Next of Kin or Akin to Christ

In order to be a follower of Jesus, or a follower of anyone for that matter, one must understand what is being asked of them. You cannot say you are following someone if you do not know what that person expects of you. If your mother says, “Do as I say,” which many mothers do, you may be extremely eager to do as she wishes, but you have no way of following her requests until she gives you some direction. In much the same way we cannot begin to follow Jesus, or be His disciple for that matter, until we understand what it is the He desires of us. Once we understand that we can begin to follow Him, and be confident we are doing a satisfactory job of being His disciple.

The word disciple - which comes from the Greek word mathetes (meaning learner or pupil) – often gets thrown around in church circles like a frisbee at a picnic, but do we understand what it really means? We assume that it means a person who follows Jesus, but we only assume that because that is what we have been told by people much like us; people who heard the word somewhere along the way and decided to use it because it sounded spiritual. Moreover, follow is a very relative term since it could mean a high level of commitment to something or someone, and it also could imply that we follow Jesus the same way we follow the local news, picking up tidbits here and there, and whenever we go to the hair salon.

In order to understand what the word disciple means – in the context of following Jesus – we must understand what the apostles did. The apostles of Christ are the best example we have of what it means to follow our savior in a fashion that both pleases and honors Him.

So what are the requirements of true discipleship?

In Matthew 16:24 Jesus says to His disciples, “If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is perhaps the most challenging of all the calls of true discipleship. Jesus is not asking us to simply add Him to our list of commitments that we already have, after all that wouldn’t be so hard to do, we add new commitments almost everyday without a second thought. He is not even asking that we put Him at the top of the list, which is definitely more challenging, but still not terrifying. No, He is asking us to remove all of our other commitments and leave following Him as our sole obligation and purpose in life. When Jesus says deny He means everything. And we know He is serious about that because in Luke 14:26 He says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brother and sisters – yes even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.” The ironic thing is that perhaps the easiest piece of this statement to swallow is the hate your own life part. Many of us can relate to hating our own life, since we have found no satisfaction in what the world has to offer - and paradoxically - what we have to offer it. But hating one’s own family is something completely different. Why would Christ ask us to adhere to a request that has such damaging ramifications, and so obviously goes against everything we know to be true and good?

It all comes down to understanding what discipleship truly signifies. If we love Christ the way that we should it will be as if we hate everything else that is in the world, because all of its value will pale in comparison with that which we attach to the Son of God. When we compare the way that we love others, even our next of kin, to the way that we love and adore Jesus, it will be as if we are neglecting them, and leaving them without and ounce of care. Once we have loved Christ this much we will understand what it means to be a true disciple.

Two Pastors, Two Answers

Discipleship is something of an enigma. On the one had we all know what it means to be a disciple, on the other hand, we really have no idea. I cannot count the number of times that as a paid member of a church staff I have asked myself the question, “Is what I am doing consistent with the Biblical model of discipleship?” Maybe I am just ignorant, or shallow, but my guess is that I am not the only one in the world who has asked him or herself this question.

The first pastor that I asked the question, “What does discipleship mean?” Was the pastor at my home church. He looked at me squarely and said, “Discipleship means duplicating oneself.” I thought about that for a second and it scared me. Do I want to duplicate myself? My first thought was, absolutely not! I walked away from his office wondering what the world would be like with more me’s in it. I saw a place that was full of guys with curly hair and big ears that was very loud because everyone was trying to be the first one to make a wisecrack about something. I did not like what I saw, it scared me, and confirmed my initial reaction. Then I thought about it some more and realized that in a place where everyone was like me nothing could go wrong because everyone would have the right opinion about everything. At least that was my opinion. If discipleship is about duplication, it is not about duplicating me. That is the conclusion that I came to after considering the consequences of a world packed with people that are only willing to pay for a burger when they can get another one for free - not good for a struggling economy - and have a habit of leaving their car on empty whenever someone else is going to be driving it - not good for making friends. This would be a less than perfect place for one to make their home, to say the least.

The second pastor that I talked with is a youth pastor and he defined discipleship as, “the process of raising spiritually mature believers.” And like any good youth pastor he came up with that definition off the top of his head – in my experience youth pastors either learn how to think fast or drown slowly. I must say, the word raising did not sound as scary as the word duplicating. Where duplicating seemed quick and uncontrolled, raising seemed steady and structured. If you’re duplicating something you don’t have much time to make sure you get it right, but when you’re raising something you have the benefit of time and correction to make sure that the product develops the way you intend it to, and ultimately looks like what you expect it to. Duplication is one big trial and error. Raising is a process of smaller trials and errors where the risk of failure is spread out over time. Of course maybe I am totally wrong about all of this, and I am completely willing to accept that.

The heart of the issue really is not what my definition of a word is, or for that matter what anyone else’s definition of a word is. The heart of the issue is what does it mean to disciple? This is probably the part when you expect me to tell you, and I don’t blame you for having that expectation, that is how our minds have been trained to work. But I am not going to say what it means to disciple someone; not because I don’t have an opinion, simply because in the grand scheme of things my opinion means squat. The only opinion that holds an ounce of weight comes from a man who died on a tree thousands of years ago, and then rose from the dead and proceeded to take his place at the right hand of his father, and in the hearts of all men who would allow him to enter - please excuse my run-on sentence. And what did he say? Was it something controversial, something charismatic, something mysterious, something esoteric, something brave? I guess that all depends on how you interpret the words, “Come follow me!”