What Discipleship To Christ Isn't

One of the realities I learned during my time wrenching in the trades is to always appreciate and recognize the rules God has created and instilled within the fabric of human existence. They are universal, too, meaning you don’t have to be a believer in Christ to acknowledge this reality either.

For example, there is no escaping the principle that the person you will one day be is the person you are “practicing” right now. You don’t just turn into someone you plan on being.

These kinds of rules, or what I call realities, are inescapable, too. No matter how hard you try, the beliefs and attitudes you currently have as it relates to things like hard work, self-discipline, sex, wealth, morality, success, pleasure, and problem-solving will be largely what shape the person you’ll be. Furthermore, unless your attitude and beliefs about those things change, the outcome won’t either. Who you are in ten, fifteen, or fifty years is the result of the practice of what you think and believe.

Consider this reality— popular virtues like integrity, diligence, patience, meekness, and fortitude aren’t human constructs that are invented to give you leverage over others, but instead, they’re the evidence, the fingerprints of something much greater—the nature and character of Jesus Christ present within the source code of His Creation—you and me.

But, too often, Christians still choose to think that their lives in Christ don’t have the same rules anymore. Like, suddenly, suffering is supposed to go away; rejection from others is supposed to stop; or feeling sad and depressed is just magically going to stop being a reality because we’re in Christ, right?

I developed this line of thinking as a young man that if I could somehow cultivate or develop this powerful faith, or do my best, God would finally bless me with the life I truly wanted. This, however, is not how God has created any of our lives to work.  And it is certainly not how the Christian faith should be practiced.

It’s not what we find in the message of Scripture either. But we still have a hard time with this, though, mostly because behind all of the rhetoric and spirituality, we mostly possess a shallow, easy-to-embrace, and believe version of Christianity.

We operate with way too many false ideas about what it means to follow Jesus, that are extra-biblical and even completely unbiblical, that our faith crumbles under the weight of real life. The reason for this is that we don’t possess the wisdom, character, and experience gained from the Word of God that inform our understanding of what being a disciple of Christ is really like.

What has shaped your ideas about being a disciple of Christ. A person who I have grown to admire over the past few years of reading his books is World War II era theologian and pastor, Dietrich  Bonhoeffer. In what is probably known as his most famous written work, The Cost of Discipleship, he writes profound, and biblical description of true discipleship:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is the dying of the old man that is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship, we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (p. 42). Kindle Edition.

For some, this might seem extreme or way over the top. But the truth is, this kind of thinking is more a reflection of our biblical immaturity than the author attempting to get our attention by saying something edgy, thought-provoking, or even provocative like this.

We must realize that our inability to embrace the fullness of this truth about discipleship is an example of how far we’ve drifted away from Scripture and how easily we’ve become addicted to alternative sources for shaping our understanding of the world.

We have to stop allowing ourselves to be lured into settling for clever shortcuts or spiritual life hacks from those we believe have special power or special illumination from God. We also have to stop embracing the half-truths and, in many cases, the outright lies that we allow to grow in the yard of our Christian faith. These do nothing but subvert the transforming truth of Scripture by making God’s Word full of hard truths that need a refresh. Most of all, we must stop equating spiritual growth with how we feel or what we are doing to earn God’s favor. The late Dr. Voddie Bauchum, in his introduction to the Sermon on the Mount Series, makes this observation:

“Unfortunately, we are hard-wired for works righteousness. In our culture in America, it is all about rugged individualism, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, and looking out for number one. It’s about being dependent on myself. And, as a result of this, here’s what we do when it comes to the Bible—we look for rules that we can keep so that we can identify as rule keepers—at the end of the day—we are about the rules we keep and identifying the rules and keeping them—” (around 25:50)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRhxeOtIZfc

We’ve made discipleship though mostly about how good we are getting at keeping the rules, while also lauding our ability to obey the standards. We possess a works based faith, that is about doing things that make us feel good and confident about our spiritual well-being. We judge our progress by how we feel, or the circumstances, even the results. We look for signs of the Lords approval through outcomes, and quickly change course only when unfavorable things appear on the horizon, as if this is how God has chosen now to relate and communicate with us.

I am not being critical of anyone, as I am only describing what I had to repent of. I was guilty of thos kind of terrible and unbiblical thinking. I chose this too, mostly because I refused to not listen to the voice inside my heart, the old self. I allowed my mind to continue to feed on the present course, "which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires" -- Ephesians 4:22

This has to stop. You must acknowledge the real allegieance you have to the old self. I know, it's not easy, especially when you've built an entire worldview on the wrong ideas about being a follower of Christ. But to continue is to self-destruct.

None of us can be the exception to the rules here. Our only choice is to repent of this self-centered view of Christianity and turn back to the truth of Scripture for understanding and clarity.

God's Word is alive, and His Spirit indwelling the believer will make the truth of Scripture effective in your life. -

[16] But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. [17] Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. [18] And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. --- 2 Corinthians 3:16-18