In Christian circles, there is an on-going
debate concerning the difference (if such a thing exists) between being a
Christian and being a disciple. For me, there is no difference. A Christian who
is obedient to the Lord Jesus will be a disciple as well as a disciple-maker. Simply
stated, a person cannot be a Christian – a follower of Christ – unless they are
also a disciple of Christ. Only recently have I turned the question around and asked
what may be an even more radical question: Can a person be a disciple without
being a Christian?
In “The Great Commission” of Matt. 28:18-20, Christ
calls every Christian to make disciples. Disciple making is not a spiritual gift
that God has given to a few, but a command He has given to all Christians. All who claim to know
Christ as Savior are called to be disciples, but to be a disciple requires that
we make disciples.
Yet how many of us who hold so firmly to our
eternal salvation can actually say that we have even made one disciple in our life times? If the
standard of reward in heaven is how many disciples follow along with us, how
many of us will have even one to offer to Christ?
Can you name one person whose life has been so
impacted for Christ by your efforts on a personal basis that they have turned
around and impacted the lives of someone else for Christ?
In his book Radical
(which I believe should be entitled Normal),
David Platt wrote the following:
Any Christian can do this. You don’t need to have inordinate skill
or unusual abilities to make disciples. You don’t need to be a successful
pastor or a charismatic leader to make disciples. You don’t need to be a great
communicator or an innovative thinker to make disciples. That’s why Jesus says
every Christian must do this.[1]
I believe I am right when I say
that the church (at least in the last couple of centuries) has come to see
discipleship as the next step after getting saved – that before we can help
someone grow in their relationship with Christ they must first have a
relationship with Christ. While it is true that they must have a relationship
with Christ, we are wrong to assume that that relationship must be defined as a
salvation experience.
When Jesus commissioned his
followers to make disciples, I don’t think He had in mind what we have
traditionally had in our minds – first get them saved, then teach them the
things of Christ and the Bible. In the Great Commission, Jesus told the
disciples first to make disciples from all people groups and then to baptize
them. Discipleship begins before a person ever comes to know Christ as Savior.
The belief that salvation
precedes discipleship has led the church to place its greatest ministry
emphasis on evangelism – on leading people to Christ and getting them saved and
baptized – whereas the emphasis of the Great Commission is on discipleship, not
evangelism. By placing the majority of our emphasis on justification instead of
transformation, we have created a church which is very wide, but at the same
time is very shallow. It encompasses large numbers of people under a very broad
umbrella while making very little positive impact on the moral and ethical
nature of our society or on the long-term spiritual development of families and
future generations.
Evangelism is without a doubt a
very critical part of discipleship, but it is only a part. It is not the end of
discipleship. Making converts is the work of God in Christ by the agency of the
Holy Spirit through the power of the spoken word of God (Rom. 10.17).
Discipleship is the shared responsibility of sanctification in which a person
is conformed to the image of Christ – God’s ultimate purpose in the plan of
redemption (Rom. 8:29). And it begins before salvation. It is a process God
intended to take place within the context of close and personal relationships.
Furthermore, when Jesus gave the
Great Commission, He was not telling the disciples to go make disciples out of
other Christians. As far as we know, all of the Christians in the world may
have been standing on that mountain with Christ. The Bible says (Matt. 28:16) that
Jesus instructed the eleven disciples to meet him on a mountain in Galilee, but
it does not say that He excluded others from the meeting. Furthermore, verse 16
says “some doubted.”
In light of all that the
disciples had witnessed in the days preceding this appointment with Jesus, we
might question why they would have any doubts at all. However, if we assume
that there were others there besides the eleven Apostles – some who had never
heard or seen Jesus before – then the fact that some doubted begins to make
more sense.
Paul mentioned that 500 people
together at one time witnessed the resurrected Christ (1 Cor. 15:6). Since this
meeting between Christ and his disciples was the only meeting following the
resurrection that was definitely appointed (Matt. 26:32), the Expositor’s
Commentary proposes that as many Christians as possible may have made the trip
to Galilee to participate in such a momentous event and would thus have heard
the Great Commission in the flesh. [2]
Of course, all of this is
speculation, yet when Jesus commissioned his followers to make disciples, He
intended for them to make those disciples, not out of other Christians, but out
of “ethnos” – a word the Jews used to refer to people who were not Jewish – in
other words, the heathen or pagan peoples of the world. The fact is, that’s the
only kind of people there were in the world at the time Jesus gave the Great
Commission.
For most of my church experience, the primary
emphasis of discipleship has been education – about gaining knowledge – about
learning what “thus saith the Lord.” We tended to measure our success as disciples
by how much knowledge we had attained instead of how much we had come to look
like Christ or by how many other people we had helped come to look like Christ.
Much to my own chagrin, I believed in this
concept and modeled my own ministry on the idea of gaining and proclaiming
knowledge. I taught much about the Lord, but very rarely became so involved
with individual Christians that they could see the practical truth of the
things I was teaching demonstrated in my own walk. In large part, this practice
contributed to a very disappointing end of my first independent pastorate – but
that is another story for another time.
Listen to the Apostle Paul’s caution concerning knowledge:
We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but
love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he
ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God. (1 Cor. 8:1-3, NIV)
Paul appears to teach that when we define
Christian growth in terms of knowledge, we become “puffed up” – all bloated
with air, looking bigger and more influential than we really are, having as
much effect against the gates of hell as a marshmallow gun against the black
gates of Mordor. When we believe that we are in the process of becoming more
and more Christ-like as we gain more and more knowledge, we are only deceiving
ourselves. How close we have attained to the image of Christ is not measured by
how much we know, but by how much we love God which is evidenced by how much we
love other people (1 Cor. 13:1-2).
The following thoughts are excerpted from a
lecture concerning Christ-centered preaching by Dr. Bryan Chapell of Covenant Theological Seminary. After a reference to 1
Cor. 8:1 (knowledge puffs up), he made the following comments which reinforce
what Paul said:
(Knowledge) is actually harmful to us unless there is some way in
which it is being used for God’s purposes... God is saying, “What I desire from
you is not simply your knowledge of the Word but your ability to communicate it
to others.”...For us to really know what God is saying, we have to be actively
involved in communicating it to others.[3]
When you couple those verses with the following words
of Jesus from John’s Gospel, a picture begins to emerge that better defines
what is meant by being a disciple.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments... Whoever has my
commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be
loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him... If you
keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my
Father’s commandments and abide in his love. (John 14: 15, 21; John 15:10)
Do you have a desire to have a more intimate
relationship with God – to experience a closer walk with the Creator of the
Universe and the Lord of Eternity? To be known by God, you must love God. How
do you love God? By obeying His commands. What was Jesus’ last command before
His ascension? Go and make disciples.
Discipleship is not simply sitting in a class
and reading a book and taking notes, no matter how interesting the class or how
well it is taught. Discipleship is about going – about being personally and
intentionally involved in the life of at least one other person – more
specifically, a lost person – for the glory of God, for that person’s spiritual
well being, and for your own spiritual growth.
Jesus said in Matt.
5:14, “You are the light of the world.” Commenting on Jesus’ words, Adrian Rogers
explained that Jesus had cause us to be “the light of the world, not the light
of the church. That means we have to get beyond the church walls and take the
light out to where it is dark.” [4]
Furthermore, there is no need for us to wait
until we have learned how to make disciples or until we have arrived at some
educational level or until we have had enough experience. How much would you
have to know and how much experience do you need to build a relationship with
one other person that would allow you to share the Gospel message with them? Christ
intended for us to learn as we make disciples. Better yet, He intended
for us to learn by making disciples.
For those who hold to the idea
that a person must have a relationship with Christ before they can be a
disciple – I will grant that there is something to be said for that idea.
Most of us have heard that
discipleship begins with relationship. In other words, we need to become
friends with lost people and talk to them about Christ (in other words, begin
the discipleship process with them) even before they come to know Christ as
Savior. As a result, a lost person who has a relationship with a saved person
who understands the meaning of making disciples already has a relationship with
Christ, for “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal (to lost
people) through us.” (2 Cor. 5:20)
As you pray for God to give you
a disciple – someone you can pour your life into for the glory of God and the
sake of the kingdom – don’t expect that person to be a Christian, although they
may be. Think about discipleship as the means of evangelism. Begin with a lost
person – end up with a brother or sister in Christ who prayerfully will be so inspired
by what Christ did for them through you that they will go out and, modeling
themselves on your example, begin to make disciples, too.
2 Tim. 2:2 You have heard me
teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these
truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.
(NLT)
There’s nothing in that verse
that says that the “other trustworthy people” to whom we teach “these truths”
have to be saved people when they begin the process of discipleship.
[1] Platt, David. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith
from the American Dream. Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2010, p. 90.
[2] Nicoll, William R. "Commentary on Matthew 28:16".
Expositor's Bible Commentary. http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/teb/view.cgi?bk=39&ch=28
[3] Not sure how to cite this reference. Click
here for a pdf of the transcript of the lecture by Dr. Chapell. Click
here to go to the webpage and listen to the entire
lecture.
[4] Rogers, Adrian. "How
Can We Be the "Light of the World"?" Jesus.Org. N.p., n.d.
Web. 17 Nov. 2014. http://www.jesus.org/following-jesus/evangelism-and-missions/how-can-we-be-the-light-of-the-world.html
