To Be a Disciple of Christ
February 1, 2025
The message I am about to share may be the hardest message I have ever written or spoken. The difficulty stems from the challenge it places on our understanding of the simplicity and purity of the message of Christ to His followers and the great demand it places on what it truly means to be a disciple of our Lord. It is also a hard message because it reveals my years of compromised handling God’s word and how I have often ignored God’s simple solution to this challenge. The Lord has of course forgiven me of past failures but commissions me to be completely straightforward and bold in presenting the pure message of Christ to His people without fear of reprisal.
What does it truly mean to be a disciple of Christ? The Greek word for disciple (μαθητής) means a student or pupil. In biblical days people who wanted to gain knowledge and experience would connect with a rabbi, a teacher, who would instruct them in the ways of God. We are now privileged to team with the God of the universe as our teacher. God as our teacher does not want us to gain head knowledge merely but to experience what we are coming to know of Him. So, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be a person who knows Him, follows Him and learns from Him intending to develop a changed life so that we are more like Him. His invitation to us is “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me” (Matt 11:29).
Now let’s ask what that looks like in our lives. To my readers who want to follow Jesus, He gave a simple declaration: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt 16:24). Jesus did not give us multiple choices. To those who want to be his disciple, He presents the way of the cross. To take up the cross means to commit to going the distance with Him knowing it means the death of our selfish ways so we can keep our eyes always on Him and our ears open to His words.
He says further in that passage, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (v. 25). The word for life here is the word for “soul.” Our soul is the essence of our human identity. It is our mind, emotions, will, personality, and everything else that we are. If we want to follow Him we are asked to give up our struggle to do it our way by denying ourselves. This is the opposite of the world’s motto: “Be the very best you can be in all you do.” The world says we must use our natural gifts to enhance our lives and become the best “me” we can be. On the contrary, He created us to be complete only in Him but we, like Eve in the Garden, think we can be fulfilled within ourselves without God.
Paul emphasized this truth in his letter to the Corinthians: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price” (1 Cor 6:19, 20). Life as a disciple of Jesus is not a religion as men define it. A disciple realizes that he belongs to Christ who purchased us with the price of going to the cross. It is a life in which Christ lives His life in us because we have invited Him in. In this passage, Paul reminds us that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit because God lives in us. This was God’s intention from the beginning. He wanted children created in His image and likeness (Gen 1:26). They would be like Him in Spirit and act like Him in every way. They would be His children infused with His life and growing to be complete only in Him.
These new believers did not form a new religion but became a new heavenly creation never before seen on planet Earth (2 Cor 5:17). They were people filled with the fullness of God and exhibiting His life for all to see. In short, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be a person whose life is changed through the indwelling presence of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit and the evidence of keeping the commandments of God will be present in the life of a disciple because His life within them will bring spiritual transformation. Any person who believes he is a disciple of Jesus but maintains his old worldly life is either deceived or mistaken (James 1:21–24).
The fruit of the Spirit is living, visible evidence of the presence of Christ through His Spirit in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control are all aspects of the nature of God expressed in our lives (Gal 5:22, 23). Love is not just a mushy feeling for someone. It is God’s divine, sacrificial attitude about us. Joy is not just a happy feeling but the manifestation of God’s consistent, ongoing calm delight in His creation. All of these fruits are aspects of God’s nature growing by His Spirit in our spirit, blossoming in our souls and manifesting in the actions of our bodies. Clearly, a person not growing in respect to these fruits is not a disciple of Jesus. This is why Jesus says of people, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16). This is why Paul says of genuine disciples “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come”(2 Cor 5:17).
If we are in Christ, as His genuine disciples we will be experiencing His new life within us and growing spiritually. But what are we to think of churches where this growth is not taking place? I’m sad that much of what we define as the church in the Western world is not experiencing this vision of discipleship. Rather, many have a vision of external growth using the carnal principles of the world to build something they call the church. Much of the rest of the world is experiencing major restoration and revival but in the West we are stifled by our tendency to let the world conform us into its image. We look like the world and much of what we call church looks like the world.
Paul warns us about this tendency in this passage:
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor 3:12–16). Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
In this passage, Paul is warning all believers in Christ to be careful how they contribute to the body of Christ which is His temple. Earlier he warned us to be careful how we build (3:10). I am humbled every time I read this passage because it is a serious warning to us to fulfill our calling in Christ to do our part in building His church. This is not just for clergymen or people involved in what we refer to as “the ministry.” It is for all believers because each of us is a priest in God’s household and each of us has been called to contribute to His temple (Rev 1:6; 1 Pet 2:9).
We see this symbolized by the Old Testament instructions to Israel. Each member of Israel was to bring something to contribute to the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness (Ex 25:2f). If you are a member of God’s household, you are assigned a part in the expression of His temple on earth. This is not just for the elite clergy but for every member of the body of Christ.
But we are warned that some contributions are not acceptable in that they will not withstand the fire of judgment. The contributions can be “gold, silver, precious stones” or “wood, hay and straw.” The first three are contributions made that reflect the nature of God and will withstand the fire of judgment because they were formed through the pressure and fire of endurance through testing. Wood, hay and straw are the combustible materials of our carnal nature which will not withstand the fire because they have not been tempered in the fire of God’s presence.
In another place, Paul alerts us that through growth toward maturity, we can reach a point where we are “. . . no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:14, 15).
Today, we are tossed around like feathers in the wind or a boat in a violent storm because we are subject to the winds of doctrine, human cunning, craftiness and deceit instead of the rock-solid stability of God’s word revealed by His Spirit and experienced in His body. The noticeable result of that is sectarian divisiveness driven by carnal attitudes of people with worldly agendas.
I hate to end on this negative note but my next message will convey what God wants us to do about this. Stay tuned.
