INTRODUCTION TO DISCIPLESHIP

In the Great Commission, Jesus told His followers to go and make disciples of all nations. What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? Why is that important? The answers to these and other related questions are vital to Christianity today being what Christ intended it to be. As we move into a new millennium, we need to look back at the teaching of the Scriptures, and the example of Christ to see what authentic discipleship looks like.

I remember when, as a new believer, I used to go out visiting people in their homes on Thursday evenings. One particular Thursday proved to be a challenge to me and my visitation partner. We spent almost an hour at the door of a man who had visited our church the week before. This man was argumentative and belligerent. My visitation partner, who was more experienced at “soul winning” as we called it at the time, met this opposition with great persistence. Finally my partner asked the man if he would just pray to accept Christ as his Savior. The man relented and reluctantly followed the lead of my partner in the sinner’s prayer. Needless to say, my partner and I rejoiced all the way back to the church where we testified to this great feat of religiosity that we had accomplished. We never saw that man again. I later came to suspect that the man just said what he thought we wanted to hear in order to get rid of us.

I have to believe that God had more in mind when He commanded His church to “make disciples.” Do not get me wrong on this point. I am not saying that door to door evangelism is wrong or outdated. In the right setting, it may be the only way to reach a particular community. I am also not saying that the man we talked to was not “saved.” We are saved by grace through faith. I am saying I have no way of knowing if he was born again or not. One might counter, “There is no way to ever know if someone is really saved.” I understand the sentiment behind this statement (we cannot ever really know what is in a person’s heart), but is it really true biblically? Jesus said that we can look at another person’s life and see the fruit of discipleship (Matthew 7:16-20, John 8:31, John 13: 35, for example). He also said that we cannot claim to be His disciples if certain things are missing from our lives (Luke 14:26-33, for example).

There is a problem in the church today. We are called to make disciples but we do not know how to do that. Why? This is because many of us are not disciples ourselves. We talk about having a life changing experience but when you look at the lives of Christians compared to others in the community, you do not see much difference. Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not saying that we are saved by our good works. “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5). I am saying that our lives will be different when we accept Christ as our Lord and our Savior. There is a fine line between a biblical belief in a changed life and the legalism of the fundamentalist or the permissiveness of the liberal. Jesus did not come just to give us a new set of laws. Neither did He come so that we could live in the same cesspool of sin that we were in before. He came to give us abundant life. He came to set us free with His truth (as Henry Blackaby says, “Truth is a person.”). If we are going to lead others into this abundant freedom that can only be found in Christ, we must be disciples ourselves. Over the next few weeks we will take a look at biblical discipleship with the hope that our lives will be changed as well as those lives around us. Only when the church takes the call to discipleship seriously, will we be able to fulfill the Great Commission. Remember, He is going to be with us every step of the way. What a shame it would be to refuse to go on the journey.