What is Discipleship?

Grace is free and un-earnable.
Discipleship will cost us our lives.

Compared to the value of the grace, the cost is nothing.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot.

What is discipleship?

It is agreeing with God on His standards, on His order. It is coming to your own determination on things as you navigate your culture, your worldview, and your religion, in relation to your knowledge and interactive relationship with your Creator.

Think of Zaccheus, in Luke 19, the short tax collector encountering Jesus, and his instant discipleship was to give 1/2 of his wealth to the poor and 4 times to anyone if he had defrauded them.

Or the one who said, Luke 9:60, I will follow you but first let me go bury my father, (which meant let me wait till my father dies and I get my inheritance). Jesus replied let the dead bury the dead, (which meant the want of money makes you dead, instead live now.)

Discipleship is uncomfortable.

Matthew 16:24-26, the cross is to take up a burden of death to this life and to follow Jesus.
Yet, even while carrying a cross there is comfort. Matthew 11:28-29, Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Discipleship is making yourself in God’s image, not making God in your image.

How you view a thing today, marriage, gender, sex, creation, miracles, heaven, and hell, eternity, may change with time, but not due to cultural pressures. The more you read His Word, pray ask for understanding, and talk with people, especially counter views, the more you grow, and even the more you might review previous presuppositions. There is a flux to discipleship. Of having to use both faith and reason, humility and deduction, to avoid self-delusion and self-aggrandisement.

It is true that Proverbs 25:2, It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.

This simply means God wants us to use our cognitive power, our reason.
Yet kings do not find it out to hide it for themselves. Kings are meant to be the spring of generosity, of justice, of showing how one should live. A king, being the highest authority, with a position ordained by God, should be the most free from fear to conduct themselves with integrity and kindness.
Of course, we see Kings afraid of the usurper or a forgotten more valid heir.
The point is that a king should imbibe the attributes of God because they have attained the most.

So to a disciple.

We have been given forgiveness, hope, opportunity, a calling, a purpose, we are on God’s side.
We are not to hold things as if we are something special. We are not to hide things as if we have been given an exclusive secret.
Rather, freely we have been given so freely we are to give.
Phil 2:4, do not merely look out for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. Sadly we, as followers of Jesus, still seem to perpetuate a superior attitude. Romans 12:3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

How does discipleship help us overcome this?

First, if we can see it we can avoid it.

Do you major on a minor?

We have had so many books written dating the coming return of Christ, or the rise of the antichrist, or some global tribulation or Armageddon. Discipleships is focusing on the really important things, often the hard things, the Great Commission, loving your Neighbour and giving mercy first.
We love to want to know something that others are blind to, to be in the know.
Do you have an attitude of thinking you know something more than others, do you ever have an attitude of ‘poor them, if only they knew…’
There is a degree of bafflement to the Gospel, Jesus’ teaching does put the world on its head. Some of that is due to our expectation that there must be a catch. We expect a con. Nothing is free. Another is due to the power of God not operating like the powers of this world. The first shall be last, Matthew 19:30 to gain your life you must lose it. Matthew 16:25.

Discipleship avoids secrets.

Discipleship is the act of taking on a few of Jesus’ catchphrases and starting to live them.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Extending grace to the ungracious goes against our self-preservation. If given the bird we give the bird.
Another one. Do not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.
The temptation to receive praise is powerful. If you can cultivate an attitude that does not need recognition, where when it does not come you are happy. There is a power to living in obscurity. When you do your good deeds without fanfare, you give the Holy Spirit space to fill your actions with His power.
Overcoming the need to be gratified by others is not an easy path, it is a discipleship attribute that only comes by doing, failing, and doing again till it becomes part of your character.

Never react.

Jesus never reacted. Everything Jesus ever did, every story of Jesus was of him acting. From healing Lazarus to clearing the temple with a whip. People may have placed expectations on him, he may have wept over them, and people may have been flagrantly evil in front of him. Take the woman caught in the very act of adultery, (where was the man?) Jesus did not react, he wrote in the sand to the embarrassment of the religious leaders. All of this was Jesus acting, Jesus being in command, Jesus not being embarrassed flustered, or reactionary. Discipleship is cultivating this attitude that was in Jesus.

You can see how taking two attributes of Jesus’ teachings gives you a full-time discipleship course.