Skip to main content

The cost of being a disciple


In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a follower, a student and an apprentice of a rabbi (a spiritual teacher). If one wanted to become a rabbi, one trained as a disciple-apprentice to a rabbi, learned from him, followed him, and then started to do as the rabbi did. Jesus, by the way, was a self-taught rabbi; as God’s son he did not need to learn from a human rabbi.

Jesus commands us to be his disciples. We follow him, we learn how to live the spiritual life that he wants for us, we learn his teaching, and we spread his teaching to others and encourage them to become disciples of our Lord. Being a disciple, then, entails a cost, because we must give up everything to become his disciples [Luke 14.33]. There’s no room for the sort of easy-believism that has become popular today.

One could be a faithful disciple, or a disciple who is ineffective or inactive (just as one could be a good or bad student, but a student nonetheless; in fact, ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ come from the Latin word for ‘student’). A faithful disciple will seek to become disciplined, that is, trained in the ways of his/her master, and to become an effective discipler and servant to others. But we don’t have a choice in the matter – all who are Christians are called to be his disciples; we can’t be believers without following after him and doing as he teaches us.

Discipleship entails a cost of total commitment – leaving behind everything to follow Christ. When the original twelve disciples were called, they left their jobs and businesses (like their fishing boats) and homes to follow Christ and change the world. While most of us are not called to full-time Christian service, we nonetheless surrender everything that we hold dear to him. We may have many hopes and dreams, many plans and ambitions, goals and desires for our lives. But if Christ is not the center of those, they will be in vain. His plans for us may be different. And we must discern the longings of our hearts, what drives and motivates us. Is all that we do driven by pride, the desire to win the praise of men, the desire to live “the good life” or fulfill our own potential in our own way? Is it driven by anything else other than our personal commitment to Christ? If so, we must let it go.

We are to let go of our claims and desires for success, wealth, status, or whatever the world has to offer, in order to offer ourselves fully to our Lord. That alone is hard enough for some people, especially those who already enjoy some of those perks. But Christ expects even more than that, if we are serious about this call – he speaks of giving up everything [Luke 14.33]. We must let go of our other things that we are mentally and emotionally attached to – career, other people, ambitions, desires, things we think we need, things we think we deserve, or anything – though some of these may be good, they can come between us and God if they are more important to us than he is. We must make Christ the greatest attachment of our hearts. He must be the center of our thoughts, our plans, our entire lives.

This, then, requires discernment, praying and asking God to show us the state of our hearts, including our deepest motives and desires, and bringing those into submission to his will. We must pray to surrender everything to him. And we engage in the spiritual disciplines of a disciple to bring ourselves into alignment with him.

Christ wants not just all that we have or all we do; he wants the full attention and devotion of our hearts. We must cast aside any hindrances to his lordship, be they internal things of our hearts, or external things. This is the painful but necessary cost of discipleship. Only then can we fully follow him, and only when we fully follow him can we see where he wants to take us.


[Originally published in OEM Newsletter, Feb. 2010]




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evangelicalism's gradual demise

The term "evangelical" was popularized by Martin Luther ("evangelisch" in German), which meant a follower of the gospel. The term was originally a very good and useful term, as it referred to someone who believed in a religion based on faith and following the teachings of Christ, rather than man-made religious rules. It was meaningful enough but also broad enough to encompass a general theological orientation and religious lifestyle. It could include and accommodate somewhat different views or interpretations of Christian belief, including those who focused more on the grace, spirituality and lifestyle of Christ. As such, it was not the exclusive property of one religious group or theological orientation. The meaning has been generally positive in modern church history. However, in recent decades the term has been hijacked by fundamentalists who insist on a narrow interpretation of the term, insisting on a set of specific theological beliefs, while ignoring the C...
Post a Comment
Read more

Portraits of Christ: John’s Gospel, part 2

In John’s Gospel we have an emphasis on Jesus that is unique compared to the other gospels. John not only emphasizes his deity, but his mysteriousness. The reader is left with an impression of Jesus as a mystical teacher, in the sense that his words and actions are not only those of a profound religious teacher, but of one who is other-worldly. So often in this gospel we read of Jesus making statements that the crowds, the religious teachers, and even his own disciples sometimes could not fathom. For starters, there are the “I am” statements (e.g., I am the bread of life; I am the living water; I am the good shepherd; I am the way, the truth, and the life), which were clearly claims to divinity, for these statements in the Jewish context referred to God’s title “I am,” given when Moses inquired of his name at the burning bush. Jesus makes much use of mystical metaphors like these and others, like all the ‘day’ and ‘night’ references in this book, which portrays him as mystical or my...
Post a Comment
Read more

Portraits of Christ: Luke’s Gospel

Particularly in Luke, we see a Jesus born and raised in the backwaters of insignificant Jewish towns - born in Bethlehem, and growing up in the small farm village of Nazareth. You would think that if God mainly cared for or wanted to influence the powerful and mighty of the world, then Jesus should have been born in Rome, or Athens, or Alexandria, or at least Jerusalem. Instead he is born to a peasant girl named Mary in the middle of nowhere, at a time when the province of Judea suffered under poverty and oppression. Incredibly, her peasant son changed the world. But he never did it by allying himself with the rich and powerful or even seeking them out in order to implement his program. Usually if you want to start an influential movement, even as a grassroots movement, you would still recruit some wealthy donors and celebrities or leaders to promote your movement. Jesus did it totally opposite. He did not even focus on winning over the religious establishment; in fact, he often chall...
Post a Comment
Read more