Let’s Talk Discipleship

Obey and Teach the Commandments (Photo credit: Fr. Stephen, MSC)

“Discipleship was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. Saying that, it is not surprising that the word disciple is used more than 250 times in the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament is the story of disciples, written by disciples who wanted to make disciples. An those disciples dramatically changed their world.”

Today in western culture, the disciple making mission of Jesus and His followers is not as clear. Contemporary Christianity does not always make discipleship central to the faith. Many who call themselves Christians don’t even know what a disciple is. While we readily agree that it is essential to believe in Jesus as our Savior, we tend to treat His Lordship in our lives as a desirable option. If we don’t recognize the importance of discipleship , we tend to think that obeying God‘s commands is a worthwhile goal but less important than being saved. We view discipleship as a goal that only a few “all-star” believers can attain!

Jesus and His disciples had a very different view of discipleship. They made no distinction between “being saved” and living in obedience to God. To be saved was to be totally committed to a life of obedience – to walk as the Rabbi walked, to become like Him. They did not do this in order to be saved, they did it because they were saved. Thus the goal of the Christian community is not to make converts but to make disciples.

Dietrich Bonheoffer said, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” James, the brother of Jesus and the author of the book of James, said, “… faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”

Since few of us know what discipleship is, let’s examine what discipleship meant to Jesus and the apostles. In the next few posts, we will examine the practices of first century rabbis and their disciples – their love for and knowledge of Scripture and their passionate desire to give up everything in order to obey God as their rabbi did.

Related articles

• This Sunday Oct 28 -“How do WELL Disciples Reproduce?” (riverrockchurch.com)
• How Jesus Made Disciples (geoffsurratt.com)
• Bartimaeus: A model of Christian discipleship (junjunfaithbook.com)
• THIS – is Discipleship! (worldventureghana.wordpress.com)

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