Disciples

The word disciple literally means a follower or student of a teacher, and the question being answered is what does it look like to make these disciples, to fulfill Jesus’ last command on earth to go and baptize men and woman, not to leave them damp with a prayer of good luck for the future, but to teach them everything commanded by their Lord.

God did not create man to walk through life alone. All men walk through life in community with friends taking the form of many varied and unusual relationships, but nonetheless, only the twisted, lonely man goes through life without any human bond. And surely most would answer they seek companionship out of a need for joy, out of a need to remain human. One pair finds community over a game of chess and coffee, and the other through intense stretching of each other’s mind in the field of science. Yet however varied, they all do so understanding, and more importantly feeling the benefit of knowing another who is like them in the most basic sense of sharing humanity. We were built to share parts of ourselves with others, whether there is much in common or only a mutual liking for chess and coffee and nothing else. A minimal mutual interest is the most basic requirement of relationship, and is itself almost riskless requiring little genuine love or self-sacrifice. If a game is the common link between two people, then the sharing of life needs to exceed little more then a common joy and the reciprocal disappointment when one of the players calls checkmate. But what of brothers or sisters who have the highest good in common? Surely this bond requires much more depth then the bonds needed to play a friendly game of chess. If the meeting ground of the two is the infinite grace, and unmatched worth of an infinite God, then there is infinitely more of the persons that must be shared. Perhaps this forms the command to sacrifice all of ourselves and consider the well being of others as more important than our own.

C.S. Lewis said we should indeed be merry in our relationships, but that our merriment should be of the most severe kind, as two people that have taken each other seriously from the beginning. When people who have Christ as their new life enter into relationship, it is required to work itself out in the upper reaches of heaven and never in the low valleys of earth where we once roamed. To share life like those who have mere hobbies to unite under would be more foolish then the man who only nibbles on crackers for his daily meal when an endless feast is arrayed on the table before him.

The call of Christ to make disciples is a call to take each other seriously, not in the solemn sense of the word, but to have significant, weighty relationships centered on the bond of Jesus. In talking about intentional discipleship between two believers, we assume that one has walked deeper and more obediently with the Lord and can truthfully say as Paul did, “follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” To make a disciple is not to create a carbon copy of oneself, but to point a person to Christ, to point them to the true source of life. Jesus in the only true vine and he commands us to abide richly in his love. “Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” The purpose of discipleship is for someone who has tasted the sweet fruit of Jesus’ love to point the other to the orchard of grace and life that is single-hearted obedience to Christ. Only the Spirit can change hearts, so we are left with the job of pointing; pointing through our day to day mundane actions, through encouragement, through prayer, through the sharp sword of scripture.

What good would it be if we did Christianity alone without help from those who had gone before us? This is the natural course of things. None of use would know how to read if someone more efficient at reading had not instructed us in the way that reading works. I need men who have walked with Jesus more deeply than I have to point me to him. I need men who have laughed and cried more then me and have trusted in Jesus to be who he is. I need men who have yearned for the Lord on deep levels I haven’t discovered, and I need men to teach me how to obey the Lord when my flesh fights with all its might. I need wiser men to be obedient to the call of Jesus to make disciples. And I must be obedient to Jesus to point the way along the road that is life, even if I have traveled but a few miles more.