Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Nature of Discipleship


     There is a question that I have had the occasion to ponder recently.  What exactly is a disciple?  Of course there are lots of patent answers to this question that are used frequently without reservation.  A disciple is a learner.  He studies the ways and methods of his mentor to learn about him.  A disciple is a follower.  She follows after the ways and methods of her mentor.  A disciple is an imitator, imitating the ways and methods of his mentor.  These patent answers are not incorrect.  However, in my own personal contemplation, I have been asking a broader question than just what is a disciple.   I have been asking, what is discipleship?  I feel quite comfortable that I know how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, but I struggle with how to show others how to be a disciple.  I can teach them the Bible and even show them how to study scripture for themselves, but I have real difficulty showing them the absolute imperative of living a life that is fully surrendered to Jesus Christ - and what exactly that looks like on a day by day basis.
     
     In the Christian community, there are way too many books out there describing how to go about discipleship.  Almost without fail, there is some method or program that is proposed that will help in making disciples.  I in no way want to disparage any of these. They all have their own merits, but it always seems to me that something important is missing in the method.  It seems to me that at the end of the day, the success of one's efforts at discipleship ultimately comes down to the individual's own perception and attitude towards grace itself.

     If a "disciple" does not have a right attitude about grace, then it is impossible for that person to be able to comprehend what is means to to be completely surrendered to Christ.  We sing "amazing grace how sweet the sound" but in reality we are neither amazed by it nor do we savor its sweetness. Without understanding the overwhelming magnitude of the grace bestowed upon us, we are inclined to have an overtly shallow comprehension of the phrase "I surrender all."   It becomes a self-deception. The words we sing roll from our lips so easily that we believe in our hearts that we truly have surrendered our all.  And since we believe that we have surrendered our all, we have great difficulty seeing how disobedient and unChristlike our lives truly are.

     When I take a step back from my Westernized religiosity and ask myself in genuine honesty whether or not I am truly surrendered to Jesus Christ, there is only one truthful answer.  No.  Upon that simple confession can be built the solid foundation from which true discipleship can be built.  We sing "I surrender all" as an invitation for the lost to come to Jesus, but after giving our lives to Jesus, we invariably take back much of it for ourselves again.  Those of us who in song are urging the lost to give their all are often blind to the fact that they have only given that which is convenient.  Until we understand how amazing is our grace we can never honestly surrender our all.

     I do not suggest in this that any of us who have such a shallow view are not saved, although it is possible and probable that some or many are not.  I do suggest, however, that such blindness to the magnitude of grace and such blindness to our own failure to surrender our all to Jesus can only be overlooked for so long without incurring permanent spiritual consequences.  Perhaps only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to such blindness.  However, when we come to an honest assessment of ourselves and realize that we truly are not fully surrendered to Christ, then we are faced with a life-altering decision.  At that point, we must choose between a life of surrendered obedience and a life of blatant disobedience.  At that point, we stand at a crossroad and make a decision... Turn left and continue in a life of shallow, self-centered, mediocre Christianity... Or turn right and become a true disciple.  I cannot say whether the person who turned left is lost or saved, but I can assure you that for me, the risks have such high eternal consequences that I am not willing to take them.  Which will it be for you?  Right or Left?

     Ah, but that is not the end of the question.  This recognition of the transcendent cost of grace and the resultant decision to surrender may identify you as a true disciple of Christ, but it still does not help us answer the question as to what is discipleship or how to be a disciple.

     In recent months, I have been greatly influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Bonhoeffer has enlightened my perspective on discipleship in many ways.  Like myself, Bonhoeffer understood that discipleship only happens when the believer is truly surrendered to Jesus Christ in every respect.  Bonhoeffer, however, had a very interesting perspective on what that looked like in the believer's life.  Bonhoeffer believed that discipleship came by living according to the Sermon on the Mount and he based much of his instruction on Christian living on the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount.

     When I think about this approach to discipleship, I find considerable merit in it, but with some important exceptions.  During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said (in Matthew 5:17-18) that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law.  The rest of the Sermon on the Mount, therefore, goes on to dismantle traditional thinking about the law and establish more correct understandings of obedience to the law.  The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, is about the believer's understanding and attitude towards obedience to the law.  This is critical to discipleship and so is very practical for teaching a disciple how to live.  However, it is still about obedience to the law, which the disciple is obligated to, but it is not about faith.  A believer lives by faith and not by the law. As such, understanding the spirit of law and striving towards obedience to it is critical for the believer; but to truly be a disciple, the believer must understand the ongoing implications of faith in his life as well.  To me, therefore, discipleship goes beyond Bonhoeffer's reliance on the Sermon on the Mount to something deeper.

     This deeper thing that the believer needs to understand is the practical side of faith.  Where the Sermon on the Mount gives us a practical look at our expected obedience to the law, we need a similar practical look at faith.  We can find this practical look at faith from the book of James.  The book of James was written to new Jewish believers to help them understand what faith looks like in their lives on a day by day basis.  This is discipleship, and it is not surprising that many of the themes in James are similar to themes from the Sermon on the Mount.

     Many believers live their entire lives thinking that faith is something they have and not something they do.  Many believers are too afraid of falling into a works-based mentality that they limit their understanding of faith to an incomplete association of faith to simple  belief or mental assent.  Faith is so much more than either belief or mental assent that James says in James 2:19 that even the demons believe and shutter.  Faith is a lifestyle that permeates every aspect of the disciple's life and it is alive and living (James 2:26).  The practicality of this living faith is the building blocks for real discipleship.  Deitrich Bonhoeffer would argue that every believer should study and adopt their lives to the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.  I would agree, but I would also say that this will set the believers mind in the right place.  For the believer to take the next step and put their lifestyle in the right place, the believer should also study and adopt the teachings of the book of James. 

For more information on the teachings of the book of James, please check out my book, Faith Beyond Belief - Understanding True Faith from the Book of James (available on amazon.com).

Blog copyright (c) 2013 Joel J. Dison

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