Confusing Discipleship with Personal Discipline | Episode: Discipleship Is Not About You.

Discipleship as Corporate Love and Unity

So, can I say this, that I think within the broader evangelical community, we incorrectly associate discipleship with personal discipline, whereas I think what Scripture is ultimately pointing us to is that discipleship should not just be personal discipline, but rather discipleship should be towards the end of greater corporate love, participation, and unity of the Church.

Absolutely. No doubt that that's true, biblically. And even if we want to talk about personal discipline as an aspect of this, what is the point of even that? It's not you. The reason why it would matter that you are a self-controlled person, okay, yeah, is that good for your life, of course it is, but the fact that you're a self-controlled person benefits your brothers and sisters, it benefits your neighbor, and it does honor God.

And so, even these ideas of personal discipline, like I am a disciplined individual and that's a badge I can wear and feel good about, is not a biblical category at all. Any of your discipline exists for the benefit of others and ultimately for the honor of the Lord, and God is not honored when you sit in your ivory tower, and are just really pleased with how well you are doing in your own personal pursuits.

God is far more concerned—it's obvious in the Scripture—with how you live amongst His people, and how you're loving, how you're serving, how you're honoring others, and how you're living an outwardly-oriented life that is concerned with others more than yourself.

And so, yeah, it's quite clear that we have it upside down in the ways that we tend to think about these things, as though discipline is the end goal. And it's like, man, it isn't. Any discipline exists for the good of the body, not for your own personal benefit.

The Goal of Christianity Is Not Personal Growth

Yeah, I would say wholeheartedly amen to that. I'm going to set up a second cue for us that we're probably going to have to take into our premium content members, but this is what it is. When you come down to why we were left here in the first place—I'm going to go back to last week's podcast that Justin and I did on Mission Critical, because it is very much connected to this particular podcast on discipleship—and that what is the goal of Christianity?

From the theocast perspective and from a Reformed confessional perspective, it is not personal.

Growth.

It's not the primary means. God did not leave us here so that we can prove ourselves to be Christians or that our focus is on making ourselves better. We will be glorified. We will have all rewards and all hope handed to us because of Christ.

So, it's clearly not the goal. John 17, Jesus says, I'm not taking you out of the world, but I'm leaving in the world to do the very same thing that I came here to do. What did Jesus tell us in Luke 12 He came to do?

I've come to seek and to save that which is lost. So, Jesus is commissioning his church to love and care for each other, and the love and the care that he has for each other will show the world who their disciple is as together as a group.

Then they go out and seek the lost to bring them in and care for them. So, thoughts on that, guys?

The Church Built Up in Love and the Proclamation of the Gospel

Even Ephesians 4 is helpful here, John. You referenced it earlier, Jesus giving pastors and teachers and the like. There's a good amount of words there from Paul about what the goal is within the church, and it all ends up in the church building itself up in love, and that's critical.

So, even if we're thinking about the church internally, it's building itself up in love, and the goal, as we talked about last week, is absolutely that we would seek and save the lost through the proclamation of the gospel.

So, yeah.

Thanks, guys.