Seedplots

In last Monday’s posting, I noted that the concept of “discipleship” is understood in quite different ways by people in Christian circles.

Here are several of the more popular understandings:

1)  A Serious Attempt to Imitate Christ
After persecution of Christians became widespread in the Roman Empire, Church fathers such as Ignatius emphasized the importance of faithfulness to Christ in the face of death.

“Only those who are obedient prove to be disciples and the conclusive proof is obedience to the point of death,” he wrote.   “Being a perfect disciple of Christ means imitating Christ in his Passion.”

Anthony and the desert Fathers further developed this line of thinking, calling Christians who were serious about following Jesus (i.e. “perfect discipleship”) to a monastic life (which they termed “unbloody martyrdom”). This theme was picked up by monastic writers in the Middle Ages.  Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, considered monastic life necessary for true discipleship, i.e. an imitation of the poverty, humility and charity of the earthly Jesus.

This understanding of discipleship as “a serious attempt to imitate Christ” is often appears in Roman Catholic writers. A classic expression of this emphasis is found in the devotional book Imitation of Christ, one of the most widely read books ever written.  In modern times, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, similarly calls believers to “radical discipleship.”

2)  A Structured Training Program for Young Christians
Others use the term discipleship to refer to the practice of using a set of “training materials” or “discipleship material” with a new believer or a young believer.  A classic example would be the Ten Basic Steps booklets produced by Campus Crusade for Christ.

Discipleship means that an older Christian (i.e. somebody already “discipled”) goes through these materials with new believers (either individually or in a small group).  In this understanding, discipleship follows evangelism.  It is something you “do” with new believers who are not yet “established” in their faith.  When a person has been through the “training program” they have been “discipled.”

3)  A Training Process aimed at Transforming Christians into Mature, Stable Believers
An older use of the term, which has its roots in the ministry of Dawson Trotman and the organization he founded called “The Navigators” divides believers into two groups – ordinary Christians and “disciples.” “Disciples” are mature, stable Christians who are active in sharing their faith with others. Discipleship is a mentoring method, usually “one-on-one,” used to transform ordinary believers into “disciples.” In this approach, mentors sometimes refer to those whom they are mentoring (”discipling”) as their disciples. Waylon Moore provides a good example of this usage:

Not every saved person is Christ’s disciple but a disciple is a certain kind of Christian, a Christian who . . . is involved in the word of God on a continual basis, . . . who lays down his life for others, . . . and who abides daily in a fruit-bearing union with Christ. . . Disciplemaking is a workable method . . .  Evangelism makes converts, follow-up makes disciples (Multiplying Disciples. The New Testament Method of Church Growth, 1981)

An extreme form of this usage developed in the Charismatic renewal movement.  Four leaders in the movement, Don Basham, Derek Prince, Charles Simpson and Bob Mumford, influenced perhaps by Juan Carlos Ortiz’s book Disciple, started a movement emphasizing total accountability and submission to church leaders.  This became known as the “Shepherding Movement” and led to excesses of abuse and manipulation.

4)  The Ongoing Nurture and Teaching of Christians
This fourth understanding of discipleship is probably the most common way of understanding of discipleship among evangelical believers. Mission is thought to have two components – evangelism and discipleship.  Evangelism comes first. When individuals respond to the call of the gospel in repentance and faith, they need to be taught. That process of nurture and teaching is typically referred to as discipleship.

Discipleship, in this usage, is either what we do to help younger believers grow in their faith, or something they do as an expression of their faith.  Leaders who emphasize this understanding often point to the root meaning of the term translated “disciple” in the New Testament:  “It simply means one who is a learner or a pupil.”

Conclusion
The problem with all of these understandings of discipleship, as I noted yesterday, is that in the New Testament, the verses that speak of “making disciples” refer to something that includes both evangelism and instruction – instruction that continues until a person is “obeying all that Jesus commanded.”  To make sense of the Biblical data, a broad definition is needed.

A confusing word it is, discipleship.  It means different things to different people.

To some people discipleship means “being a disciple” of Jesus.

To others it means “making disciples of Jesus.”  Which is right?

The New Testament data doesn’t help us decide how to use the word because the actual term discipleship because is not in the New Testament.

The closest New Testament word is matheteuo – a word which can mean either “making disciples” or “being a disciple.”  This word only occurs 4x in the New Testament.

Making disciples?
Twice the term (matheteuo) refers to “making disciples” – in Jesus’ Great Commission given to the 11 disciples (Matthew 28:19) and in a description of Paul’s missionary work (Acts 14:21).

In these two verses matheteuo refers to both what we usually call “evangelism” and the teaching that followed after a person responded to the Gospel in a positive way.

Being a disciple?
Twice the term matheteuo occurs as a passive verb that means “being” or “becoming” a disciple.  In Matthew 13:52 it refers to a scribe “who has become a disciple of the kingdom” (NASV) or has been been “trained for the kingdom of heaven (ESV).

In Matthew 27:5 matheteuo occurs in a description of Joseph of Arimathea, noting that he had become a disciple of Jesus

Both / and ?
Probably the way New Testament uses the term matheteuo is the way we should use the term “discipleship” – i.e. in a broad way to refer both to making disciples and to being disciples.

We would also do well to use the term in a comprehensive way to refers both to the process of evangelism, and to the process of instruction that follows a positive response to the gospel – as this is how the term is used in the New Testament

For most of us, using the term discipleship in this way requires a shift in our thinking, a “paradigm” shift.  We are not used to using the term “discipleship” like this.  The danger is, however, if we use the term differently that the way it is used in the New Testament,  that we will end up reading a different meaning in New Testament verses that refer to “disciples.”

More about this in a later posting…

In earlier postings I’ve writing about the phrase “walking with God.”  A similar phrase that is extremely important in Scripture is the challenge of living to “please God”  (see for example, Colossians 1:10).  Both of these ideas are present in the Latin phrase Coram Deo, a term that some Christian writers are fond of using.

Here’s a post by R.C. Sproul that explains in more detail this term:

What does “Coram Deo” Mean?

I remember Mama standing in front of me, her hands poised on her hips, her eyes glaring with hot coals of fire and saying in stentorian tones, “Just what is the big idea, young man?”

Instinctively I knew my mother was not asking me an abstract question about theory. Her question was not a question at all–it was a thinly veiled accusation. Her words were easily translated to mean, “Why are you doing what you are doing?” She was challenging me to justify my behavior with a valid idea. I had none.

Recently a friend asked me in all earnestness the same question. He asked, “What’s the big idea of the Christian life?” He was interested in the overarching, ultimate goal of the Christian life. To answer his question, I fell back on the theologian’s prerogative and gave him a Latin term. I said,

“The big idea of the Christian life is coram Deo. Coram Deo captures the essence of the Christian life.”  This phrase literally refers to something that takes place in the presence of, or before the face of, God.

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.

To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God. God is omnipresent. There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze.

To be aware of the presence of God is also to be acutely aware of His sovereignty. The uniform experience of the saints is to recognize that if God is God, then He is indeed sovereign. When Saul was confronted by the refulgent glory of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, his immediate question was, “Who is it, Lord?” He wasn’t sure who was speaking to him, but he knew that whomever it was, was certainly sovereign over him.

Living under divine sovereignty involves more than a reluctant submission to sheer sovereignty that is motivated out of a fear of punishment. It involves recognizing that there is no higher goal than offering honor to God. Our lives are to be living sacrifices, oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.

To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity. It is a life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the majesty of God. A fragmented life is a life of disintegration. It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos.

The Christian who compartmentalizes his or her life into two sections of the religious and the nonreligious has failed to grasp the big idea. The big idea is that all of life is religious or none of life is religious. To divide life between the religious and the nonreligious is itself a sacrilege.

This means that if a person fulfills his or her vocation as a steelmaker, attorney, or homemaker coram Deo, then that person is acting every bit as religiously as a soul-winning evangelist who fulfills his vocation. It means that David was as religious when he obeyed God’s call to be a shepherd as he was when he was anointed with the special grace of kingship. It means that Jesus was every bit as religious when He worked in His father’s carpenter shop as He was in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Integrity is found where men and women live their lives in a pattern of consistency. It is a pattern that functions the same basic way in church and out of church. It is a life that is open before God. It is a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord. It is a life lived by principle, not expediency; by humility before God, not defiance. It is a life lived under the tutelage of conscience that is held captive by the Word of God.

Coram Deo . . . before the face of God. That’s the big idea.

Next to this idea our other goals and ambitions become mere trifles.

(Original Link)