Defining Discipleship
hey family,
so one of the things that i've heard recently on here, is that we have a real problem with our mission of making disciples, since we haven't really defined that. so here's my crack at it, in the form of commentary on the "great commission", Matt. 8:18-20.
"Jesus came and said to them, “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
if you look at the greek, the only active verb in verse 19 is matheteuw, make disciples. the other 3 verbs (going, baptizing, and teaching) are all participles, which i think means Jesus sees them as 3 parts of disciple making.
1) go: Jesus seems to assume that the disciples will go. i've heard some scholars translate this as "having gone", that going out is a foregone conclusion in Jesus' mind. this first part is us not only reaching out, but going out, putting ourselves out into the mess of this broken world and meeting people where they're at. this is where recent terms like "incarnational ministry" and "being missional" come from. book could be, and have been, written on going out and reaching the lost, but i'll leave it there for now, as simply going to the "them" of the world.
2) baptize: as i've studied the Scriptures, it amazes me how closely the apostles tie salvation and baptism together. they almost use them interchangeably, like in Gal. 3:27, Col. 2:12 and Rom. 6:3-4. God uses this symbol to impress upon us the union with Christ, His death and resurrection, that we have through faith. and it is written, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17) so this is about people coming to saving faith in Christ, being united with Him, and professing that publicly. as a command to Christians, this is about proclaiming the Gospel.
3) teach: if the last part is what modern evangelicalism calls "evangelism", this is what it calls "discipleship". however, i think both of these terms are false, in that evangelism and discipleship are the same. it is a myth that the Gospel is "Christianity 101", something that is basic and mastered and then moved past, and equally unBiblical is the notion that Christians don't need to hear the Gospel.
paul writes in to the Christians in rome, "i am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in rome." he's eager to evangelize (euangelizw) the Christians! because while non-Christians need to hear the Gospel in order to come to Christ in the first, Christians need to understand the depths of the Gospel and how it transforms a life, how it becomes a lifestyle. that's why almost all of paul's letters start out with an unpacking of certain aspects of the God's ways and His redemptive history, and then he goes into application, because all of the Christian life is an application of the Gospel.
we are generous with our money, because Christ has secured our ultimate Treasure in heaven for us. we are not obsessed with position-seeking vanity, because our identity is in Christ. we honor God in the stewardship of our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls, because He has bought us at the price of Jesus' blood. we love sacrificially, because that's how our adoptive Dad has loved us, and we as His adopted sons want to be like our Father. i could go on and on, but you get the idea.
4) don't forget verses 18 and 20. we make disciples, because Christ has all authority, and He's commanding us to do this. and that authority is also our bedrock. when things look worse, we know Christ has all authority over all things, and that it is His will that we make disciples. He will see this through. we have a divine promise: "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. so there will be one flock, one Shepherd." (John 10:16) it is a sure thing, for "there will be one flock, one Shepherd." not maybe, not possibly, but surely there will be, this will come to pass.
and secondly, He's with us. both joshua of the OT and the hebrews of the NT are comforted by the words "I will never leave you nor forsaken you." (Jos. 1:5, Heb. 13:5)
Christ repeats these promises to comfort paul in corinth. "the Lord said to paul one night in a vision, 'do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are My people.'" (Acts 18:9-10) Jesus was with him in his disciple-making, and was making sure it happens, because, as far as i understand it, the "My people" Jesus is referring to are not yet believers. and paul, being so encouraged, "stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them." (v.11)
now i know this is simplistic, and will continue being fleshed out for til Christ comes back. but i think a pretty good, brief definition of discipleship, for our purposes, would be "going into the world with Jesus to proclaim His Gospel and teach His commands to His people by His authority."
i would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Labels: definition, discipleship, gospel, mission
posted by John at 10:13 PM
8 Comments:
Looks like the makings of a nice sermon, Walt. If only we could still preach sermons... (JUST kidding!). :)
Thanks for sharing it.
(wow, but my word verification for this comment is "bable" - slight mispelling)
walt and H,
It would make a good word of instruction, which, under the New Testament plan, we'd be doing like it was on a clearance rack.
; )
walt,
Thanks for working with the Greek. How much training do you have in that language?
The verb for 'go' is a past participle.
'Having gone' is a good literal translation. But, there must be something peculiar about the verb because I've seen the past participle used other place for an active command. I believe that, in Luke, Jesus uses the same form of the verb to tell disciples to 'go and prepare' the Passover feast.
More importantly, the verb is poreuo, not erchomoai, the more common verb for to come or to go. It suggests more purpose or intentionality.
Dittos on you comments on 'baptize.' Winebrenner was so radical in his belief that a person is born again through faith that, while he was very adamant about the proper means of observing the ordinances, he took the radical position that observance of the ordinances in not essential. (We often forget--or, perhaps, choose not to remember--how radical his theology was in many ways because his radical theology and a priestly leadership culture can't coexist. [Okay, off the soap box.])
As far as the verb 'teach' is concerned, don't miss the fact that the verbal phrase is completed by the infinitive verb to obey. The verb 'teach' here really serves in the way one verb can to another to modify the verb 'obey.' It's the obedience part that is crucial here and the object of the verbs is "everything I have commanded you."
Jesus is talking about teaching a lifestyle, not a set of doctrines.
Discipleship was, from the beginning, a way of life in the ministry of Jesus. In the final command in Matthew the making of disciples is defined as the act of teaching obedience to His commands, which He gave to His disciples as their Lord.
By the way, the verb matheteuw is the Greek noun mathetes, i.e., disciple in verb form. Jesus is literally saying, "Go and disciple all nations..."
walt,
while non-Christians need to hear the Gospel in order to come to Christ in the first, Christians need to understand the depths of the Gospel and how it transforms a life, how it becomes a lifestyle.
Amen, bro!
I make even myself weary by pointing out that the word preach is never described as taking place in gatherings of saints in the New Testament and that is true--in Greek. In fact, the word 'preach' does appear in connection with the gathering of saints in the English Bible. And, when it does appear, it is often (perhaps most often, I haven't done the research) the verb form of the word for gospel.
Sadly, Christendom Christianity has so fiddled with essential Christian truth that we have no way of saying the word gospel as a verb in churchianity. We're left with 'preach the gospel' as the most common translation. That's churchish for sure, but it is a perversion.
Oh, that we, like those living the New Testament plan, had a lexicon that made it possible to use the word 'gospel' as a verb!
What Paul said literally is,
"i am eager to gospel to you also who are in Rome."
That rendering would be meaningless in today's perversion of New Testament Christianity. There is so, so much even at the Dick and Jane level that we need to repent of. "See Dick gospel. Gospel, Dick, gospel. Gospel, gospel. gospel."
Huh? Paul could have said that and every saint would have known what he meant.
Anyway...
...your point is right on, my friend. From where I stand as a prophet, we give too little energy to focusing on gospel both as noun and verb. It is key. It is a matter of truth. Alas, because gospel is a series of intimately inter-connected truths we, in a priestly and shepherd, i.e., relationship-dominated culture diminish the value of key truths. The most important truth is less important than the need to nurture.
I believe that it is impossible to overestimate the importance of constantly reminding ourselves of the content of that core truth. We must find a way to make gospel a verb among our people.
linguistics comment:
bill,
i've been working through the "greek tutor" pc program from parsons tech, which my pastor-cousin lent me. i'm about half-way through. i've also listened to lots of good teaching/preaching - guys like john piper who have such a love for the Word that they dig in and seek to help the everyman understand the beauty of its depths. i also recently bought a readers' greek Bible, which i'm slowly starting to use. if you have any suggestions on further study (outside of going to seminary, for now), let me know.
as far as the participle of "go", i think it makes sense to be a participle, as you can't disciple the nations if you don't go to them, nor can you prepare a passover unless you go to where you're having it. i'm making an assumption, based on my limited experience, that you don't often have multiple active verbs in greek sentences, so it makes sense that "go" would be an assumed action necessary to complete the active command.
on obedience, i think we're in agreement. one cannot obey unless one is taught, and what use is teaching commands unless they are obeyed?
Gospel comment:
bill,
i think the best thing we can do is to take back the word "evangelize", as that is the transliteration of euangelizw.
i think, in the mind of joe-in-the-pew, to evangelize means to tell someone the Gospel. in essence, that's true, but needs to be expanded. while it can mean a simple "Gospel presentation", it can also be expounding on the Gospel, unpacking it as it relates to a certain topic (money, sex, family, games, everything, etc.).
what i think our biggest task is, in this line of thinking, is to dissociate the term "evangelism" as what we do to unbelievers, and reframe it as how we speak the Gospel: not only as a little 4 laws or 5 steps or whatever, but also in encouraging each other to walk by the Spirit, and reminding each other of the grace of God so we do not despair or grow cold, and so that we do not lose sight of who we were (and would be apart from that grace) and become prideful and arrogant toward our fellow man.
we need to be constantly focused on Christ, living in the light of His glory shown through His Gospel, and reflecting Him in all that we do, to ourselves and to others, even to the powers in the heavens.
we must be Gospel-centered if we are to be Christ-like.
walt,
On your Gospel comment:
Amen, brother, amen. However, as simple as that seems, in my opinion, getting this relationship-oriented church culture to elevate the Gospel, which is truth, to the place it deserves will require serious macrorepentance, something we seem to have little interest in.
bill,
you're right, at least in part, that many tend to drift toward the ease of getting along and not toward truth and repentance. actually, i would wager all of us feel that pull to some extent.
while that is true, i think there's a large part of this that is ignorance more than apathy. i've talked to a lot of people about getting the Gospel as the center, and while some are uneasy about what that will do to community, etc., there are also many to whom the idea is so foreign that they just don't know what to make of it.
and i think it's with those people that we need to act, in some ways, as shepherds. we need to shoot the wolves, and to rebuke the swine, but we best be guiding and not killing the sheep in the flock.
perhaps i'm a bit naive, but i think there's a lot of people out there who, being moved by the Spirit, would fly to this, if only they could grasp what we meant.
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