Discipleship Is Not About You | Theocast

The Difference Between a Christian and a Disciple

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 Wilmer, 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? Doing well. Good to have you back on the mic.

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. 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? 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.

Sinclair Ferguson, the Marrow Controversy, and the Whole Christ

A book recommendation from me. I give out this book probably more than any other. If we're talking about a book of a 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. 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.

If 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.

Jimmy, go for it. In case I accidentally steal your book, I'll let you go first.

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, and 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.

Jimmy always says, hug your pastor on Sunday, but that would be overstepping.

Hug him, don't cuddle him.

I have a guy in my church who doesn't hug. You don't touch him. I always say, but on my birthday, I get a hug. He's like, no, you don't. You get a pat on the arm.

Yeah, that's part of learning your congregation, is 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, and we took our church through it recently. It was just so good.

It was an excellent book. If you ever want to get different perspectives of the cross and how 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, so 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 know I put even 4 Calvinism on a little bit, and this would be a super simple conversation 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. 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 being discipled by somebody or being 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, started to evangelize on a base and really started working with these military men.

They would set up scripture memorization, reading plans, 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? 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 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? Are you being Christianed? We could invent a new verb.

We've already invented Calvangelical. I think we can invent Christianing.

Yeah, probably Christianing. Are you part of a Christianing group?

Yeah, Christianing.

It doesn't work.

Discipleship Is Not a Verb in the New Testament

So, 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.

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I totally didn't set you up.

The answer to that, John, in terms of where is discipleship or discipline a verb in the New Testament? Well, it isn't in the New Testament. There are plenty of verbs in the New Testament that we'll touch on a number of them today—things we are exhorted to.

But discipleship or discipling in the verb form is not there.

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.

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. 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. 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.

You pick your descriptor. There's always this parsing up of people into various classes or tiers within the church. In this 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, so 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. I think that a part of this also creates who you are discipled by. They've walked up to my daughter and they've said to my daughter, hey, I would like to disciple you. My daughter was kind of like, well, okay, 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.

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. 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 someone.

You were following the teaching of that particular individual.

Corporate Maturity, Not Spiritual Tiers

So, 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 as the language that JP 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.

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 J .P. is just saying is no. Yes, there are the older, wiser.

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

Tim Cynova.

Sorry. He tells Timothy to teach faithful men who can teach other people. Like you were just saying, it's always about me and my Christian growth. In the New Testament, it's about us and our growth together.

That's a distinction that needs to be made. Go ahead, John.

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. 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.

Absolutely, and mercy. Gentleness.

Mercy, that's right. Not being judgmental of the areas 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, 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 or whatever 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 John.

Love, Unity, and the Goal of the Church

Between emphasizing one's 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. You can get this at theocast .org slash primer.

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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. It becomes this focus on the interior of the Christian life. Everything is all about you and your progress. The church is just a means, and your discipler is just a means to that end.

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. 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. 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.

Then you feel awful about yourself. Something that I just wrote down here is within the broader evangelical church, discipleship 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. I am not as disciplined as this person. I am not as faithful, or insert your own word there.

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 greater love and unity.

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.

J .P., I think you wanted to jump on this as well, so I'll throw it over to you.

I agree with everything you said, J .P. 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. 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, 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 power of His 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.

Justin Perdue. Yeah. Just evaluating what someone is trained to do when they're in a typical discipleship program is an improvement in morality, really. It's how to do less sin and how to do more righteous deeds.

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, is love each other. Yet, it seems like that's not the mission. The mission is, help me be better and help me do less sin.

Justin Perdue. So, John, you brought something up. I wanted to take us 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.

That's big. We are told to teach. That 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, so what we ought to be talking about is, here is how the redeemed live.

Here is how disciples, aka Christians, aka 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, and 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.

Jon Moffitt. 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.

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.

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.

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?

May we never have this category of, I am a mature Christian, but people just don't like me. Well, brother, you're missing something in terms of your definition of maturity. So, John, I think you wanted to jump in here if I'm correct.

Yeah, 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, you know, 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.