disciple is not a onetime
event but a lifetime of work.
There are three main
requirements to being a disciple.
- A disciple knows
what God expects
- A disciple does what God expects
- A disciple teaches others so that they know what God
expects and then does it
We can’t be an effective
disciple if we have no idea what God expects of us. So a
disciple must be diligent in the study of God’s Word.
This means more than simply attending church on Sunday
morning. Personal study is needed to truly understand
God’s will for our lives. We wouldn’t be in good
physical shape if we only ate once a week. It is the
same case with our spiritual condition. Hearing a sermon
once a week will not leave us spiritually well fed.
Simply knowing what God expects is not enough to make us
disciples however. It needs to be applied. This happens
both consciously and subconsciously. Consciously, we
realize that a certain behavior is expected of us and we
make corrections in our life to conform with those
expectations. Subconsciously, by hearing the examples of
love in the Bible over and over again, we understand
that this is normal for a Christian and become more
loving without thinking about it. The adage “one bad
apple ruins the whole bunch” works in the opposite
direction as well. By being around other Christians who
are living out God’s Word, we are trained to live it as
well.
The third requirement is critical to
discipleship. It is possible to be a very godly person
by following God’s commands but if God’s commands are
not shared with others, Christianity is only one
generation from extinction. Fortunately we have the
Great Commission. One of the commands that we have is to
go and make disciples. If we are obeying God’s commands
we will be making more disciples.
Being a disciple
is not an easy task. It is more than simply following,
it takes hard work and devotion. Jesus Christ must come
above everything else in life. A disciple must learn the
commands of God, then they must obey them. Finally a
disciple passes that knowledge onto others and helps
them to obey the commands as well.
