What is a Disciple?

        

          The issue of Discipleship in the modern context of the church presents a rather frustrating and confusing topic for many Christians. Many Christians are confused on what a disciple is and are further mystified on what a disciple does. Theological confusion among churches and pastors has not helped the situation. Sermons topics on discipleship range from seeing disciples primarily as learners, or believers, or committed believers who become disciples, or as the conditions of salvation. I too, like many Christians across the denominational spectrum, have experienced existential turmoil and pain because I wasn’t sure if the characteristics of discipleship were conditions of salvation, if Jesus’ message to the apostles were intended for me, and if I met the qualifications for a “second tier” of Christian spirituality. Because of this ongoing frustration I have felt burnout by my Christian experience, always wondering if I was good enough to be considered a disciple.

For some time I wondered if there ever would be an answer to these questions or if this was area of mystery that I would have to take up with God upon my death. Yet this is not the position God wishes for His children to be in, God desires for those He has given to Christ to be empowered, encouraged, and impassioned to follow after His Son, not discouraged, burnt out and confused, throwing their hands in the air hoping for their death so that they can finally understand what God meant. Therefore, God has not left us with a fractured piecemeal picture of discipleship which leaves the interested student wondering. Through careful study of God’s word we can build a theology of what a disciple is and what he does. It is true that orthodoxy produces orthopraxy, this gives us confidence that if we are faithful to God’s word in our understanding then we will be empowered and encouraged to live out the Spirit empowered life of discipleship that Jesus intended.

In his book Following the Master: A Biblical Theology of Discipleship Michael Wilkins builds his biblical theology of discipleship by first examining the etymology of the word “disciple” which in the Greek language is Mathetes. The definition of the word is “learner”; however, the meaning of the word is not limited to its definition.  In the Ancient Near East during the mid 1^st century the word also included the additional sense of adherent. This would indicate that a disciple was much more than an interested student. In the case of a Christian disciple an adherent would be a believer in Jesus Christ for this is what Jesus made evident in His teaching, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40). There are numerous passages especially in the Gospel of John where Jesus made this abundantly clear (John 3:15-18, 36, 6:47, 11:25-26, 20:30-31) also Peter in Acts and Paul in his Epistles. In order to follow Jesus you must believe that He is the Son of God, anything less will not please God. Also, the way Mathetes was used in the early church recorded in Acts was synonymous with the terms Christian, Brother/Sister, Believer, and Follower of the Way. Therefore, we can conclude from the etymology of the word Mathetes, from the way it was used in the Ancient Near East and in the early church recorded in Acts, that a disciple was someone who learned from and believed in Jesus.

It would seem from the Biblical and cultural-historical data that a disciple was a convert, suggesting a 1 to 1 relationship— convert equaled disciple. However this view is not held by many, some hold the view that a disciple was merely a learner, others seem to think a disciple was a minister, and still others think discipleship was a secondary step of the committed Christian. I’ve demonstrated that a disciple cannot be simply a learner, but what does scripture have to say about these other options?

At this point it is important to understand what a disciple does. It is critical to identify the point at which Jesus was teaching the masses, the disciples or the apostles. First of all, Jesus gave a general call to discipleship. Jesus when He was addressing the masses put forth this invitation, “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple”’ (Luke 14:25-27).  This call was to hate your mother and father and brother and so on, basically communicating that the disciple was to possess a love for their heavenly Father that made all other love look like hate. Let me be clear, Jesus was not advocating hate,  but a love that looks like hate in comparison to the intensity of love for the heavenly Father, our love for God should be supreme (v. 26). Secondly, in order to be a disciple one had to take up their cross and to come after Jesus (v. 27).  Jesus’ general call of discipleship, not His call of Apostleship, also included abiding in belief (John 15:4) and again obedience by taking up ones cross (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23).

This call was drastically different than the call to Apostleship, which was to leave home and family (Luke 9:60), sell all you have (Luke 12:33), and come physically follow Jesus (Mark 1:17). Jesus selected twelve for this special task. For three years Jesus trained and taught the apostles/disciples, then He died, resurrected, ascended and poured out His Spirit at Pentecost. This enabled the Apostles to remember Jesus’ teaching and be anointed to carry out miracles for the purpose of spreading the Gospel and establishing the church. This was a very specific call, one that was not intended for the disciple.

Jesus intention was that He should die, be resurrected and ascend into heaven. However, this creates a problem because how was a disciple to follow after Jesus if Jesus was not physically present. As Jesus discussed in John 14 through 16, He was leaving so that one better will come in His place. The Holy Spirit provides the presence of Christ so that all can follow Jesus regardless of location and time periods. This is another reason why it makes sense that Jesus’ general call to all disciples was not one to sell everything one had and to physically leave family and home to come and follow. Jesus foreknew that this would be an impossible task for all of the billions of believers that would follow after His death, resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father. Jesus desired for the whole world to hear the gospel, be saved and follow Him (Matt. 28:19). The specific call to sell everything, leave family and home, and physically follow Jesus was intended only for His Apostles. So this rules out the possibility that a disciple was only a minister. In fact, every disciple is called to minister and serve, Jesus died so that He might have a nation of priests (I Pet. 2:5-9). Observe what Wilkins has to say about this issue, “Therefore our preliminary observation is that as disciples the Twelve give us an example of how Jesus works with all believers, and as apostles the Twelve give us an example of how Jesus works with leaders of the church” (pg. 36).

However, the issue of a disciple being a committed believer still lingers. The view that there are Christians and there are disciples, a disciple being a committed and obedient Christian. To understand this issue better consider the account of the disciples not able to believe the hard sayings of Jesus in John 6, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (v. 66). It is important to note that Jesus was speaking to a mix of disciples, the masses (v. 22 “the crowd”), Jews (v. 41) and the Apostles. It would seem that based on the context surrounding verse 66 that the term disciple was being used loosely here. Wenham, Motyer, Carson and France note in New Bible Commentary “The grumbling of many of the disciples (60-61) shows that the word ‘disciple’ is used here in a loose sense for those fringe followers of Jesus. They were not true believers for they found it hard to accept his teaching (60). They could not even imagine anyone accepting it. Jesus knew their real position and proceeded to advise” (pg. 1039, emphasis in the original).

Looking at the previous verses it can be gathered that Jesus knew the true intentions of those He was speaking to, and so He spoke evangelistically to persuade them to belief, “Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29) and using His words to act as a winnow for He knew that some could not believe after hearing His words concerning Himself being the bread of life, “But there are some of you who do not believe” (v. 64). Therefore, some “disciples” walked away among the mix of people, not possessing true belief in Jesus, contrast that with the belief of the true disciples found among the twelve, “So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (v. 67-69). The twelve here model true discipleship, which is belief that Jesus is the Son of God upon whom we depend for eternal life.

It would seem, there is no secondary step of Christian spirituality, these “disciples” did not walk away and cease to follow Jesus because they didn't want to live a committed life of obedience, it was because they could not believe that Jesus was who He said He was. Therefore, keeping in mind the definition of disciple which was a learner and adherent, they did not qualify as disciples since they did not believe. It is also important to note that a disciple was never conceptualized outside the context of a community. To be a disciple was to identify and participate in a community of disciples. This idea was developed further in Acts and the Epistles, when the nascent church was established and the body of Christ was starting to operate in its redemptive capacity.

Some people after reading this might raise the objection that if Mathetes meant learner and adherent, then it is a copout to say based on the context of John 6 the meaning of the word would allow for someone who was not fully a believer. In response to this objection it is important to understand Jesus’ mission and how that mission unfolded. Jesus first came on the scene in Matt. 3 when He was baptized by John the Baptist; this event identified Jesus with John’s ministry of preparing the way for the Messiah. It is important to know that Jesus not only was born, matured to adulthood, did some teaching, then died on the cross and then went to heaven. But He entered into a movement which served as a vehicle for His ministry, that was the Messianic Movement prepared by John the Baptist. This movement unfolded over time, for example after the temptation in Matt. 4:1-11 Jesus then preached about the Kingdom (Matt. 4:17) and only later did He perform signs and wonders to demonstrate that He was the Messiah, anointed one of God, Divinity in human form (Matt. 8-10). There was a progressive unfolding of the Movement and therefore, an unfolding understanding of who Jesus was.

It is possible to see this unfolding through five stages in the gospels. First, in John 1:25-42 people took the personal initiative to follow Jesus out of curiosity or to question Him in order to find out more, therefore a full understanding of Jesus' identity had not fully emerged. The second stage can be found in Matt. 4:18-22 (also Mark 1:16-20) where Jesus called people to follow Him, this was a challenging and costly call that entailed two separate calls, the first to discipleship and the second to apostleship. At this point we see the third stage, Jesus began sifting those who truly believed from those who didn't this was the account described above in John 6. After this the fourth stage was a smaller group of committed believers/disciples, and stage five the establishment of the church through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Taking this into account, it is entirely possible to see how there was a progression of the Jesus Movement, understanding of the Messianic nature of Jesus and His message of belief in Him. So that by the time we come to the early church described in Acts, disciple had a robust meaning of learner and adherent with associations to other terms such as Christian, Brother/Sister, Believer, and Follower of the Way. And most importantly, we can conclude that those disciples who walked away from Jesus in John 6 had up to that point an underdeveloped belief in Jesus, because full knowledge had not yet been unfolded.

In conclusion, based on the Biblical and cultural-historical data a disciple was a learner and an adherent who responded to the costly call of life commitment to following Jesus with belief. Discipleship begins at the point of salvation, we all are disciples if we are Christians, and there is no upper or secondary tier of Christian. A key component of following Jesus is to participate in His New Covenant post-resurrection community.