The Grace of Discipleship

What is discipleship?

It seems that is the question of the day.  We’re called to make disciples and yet we hardly see it happening.  And when it comes down to it, we don’t even know what it looks like, so how can we know if it’s happening?

The word discipleship for me usually brings images to mind of meeting one-on-one with someone, teaching them from scripture, talking about what God is doing in their hearts.  I think this is what it can look like to make disciples, but I think to truly understand discipleship the tables must be turned so that we find ourselves sitting face to face with Jesus.  Rather than focus on the outer act, he turns our eyes to the inner state.

In Matthew 16:24, Jesus tells His disciples that “if anyone wishes to come after [Him] they must deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow [Him].”  Tough orders from the God of the universe. I think I cringe a little every time I hear those words.  

Could it be this life of a disciple that often sounds so burdensome could be one of grace and freedom?

Psalm 135:15-18 reads:

“The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, the work of man’s hands.  They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes but the do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear, nor is there any breath at all in their mouths.  Those who make them will be like them, yes everyone who trusts in them.”

Those who make them will be like them.  

Those who trust in them will be like them.

Could it be that what we trust in leads not only our hearts but our actions?  That the things that become our idols shape the way our sin is manifested?  That the affections of our heart lead the living of our lives?

In Tony Reinke’s review of the book “We Become What We Worship” by Greg Beale he articulates this well:

“In whole-life worship of God, our minds are being transformed, and we are being conformed to the image of Christ (see Colossians 3:10). In the act of idolatry, as a heart worships a created image, it is being conformed to the world in its unnatural twistedness (see Romans 1:18–27)....Beale's point is that our worship and our affections right now are pointers to a future trajectory. Our worship is either aimed at our ruin, or our worship is aimed at our restoration, but it is aimed in either case. We are becoming what we worship. Thus the process of sanctification is the gracious redirecting of our worship and affections away from worldliness and toward God’s image in Jesus as we are conformed to that image (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).”

As we sit with Jesus, he holds up a mirror and asks us to look into the depths of our heart.  He does it with the rich young ruler when he asks him to sell his possessions.  He does it with the disciples when He asks them to leave behind their former lives.  He does this when he tells a possible disciple to “let the dead bury their own dead”.  He in essence looks them in the face and says “lay down your idols.”  The outer situations are not what He’s concerned with but the state of each of their hearts (see John Piper’s sermon “The Radical Cost of Following Jesus”).

It seems so often what wars for our affections the most are things that are good.  They are God-given passions turned sour as we turn our face from Him to what we want to see Him do.  

Jeremiah 2:13

“for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

We become so focused on the ways we’ve seen God move that we desperately try to create those again.  We assume that because God has moved in a way before, He will do it again, if we just create the opportunity for Him.  We forsake the Living Water; we think He needs us to build Him a well.  So He shows us a mirror and shows us who He really is and that He doesn’t need our help.  He just wants our hearts.

But why in the world would we want to follow a God who asks us to get rid of things that are important to us?

Because in fact what we thought was a burdensome load and tiresome following is an act of grace on His part.

We become what we worship.

In His turning of our affections to Him, He is changing us to become like Him.  He is not taking away what we love because He wants our journey with Him to be daunting, He is not emptying our hands of what they held because He wants us to be alone, but He is clearing out our hearts and filling it with Him so that all we can do is follow after Him in complete adoration and worship; being blessed because we not only get to know Him and experience Him, but because, by His power, we get to become more like Him.

Someone recently told me that the “come after me” that Jesus says is commonly used in a romantic sense.  He desires not to make our life miserable, as a slaving task-master, but to give us new life, as the lover of our souls and winner of our affections.

“We follow Jesus into a new world, not as pedagogy, but as fellowship. We come not as pupils, but as rebellious creatures made alive for the first time — rebellious creatures now reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Discipleship — following Jesus — is to live before God's face, to dwell in his presence, to be satisfied in all that he is. We follow as creatures of grace, entering into the fellowship of the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy, at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).” (Jonathan Parnell in “The Heart of Discipleship” on desiringgod.com).