Discipleship is NOT A VERB | Episode: Discipleship is not about you

Before I throw it over to you guys, I'm going to do what I always like to do, I'm going to throw a little bit of a bomb in there. Where in Scripture do you find discipleship as a verb? You are being discipled or you are discipleship.

We don't ever say, are you being Christianized or are you being Christianed, but yet we'll say, are you being discipled?

Maybe we should start using that. We could invent a new verb. We've already invented Calvangelical. I think we can invent Christianing.

Probably Christianing. Are you part of a Christianing group?

Yeah, a Christianing. It doesn't work.

The Absence of “Discipleship” as a Verb

So, Jimmy, I know you want to jump in with something that was probably not in direct answer to John, so I'll answer his question really directly.

Oh yeah, sorry about that.

I totally didn't set you up.

So, the answer to that, John, in terms of where is discipleship or a verb in the New Testament? Well, it isn't in the New Testament. We can talk about it. There are plenty of verbs in the New Testament that we'll touch on a number of them today, things that we are exhorted to, but discipleship or discipling in the verb form is not there.

Right.

So, true.

Right.

And the reason I bring this up, and Jimmy, I'll throw it over to you. The reason I bring this up is that we take Christianity and we chop it up into two separate.

Forms.

You have those who are following Jesus, they believe in him, they consider themselves Christians, and then you have the second tier in terms of disciples. Right.

Well, and I'll speak in a minute. I have something to say, but I want Jimmy to jump in first.

Well, and this is exactly what I wanted to throw in there. So when I was in college, I was part of a fairly discipleship-oriented college ministry. Also the church I was part in at that time, and then just the various churches I've worked in since then as a young pastor.

And this phrase, and I want us to kind of throw this out there and look at it and poke it a little bit. This phrase was used frequently. And the phrase was, it went something like this, and you could insert your own language, but it went something like this.

Jesus isn't looking for more Christians. Jesus is looking for more disciples.

Oh, wow.

So I just want to throw that out and let you guys play with that for a little bit.

Rejecting Two Tiers of Christianity

Yeah, again, I think that's a great example of setting up the two tiers. So go ahead, JP. I know you probably have something on that.

Yeah, I agree. I think that you see this happen in a number of ways where we tend to set up tiers as you've described it, John. I might even call it different classes within the church. And you've often heard the framework presented in our modern context of you have the serious, really dedicated type people, the sincere Christians, and then you have those who are nominal or you have those who are carnal or you pick your descriptor, right?

There's always this kind of parsing up of people into various classes or tiers within the church. And this kind of language that we're talking about, a distinction between being a Christian and a disciple is doing that.

And the problem with it is that the New Testament doesn't have this category. So if you are a Christian, you are a disciple. So what we're really driving at here is the question of identity versus duty and what you're doing.

And we've talked about this many times on Theocast, so I won't labor it very long right now, but we are convinced reading the scripture and looking to the confessions that the Christian life is identity forward.

It is status forward. So your identity is in Christ. Your identity is that you are a Christian. Your identity is that you are a disciple. And then, of course, we can talk about what we do as an outflow of that.

That's fine. But what we tend to do when we have this conversation about this topic, discipleship, and making a distinction between Christians and disciples, it's very clear that in the minds of most in our current church context, your identity is derived by what you do rather than what you do being derived from who you are.

And that's a real problem. It's a real problem. And so that's what I wanted to start us with, John. I have a lot more to say on this, as I know you brothers do, so let me throw it over to you and let you jump on that.

Discipleship, Identity, and the Outflow of Christian Life

Yeah, I think that a part of this also creates the who you are discipled by. And I know that people who, you know, they've walked up to my daughter and they've said to my daughter, hey, I would like to disciple you, in which my daughter was kind of like, well, OK, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure what you mean by that and what you're trying to accomplish. And then there's people who would walk up to someone who they love and respect and say, hey, will you disciple me? Will you take time out of your life and disciple me?

I've hit my max as a Christian, what I can do on my own, and now I need a mentor outside of myself to take me to the next level. And so there's the, you know, it's almost like a gym where I could go in and I could work out on my own.

But if I really want to go to that next level, I need to get a professional who's going to come in and really teach me how to use the weights and really teach me how to use cardio and how to use my diet.

You need a personal trainer.

A personal trainer, right. So discipleship becomes the spiritual personal trainer to get you to that next level. And what's interesting about it is when you think about the disciples of Jesus, Jesus never set up two categories of believers.

It wasn't the followers of Jesus and then the disciples of Jesus, right? He even uses those. He even uses those. In other words, if you believed in him, you were his disciple because you were then you would be following the teachings of Jesus, which is what it meant to be a disciple of someone.

You were following the teaching of that particular individual.