Discipleship Is Not About You | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on the podcast, we are talking about a modern evangelical movement called discipleship.

And yes, I said modern. What is the difference between a Christian and a disciple? Does the Bible make a distinction between the two?

And how is it that we have individualized the Christian life by calling it discipleship? We hope you enjoy the conversation, and in the members podcast, it gets a little lively as we try and explain how dangerous it is when you radicalize discipleship from just the normal, ordinary

Christian life. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are

John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and myself,

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. Gentlemen, good to be back on the mic with you both and see your lovely faces at 744 a .m.

Central time. How are you both doing? Jimmy Buehler Doing well. Good to have you back on the mic, dude.

Yeah, I'm feeling better about myself from that compliment. Thank you, Jimmy. I'm ready for the day. I'm here to serve and make you feel good about yourself.

John's all about comparative righteousness. He is. Yeah, pretty much.

Absolutely. Hey, today we're going to do something a little different from Cultural Update. We're going to do a book recommendation.

JP, what have you been reading, man? Just give us something that the listener might be helped by if they want to read it—secular or Christian.

What have you been reading? Tell the world. Just a quick word of comfort to our listeners who are just falling out of their chairs because we've changed the

Cultural Update. Just remember that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, even if things on Theocast do change from time to time.

So, a book recommendation from me. I give out this book probably more than any other.

If we're talking about a book of theological nature, I give this book out more than any other these days. In my context at Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, it would be

The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. It is a wonderful book. I think it's one of the better books

I've read outside of Scripture in recent years in how he deals with antinomianism and legalism.

He talks about an historical situation known as the Marrow Controversy. The Church of Scotland was basically split about 300 years ago over issues of doctrine and questions of antinomianism and the nature of the gospel and all those kinds of things.

It resonates with a lot of the things that we say here on Theocast, and it would resonate, I trust, with a number of our listeners.

The Marrow Brethren, as they were known, were often charged with being antinomian, as we often are charged with being.

So, I think this book is a helpful read to shed some light on the heart of the matter.

I couldn't commend it more. The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. Being accused of being an antinomian now doesn't bother me anymore.

It's like a badge of honor. I even tell guys in our context, because they hear me being questioned even in our local area at points where guys misunderstand me.

I let them read this book or I talk with them about it, and it does help them understand, oh, well, this is why people think we're antinomian when we know we're not.

For no other reason, the book is helpful. It's really worshipful. It's doxological, if I can even use such a big word.

It really, I think, can help stir one's affection for Christ and the sufficiency of his work. I think the most helpful book that I've probably read in the past three or four months was

Horton's Four Calvinism. I thought that was a really helpful and succinct summary of what the five points of Calvinism are.

The reason why I like that is because I think Horton does a great job of helping us see that the five points of Calvinism are indeed important and foundational, but there is so much more to them than we think and that we have perhaps heard.

I'd recommend that to you, even if you are somebody that is unsure about Calvinism.

I think Horton is extremely charitable, one of the most charitable guys that I've ever read or listened to or met.

Check that out. Four Calvinism, Michael Horton. Nice.

Well, we're going to go three Presbyterians for all three books this week. I'm actually going to recommend

Sinclair Ferguson as well. If I could pick who would be my pastor,

I would want Sinclair Ferguson to be my pastor because he would be a guy I just want to crawl up into his lap and rest my head on his chest and say, speak to me in your accent, please.

Tell me of Jesus. Perhaps the listener should not do that with their pastor.

Jimmy always says, hug your pastor on Sunday, but that would be overstepping. Hug him, don't cuddle him.

That's right. I have a guy in my church who doesn't hug. You don't touch him. I always say, on my birthday,

I get a birthday hug, and he's like, no, you don't. You get a pat on the arm. That's part of learning your congregation.

It's learning the people that have trouble with physical affection. I tell him

I'll wear him down. So, Brian, I'm coming after you. Sinclair Ferguson wrote a book based off of a hymn called

By Grace Alone. We took our church through it recently, and it was just so good.

It was an excellent book. If you ever want to get different perspectives of the the gospel affects your life on almost every angle it could possibly affect your life,

By Grace Alone is one. It's written to be theologically on a very low level.

It's so simple. You're not using a lot of brain power. It's like easy chocolate cake for the soul, is the way

I describe it. It is just so good to read. I also wrote lesson plans that go with it, which we're going to make available on Theocast, so if you want to take a small group through it, available as well.

But just as to read, if you are tired and you're fatigued, and you're just like, man, I just don't have a lot of energy, but I want to be encouraged,

I would say the whole Christ is get a cup of coffee and a pad and paper and pay attention because it's a little heavier read.

I would put even 4 Calvinism on a little bit, and this would be a super simple conversation like with Sinclair Ferguson, so super helpful.

Hopefully those are encouraging. We recommend grabbing those. We'll put them all three in the show notes, so you can click on the notes, click on the links, and you can buy them right there.

I think there's a good natural segue here.

Why don't you let the listener know what it is that we're going to talk about today? I think reading is always an important part of that conversation, or at least it can be good, it can be bad.

Tell us, what are we talking about? Today we're going to be covering the subject of discipleship, a very popular evangelical movement.

If you've grown up in the church or been around the church, you've heard the concept of discipleship.

Whether it's, are you being discipled by somebody? Are you part of a discipleship group? It's really popular within the college ministry.

I remember when I was doing college ministry for over 10 years before I became a church planner, I would have college students walk up to me all the time asking me to disciple them.

Then I asked them, what does that mean to you? The typical ministries that are out there, which are like Cru, and the one that actually can be historically credited with the modern movement of this is what would be

Navigators. Navigators were originally started with, in the military, a particular guy who was frustrated by the church and just felt like the church really wasn't evangelizing and getting out there.

He started to evangelize on a base and really started working with these military men.

They would set up scripture memorization, reading plans. There would be accountability and discipline, which then eventually moved into the college ministry and then, of course, moved into the church.

This is what we're going to talk about today. How do we look at scripture and how the Bible describes discipleship and how the modern day movement is using it?

Where does it intersect correctly, and maybe where is it dangerous where it's not a biblical perspective?

Before I throw it over to you guys, I'm going to do what I always like to do. I'm going to ask, do you find discipleship as a verb?

We don't ever say, are you being Christianized, 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 evangelical. I think we can invent Christianing. Yeah, probably

Christianing. Are you part of a Christianing group? Yeah, Christianing. It doesn't work.

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

Sorry about that. I totally didn't set you up. The answer to that, John, in terms of where is discipleship or discipling 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.

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. Then you have the second tier in terms of disciples.

I'll speak in a minute. I have something to say, but I want Jimmy to jump in first. This is exactly what

I wanted to throw in there. 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.

This phrase, and I want us to throw this out there and look at it and poke it a little bit.

This phrase was used frequently. It went something like this.

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.

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

Again, I think that's a great example of setting up the two tiers. Go ahead, JP. 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. You've often heard the framework presented in our modern context.

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.

You pick your descriptor. There's always this parsing up of people into various classes or tiers within the church.

In this kind of language that we're talking about, a distinction between being a Christian and a disciple is doing that.

The problem with it is that the New Testament doesn't have this category. If you are a

Christian, you are a disciple. What we're really driving at here is the question of identity versus duty and what you're doing.

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. Your identity is in Christ.

Your identity is that you are a Christian. Your identity is that you are a disciple. 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.

That's a real problem. 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.

Part of this also creates who you are discipled by.

They've walked up to my daughter and they've said to her, I would like to disciple you. My daughter was like,

I'm not sure what you mean by that and what you're trying to accomplish.

Then there are people who would walk up to someone who they love and respect and say, will you disciple me? Will you take time out of your life and disciple me?

I've hit my max as a Christian of what I can do on my own, and now I need a mentor outside of myself to take me to the next level.

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. Discipleship becomes the spiritual personal trainer to get you to that next level.

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. He even uses those.

In other words, if you believed in him, you were his disciple because you would be following the teachings of Jesus, which is what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus.

You were following the teaching of that particular individual. I'm already hearing the yeah buts out in the listener world.

Something that I think would be worthy of our discussion is there are passages –

I think of the latter chapters of Romans, for example – where we do see the

Apostle Paul make some sort of distinction where he talks about mature and immature. What would you guys say to that?

How are we to understand these questions where the Apostle Paul says, for example, let those who are mature among you blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

The mature think for the immature, so on and so forth. It sounds like Paul is making some sort of distinction, or maybe the language that J .P.,

you used was he's creating different tiers. How would you respond to something like that?

The way I'm going to answer this question, and I hope this is reasonable even to the listener, and we'll try to unpack this together for the next few minutes,

I'm sure. Paul is writing into a corporate context in the church, and nobody is going to dispute that within a particular local church that there will be people of not only different ages or whatever, but there will be people who have been

Christians for different periods of time. There will be people who have different gifts. There will be people who are set apart to do certain kinds of work or serve in certain roles in the church and the like.

When Paul starts to talk in these terms, I think he's just acknowledging that reality that's obvious to everybody.

He's writing to a church where he's saying, this is how it's going to be in the church.

There are going to be certain individuals who have been maybe set apart even to pastoral ministry, to shepherd and guide the congregation, to teach the congregation.

There will be those in the church who, for nothing but the grace of God and perhaps time and the work of the

Holy Spirit, have just some wisdom and life experience on top of that. They will be able to help other believers who are maybe newer in the faith and just haven't really thought through various categories, haven't experienced these things in life, haven't come up against this particular trial, haven't suffered in this particular way.

There will be Christians around them in the church in the context of the corporate body life that will be able to help them and will be able to guide them, will be able to love them, will be able to help bear their burdens with them.

I think that's what he's talking about. He's not setting up this mature versus immature real disciple versus carnal

Christian distinction. It's just the reality that there are all kinds of people at various stages in their

Christian lives in any one local church. That's how I would begin to answer the question. He's writing about a corporate reality.

He's not talking about a bunch of individuals. He's talking about the life of the body, and he's talking about how that fleshes itself out and how it's profitable to individuals who comprise the body.

Jon Moffitt Yeah. I think that's a great example also in 1 Corinthians when he even gives the example of, hey, listen, there are all of you who are gifted in different ways.

He says this in Ephesians as well. There are teachers and prophets and evangelists, and he says, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

So, it's very obvious there are people who are going to not only be older in the faith and have gifts that are given by the

Spirit that are designed to then benefit the corporate reality of those who are younger, but it's not an individual.

In Theocast, we've tried for years to point this out where we individualize our faiths from the church saying, well, it's me and my

Christian growth. What JP is just saying is that, no, yes, there are the older, wiser.

I mean, Paul specifically tells the older ladies to help and love on the younger ladies, but that's always in the corporate of—

Jimmy Buehler Sorry, he tells Timothy to teach faithful men who can teach other people.

So, like you were just saying, it's always about me and my Christian growth. Well, in the

New Testament, it's about us and our growth together. That's a distinction that needs to be made. Go ahead,

Jon. Sorry. Jon Moffitt No, Jimmy, I think you had something. Jimmy Buehler Well, what

I was going to say is, I think we can make a distinction within a distinction, if I dare do so.

It's like a dream within a dream happening here. But I think a lot of times we want to talk about the real

Christian, the carnal Christian, and certainly there are moments that we see in Scripture.

I have Romans 14 and 15 open in front of me, where Paul is making a clear mark between maturity and immaturity.

However, what you see through Romans 14 and 15 is that the mature

Christian is often driven toward what? Towards the immature Christian. The mature Christian is driven towards compassion.

Jon Moffitt Absolutely, and mercy. Jimmy Buehler Not being— that the immature

Christian may lack in discernment or wisdom or growth or whatever it is that it may be.

So often, what I have seen and witnessed within the evangelical church is that those who tend to be—and

I'm going to make a general statement, so please don't hear what I'm not saying.

I'm making a generalization. Those who tend to be the most intently focused on creating the church within the church, the sold -out

Christians, the obedient Christians, insert your favorite adjective there.

Those who tend to be most focused on that also, interestingly, tend to be some of the most intolerable and impatient people with other believers.

There's just something wrong there. I have one guy in my own body

I'm thinking of specifically. He's probably one of the most patient men that I know. He's patient with me as his pastor, who is—if

I'm doing my math correctly, I'm half of his age—but he's patient with me and my failures and the ways that I still need to grow.

I look at him and I say, this is maturity. To use the vernacular, this is the kind of guy that I want to be around in a corporate setting to disciple me because there's something in him worth emulating.

Whereas, just like I said, those who tend to be most militant about discipleship processes and growth processes and strategies and things like that, they're almost insufferable because nothing ever seems like enough.

There's just so much impatience being flown around. I want to weigh in on this briefly.

I really hadn't planned to make many of these comments. I said something similar on a recent podcast. You alluded to this already,

Jimmy, and you did it well. A mark of maturity in the faith, dare we even say a growth in holiness, would be characterized by more compassion towards struggling sinners, not less.

It would be characterized by more mercy towards struggling saints in the church, not less.

I think you're right. It's indicative of a larger systemic problem when those among us who are perceived to be the most mature and who are perceived to be the most godly often lack compassion and mercy toward those who are weaker, who are struggling mightily against the weight of their own corruption.

It ought not be that way. There's a lot that we could talk about on another podcast about where that stuff comes from.

Pietism is related. Discernment ministries are related, where we wear as a badge of honor.

If I can be a bulldog for truth and just absolutely burn the village down in the process, then

I will have done something great for Christ, because I will have stood for truth in the midst of all these other people who clearly don't care about it like I do.

It's just unhelpful. I think, lest I digress too much from the main topic today,

I'm going to throw it over to Jon. faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Yeah, I think there's two more points that I would love to hear you guys' dialogue on. One of them is really the foundation motivation for discipleship.

One of the things that really pushes discipleship along and makes it stay and grow. It's a growing phenomenon.

It's not going away. What I mean by that is the idea that it is the

Christian personal trainer movement is what I'm attacking. The reason is that most people see the

Christian life that once you're in, in other words, you now have the badge of Christian, the responsibility is now personal holiness, personal growth, personal sanctification.

You are now to be progressing, and it becomes this focus on the interior of the

Christian life. Everything is all about you and your progress, and the church is just a means, and your discipler is just a means to that end.

So that's the first thing that I would love to hear you guys talk about. Before I throw the second one, I want to distract you. How is it that if you remove that motivation, what should be the motivation of the individual?

If it's not personal progress, what is the primary focus of the church, and how does that change discipleship in general?

I'll gladly jump on that. To the first point that you made, where the focus becomes me and my growth and the interior of my

Christian life, often what you see in that is that the church, as you said,

John, becomes a means to an end. Often one of the things that you see is the church is no longer this corporate body that I am part of, but rather what can happen is the church is this place that I go to where I can easily compare myself to others.

I am more mature than this person, or I am a more intense disciple than this person, and so therefore

I feel good about myself. Or you look at others and say, boy, that person really seems to be sold out and radical for Jesus, and I'm just not, and I need to be more like them, and then you feel awful about yourself.

And something that I just wrote down here is that within the broader evangelical church, discipleship – if we're going to use that term – can almost just become law on our lives.

It's either a law that we use to bash others – I'm better than you, I am more disciplined than you,

I've done this, or it becomes a law that we feel crushed by, that I am not as disciplined as this person,

I am not as faithful, or insert your own word there. Even as we think about this, and to the second thing that you said,

John, this has been something that you have pounded into me over the past year as we've planted this church.

Even when you came to visit, you and one of your elders, this is something that you pounded into our church.

Ephesians 4, as we think about the local church, the church that we are part of, the corporate body of believers,

Ephesians 4, one of Paul's main focuses of the

Ephesian church is that they would grow in what? That they would grow in greater love and unity, and we could also insert compassion, gentleness towards one another.

These things are not isolated away from holiness or maturity, but rather, they are so keenly tied to those things.

The holy church is the loving, gentle, kind, and patient church. I think you wanted to jump on this as well, so I'll throw it over to you.

Justin Perdue I agree with everything you said, Jamie. I want to take us in a slightly different direction in answering John's question.

I think a good diagnostic question to ask to assess ourselves is, look at the scripture, look at the trajectory of it, and ask, what is the end goal?

What is the end goal of the Bible? It is not an individual reality.

It is a corporate one. God will be our God, and we will be his people.

It's the new heavens and the new earth together forever with the Lord, seeing Christ as he is, eating and drinking with him, and living in a perfect existence with him and with each other forever.

That's the goal. The church, properly defined, is an outpost of that on this earth.

It is a foretaste of that on the earth. I think we're missing it altogether if we view the church as a means to some kind of individual end.

Of course, we are saved individually. We are saved individually, though, to a body, that being a local church here on earth, and then ultimately we are saved to be a part of the people of God forever.

If we have that framework in view, we're going to tend to think better about the local church and what it's for and why it exists.

I don't misunderstand what I'm about to say, but the church is not a means to really anything on the one hand.

The church is kind of the point of you're saved into this body that is on its way to the new heavens and the new earth to be with the

Lord forever. Being in the church and being in Christ and being a disciple is the goal.

Our growth and sanctification and God sustaining us and all those kinds of things is what he does by the

Spirit through the organism of the church and the ordinary means. It's just a different perspective than what most modern contemporary evangelicals would have, where it's been made all about us as individuals.

Just evaluating what someone is trained to do when they're in a typical discipleship program is an improvement in morality.

It's how to do less sin and how to do more righteous deeds. So, you have

Jesus and the teachings of Jesus, and he makes it very clear. Listen, I give you two commands. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Then he says to clarify, the world's going to know that you're my disciple. He could have listed all kinds of dedications, memorizations.

He says the world will know you're my disciple by the love that you have for one another. You cannot follow the command of Jesus and truly be his disciple if you are unwilling to love one another.

That is the primary mission of what Christ gives us. Love each other, and yet it seems like that's not the mission.

The mission is, help me be better and help me do less sin. Jimmy, are you cool if I jump in here?

Jimmy Buehler Yeah, please do. Justin Perdue John, you brought something up. I wanted to take us in this direction.

It's very much related. I have this written down on my handy -dandy white board here. There are all kinds of imperatives in the

New Testament. There are all kinds of commands given. Nobody behind these microphones would ever deny that reality.

I know a lot of times people act like we don't think there are imperatives in the New Testament, but that's absurd because we talk about them regularly.

What would be useful for people to do, I think, is to survey the New Testament and look at the things that we are actually exhorted to do.

You just talked about the big one, John. A new command I give you, love one another.

That's big, but think about other things. We're not actually commanded to disciple in terms of a verb per se.

Discipling is not a verb. We're told to do a number of things. We're told to gather together. We are told to teach, meaning formally in terms of pastors teaching the church, but to teach one another.

Of course that's happening. I think that's obviously a subset of what some people describe as discipling. It's this teaching component.

We're told to pray. We're told to confess sin. We're told to love, like you just said.

These are the things that we're exhorted to do. What we ought to be talking about is, here is how the redeemed live.

Here is how disciples, Christians, those who are in Christ, live. These are the things that we're told to do.

Rather than turning it into this weird thing where it's like, oh, well, discipling is this.

It's like, well, no, this is just the Christian life. Stop turning it into this thing that only certain individuals do, where there's a certain way that you need to go about doing discipling.

Rather, it's like, well, no, here's who we are, here's how we live in the community called the church.

Jimmy Buehler Correct. I would even say, perhaps even harshly, that scripture has no category for somebody who is an obedient and faithful disciple who people within the church can't tolerate just because of their attitude.

Justin Perdue So true, man. Jimmy Buehler The scriptures have no category for an individual.

Well, actually, they do have a category for an individual like that, and they say to avoid them. They just like to argue about words and things that are fruitless.

To further emphasize what you are saying, JP, our church has been walking through First Corinthians, and last week

I was in a difficult passage. The first 11 verses of First Corinthians 6, where Paul so clearly just lays down the hammer with the

Corinthians saying, y 'all are suing one another, you don't know how to handle conflict with one another, you're making the gospel look bad in front of the unbelieving world around you.

But the true ground of that passage of verses 1 -11 is actually verses 9 -11, where Paul says, you know, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

He lists a pretty exhaustive list of sins, and it kind of leaves you feeling hopeless.

But what does he remind them of? Hey, this is who you were, and such were some of you, he says in verse 11.

But then he gives us three wonderful gospel realities, that we've been washed in Christ, we've been set apart or sanctified in Christ, and we've been justified in Christ.

So when you focus on that reality, that corporate reality that this is who you are, kind of the status forward, then we can go back to verse 1 and say, in light of what

Christ has accomplished on your behalf, man, believe that he's accomplished that on the behalf of those sitting around you.

So the thing that I was seeking to push our church toward is that maturity, discipleship, or however you want to phrase that within Christ Community Church, what does that look like?

Well, it looks like believing, accepting, receiving the gospel for myself, and also being so keenly sensitive to the people around me, our fellow sinners that also need the gospel.

So who am I to take them to court or be overly concerned about being vindicated and right in a worldly sense, when the same blood of Christ and the same body of Christ that was shed and broken for me, was also shed and broken for them.

So may we never have this category of, I am a mature

Christian, but people just don't like me. Well, then brother, you're missing something in terms of your definition of maturity.

John, I think you wanted to jump in here, if I'm correct. Absolutely. I would also say you cannot be a disciple of Jesus and disconnected from the people of Jesus.

Some people say, well, I'm a disciple of Jesus, but the church, they're too carnal, they're too lazy, they're not radical enough for me, so I just do my own thing.

Jesus is the one who set up the system, not you. I would even say there's confusion with the book of James. James says faith without works is dead, and we immediately think of morality or we think of discipline.

But in the context of James, the issue was these people were not doing the works of love, which is connected to what

Jesus is talking about. They were creating hierarchy, they were giving favor to people. James is saying you can't claim to be the follower of Jesus and not have the works of love.

You cannot do that. He's not attacking morality, he's not talking separatism, he's attacking love and the lack thereof.

Can I say this? 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.

No doubt that that's true biblically. 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 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. 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. God is not honored when you sit in your ivory tower, quote -unquote, 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.

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.

It's like, man, any discipline exists for the good of the body, not for your own personal benefit.

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 in to 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.

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 on all hope handed to us because of Christ. So it's clearly not the goal.

In 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 that 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. Justin Perdue Even Ephesians 4 is helpful here,

John. You referenced it earlier, Jesus giving pastors and teachers and the like. There are 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.

That's critical. Even if we're thinking about the church internally, like the church within itself, it's building itself up in love.

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, agreement. Jon Moffitt Well, guys, there is so much that could be said. I've stolen that from Justin.

So much could be said. We could continue this conversation throughout the course of the day.

As is our weekly custom, we are going to head over now to our Total Access Members Only podcast.

If you'd like to learn more about that, you can head over to theocast .org and check out what it means to become a

Total Access member and what that all entails. Let us just say you get access to a lot more exclusive content from Theocast.

As always, thank you for listening. We hope this conversation was beneficial to you.

Just in light of what we discussed today, we hope that this conversation does not drive you into greater judgment of your own body and where you participate in the gathered worship in the church, but rather we hope and pray that this conversation pushes you towards Christ and love and compassion of the saints that you worship with.

So, to our members, we will see you on the flip, and I know

I'm going to get judged for that, but that's okay, because I'm free to trust. And so, thanks for listening. Justin Perdue Word.