What is discipleship?

Question 11019.

Christian discipleship has become a word we use for programmes: a course, a booklet, a six-week series for new believers. The New Testament uses it for something considerably larger, and considerably less optional.

A disciple is a learner who follows a teacher in order to become like him. That is the whole idea, and everything else follows from taking it seriously rather than from finding the right material.

What a disciple is

The Greek word is mathetes, a learner or apprentice. In the ancient world a disciple did not simply attend lectures; he attached himself to a teacher, went where the teacher went, and absorbed a way of living as much as a body of information.

That is exactly what Jesus called people to. Follow me, He said, and I will make you fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). The call was to a person before it was to a programme, and the training happened on the road rather than in a classroom.

Which is why Christian discipleship cannot be reduced to a curriculum. You can complete a course without changing, and no ancient disciple would have recognised that as an outcome.

Christian discipleship is not a second stage

Some traditions distinguish between believers and disciples, as though salvation were the entry level and Christian discipleship an optional upgrade for the committed. The New Testament does not speak that way. In Antioch the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), and the two words describe the same people.

This matters because the alternative produces two damaging classes: nominal believers who feel no obligation to grow, and an elite who mistake their enthusiasm for a higher grade of salvation. Neither exists in Scripture.

Salvation is by grace through faith and not by works, and I hold that firmly. But the person saved by grace has been joined to Christ, and a life that shows no sign of following Him raises a fair question about what actually happened, which is the concern behind Jesus’ words about hearing and doing.

The terms Jesus set

He never disguised the cost. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23). A cross in that world was not a metaphor for an irritating colleague; it was an instrument of execution carried by a condemned man.

He told the crowds to count the cost before starting, using the pictures of a builder estimating a tower and a king assessing an army (Luke 14:28-33). Christian discipleship that is presented as a life enhancement has misrepresented the terms at the outset.

None of this contradicts grace. The call to follow is issued to people who have already been received, and the cross a disciple carries is not the price of acceptance but the shape of a life lived by someone already accepted. Confusing those two turns discipleship into a treadmill, which is precisely what Jesus offered rest from.

And He named the priority sharply, saying that anyone who does not hate father and mother in comparison with Him cannot be His disciple. It is the language of comparison rather than of hostility, and the point is that nothing else may hold the first place.

How Jesus actually trained people

He chose twelve to be with Him, and then to be sent out to preach (Mark 3:14). Notice the order. Being with Him came first, and the sending grew out of it.

The method was proximity rather than instruction alone. They watched Him pray and then asked to be taught. They saw Him with lepers, tax collectors and hostile scholars. They were sent out, came back, and were debriefed. They failed publicly and were restored publicly.

That is a considerably messier model than a course, and a good deal more effective. Christian discipleship happens where life is shared, which is why the New Testament assumes a body of believers who actually know one another rather than an audience.

What it produces

The aim is likeness. A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). Paul says God’s purpose is that we be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

That likeness shows in character before it shows in activity. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), and a believer growing in those things is being discipled whether or not anyone has used the word.

Do not expect it to be even. Growth in one area often runs alongside stubborn failure in another, and a believer may be generous and impatient, brave and proud, at the same time. Christian discipleship is not a tidy ascent, and anyone describing their own as one is either very young in the faith or not paying attention.

It also shows in obedience. If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15). Christian discipleship is measured in what a person does on an ordinary Tuesday rather than in what they can articulate about doctrine.

The ordinary means

There is no secret here. Scripture, prayer, the gathered church, the Lord’s Supper, service, giving and suffering are the means God uses, and they are the same ones He has always used.

Time is the other ingredient nobody wants. Growth is slow, uneven, and often invisible to the person growing. The apostles were with Jesus for three years and were still arguing about status at the last supper, which ought to encourage anyone impatient with their own progress.

So Christian discipleship is less about intensity than about direction sustained over decades. The person who reads a little each day and turns up faithfully for twenty years will be transformed. The person who attends a conference and buys the book usually will not.

What gets in the way

Two things block Christian discipleship more than any doctrinal confusion. The first is busyness. A life with no margin has no room for the slow work of formation, and most of us have arranged our weeks so that there is nothing left to give. Jesus never appears rushed in the Gospels, which is worth pondering by anyone who claims to be following Him.

The second is comfort. In much of the West, following Jesus costs almost nothing socially, and a faith that has never been tested tends to stay shallow. Believers in places where the cost is real often display in five years what we fail to reach in fifty, and the difference is not their teaching material.

There is a third, less discussed. A good many Christians have never been discipled by anyone, and so have no idea how to disciple another. The chain broke a generation or two back, and what replaced it was attendance. Rebuilding it takes individuals willing to do for someone younger what nobody did for them.

None of this requires a new programme. Christian discipleship needs time, honesty and somebody willing to go first, and every congregation already contains people who could offer all three if they were asked directly rather than by general appeal from the front.

Where the church comes in

You cannot be discipled alone. The New Testament instructions are relentlessly plural: love one another, bear with one another, forgive one another, teach and admonish one another, confess to one another.

Practically, that means committed membership of a local congregation rather than attendance at a venue. It means being known well enough to be corrected, and knowing others well enough to be inconvenienced by them. I have written about why the gathering matters at more length.

It also means older believers taking younger ones seriously. Paul told Titus that older women should teach the younger, and the pattern of one generation training the next is the ordinary engine of Christian discipleship in every healthy church I have known.

So, now what?

Ask what you are actually being formed by. Everyone is being discipled by something, and for most of us the strongest formative influences are a screen and a schedule rather than a Saviour.

Then take one concrete step. Join a congregation properly, ask an older believer to meet you monthly, or start reading a Gospel with someone. Christian discipleship advances by such unremarkable decisions, and I have written on how we make disciples for those wanting to help others along.

Be realistic about the timescale as well. Nobody is discipled in a term, and the people who gave up on Christian discipleship usually did so because they expected visible progress on a schedule that suits nothing else in nature either. Trees, children and character all take longer than we would like.

And ask the question Jesus asked the first two men who followed Him: what are you seeking? It is worth answering honestly before you answer anything else.

And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Luke 9:23, ESV