Discipleship
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We are coming to the last of our six purposes we feel like God has given his church.
Our hope is that this has been a series that has done more than just inspire and inform; our hope is that you have grown closer to Christ and stronger in your relationship with him through the concepts and tools we have talked about.
The final purpose we are going to look at together is the idea of discipleship.
Borrowing the language from Dr. Chuck Lawless’ book Discipled Warriors, we say that our desire is to “Equip the saints through discipleship.”
There is a reason why we moved this to the last of the purposes we wanted to cover.
According to the church-wide assessment we took back in the spring, this is an area of weakness for us.
However, we moved it to last because there is a lot of overlap between discipleship and several of the other areas.
Let’s start with the idea of “discipleship” in general.
We draw this idea from Jesus’s example. What did he call the twelve men who walked with him during his earthly ministry? “Disciples.”
The word has the idea of being a learner, but it is more than just learning facts.
A disciple was someone who committed their life to following the teaching and lifestyle of a particular teacher.
It wasn’t just that they wanted to learn whatever knowledge they could from their teacher; a disciple is one who actually shapes his or her life to look like the teacher they follow.
So, when you think about discipleship as an individual follower of Christ, we can define it this way:
“The process of becoming a committed follower of Jesus Christ, with all the spiritual discipline and benefits which this brings.” (Dictionary of Biblical Themes)
I really like this definition because it speaks to something we often miss.
Discipleship is the process of you growing to live like Jesus.
That will involve spiritual disciplines like prayer, Bible study, worship, using your gifts, and more.
However, it also comes with great benefits as you get to know God better and have more opportunities to reflect him to the world around you.
As you grow as a disciple, you grow in your understanding, you gain a deeper peace in Christ, you grow to rely more heavily on Christ’s strength in fighting sin, and you gain a deeper love for Christ and grasp his love for you more fully.
On one hand, then, discipleship is the process where you grow to live like Jesus more and more.
In addition, e can also look at discipleship as a group. Together as a church, we might speak of discipleship in terms of “disciplemaking”.
Dr. Lawless defines that this way:
“Disciplemaking is the overall process of guiding believers to be followers of Jesus. Included in that process is everything from building a theological foundation to carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth.” (Chuck Lawless, Discipled Warriors)
As a church, then, part of our role is to help equip you to grow in your walk with Christ.
We don’t have activities just to entertain or educate you; our goal in everything we do is that it helps you to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
On Sunday mornings, we do that through Sunday School classes where you can fellowship with others as you come to understand God’s word together. We disciple each other through reflecting on Christ in worship, singing songs that exalt him and draw our attention to him together. We continue that discipleship process through our Children’s church leaders and through the pulpit as we look at a section of God’s Word together.
Outside of Sunday mornings, we are discipling men and women through our small group times, through our prayer meetings, through impromptu conversations and times of prayer.
As a part of our strategic planning process, we are looking at additional ways we can intentionally help you grow in Christ-likeness and become a more mature disciple of Christ.
This morning, instead of taking more time to talk about how we are going to go about disciplemaking as a church, I want to lay out some foundational principles for you to consider as you think about growing as a disciple.
To do that, we are going to look at 2 Peter 1:3-11, so go ahead and turn over there if you have your Bible.
From this passage, we are going to draw out three truths for you to understand about your growth as a disciple.
These things are only true of those who have been saved. In other words, those who have been drawn into a relationship with God that isn’t based off how good you can be.
Instead, you have come to God and recognized that you have nothing to offer him, yet he graciously gave you salvation, life, and a relationship with him.
If that isn’t you yet, I want you to hear clearly what God provides for those of us who have the kind of relationship with him.
Diving in, we see that:
1) You have what you need.
1) You have what you need.
Go back and read verse 3.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Through God’s divine power, I have everything I need for life and godliness.
It isn’t because I have trained hard and developed some super-spiritual abilities.
No; God’s power has given me everything I need for life and godliness.
This is absolutely essential for us to understand as we think about discipleship.
Discipleship doesn’t start with you. It starts with Jesus.
It starts with the fact that there is a God who loves you and cares for you and rules and reigns over all of the universe.
It starts with understanding and accepting that that same God sent his own son, Jesus, to the earth to live, die, and be raised from the dead to save us and bring the beginnings of his kingdom to bear on the earth.
Discipleship begins with that same God drawing me to himself, and as he does, this God of glory and goodness gives me everything I need for life and godliness.
Discipleship isn’t about working for salvation; it’s about working out of the salvation he has already given us.
If you are saved, you have everything you need for life and godliness already available to you.
Discipleship isn’t the process of gaining what you don’t have; it is the process of living out what God has already put in you.
You already have everything you need. You just need to learn how to live in relationship with him.
You see, that’s the second truth we see here about discipleship:
2) You have the relationship you need.
2) You have the relationship you need.
You aren’t walking this discipleship journey alone.
When we think of what God has given us, we might be tempted to think of it like a scene you may have seen in a movie like Men in Black or Despicable Me.
The secret agent goes into a room, the wall panels flip round or slide out of the way, and they reveal this arsenal of weapons and tools.
The bumbling hero to be will grab something and accidentally blow a hole in the wall or shrink someone’s head or something because he doesn’t know how to use the tool.
Is that what discipleship is? God saves you, and that unlocks this room where you can go in and grab prayer or Bible study or some other tool off the wall and hope you don’t blow something up while you figure out how to use it?
No; look back at verse 4...
Through the promises God has made, we get to share in the divine nature.
That doesn’t mean that you and I become God like some religions might teach.
Instead, it points us back to statements like Jesus prayed:
May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me.
I made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them.”
You aren’t just believing a set of ideas or getting better at some set of disciplines; through Christ, you are drawn into the unity and love that exists within God himself.
You have been drawn into a relationship with God in so real a way that your growth in discipleship is growing in your relationship with Christ.
Yes, there are sins to confess and repent of, and there are disciplines to develop, but all that stems from this relationship we have with Christ.
As Peter continues, we see our third truth about discipleship, which is that...
3) You have room to grow.
3) You have room to grow.
Our definitions of discipleship and disciplemaking have both centered around a key idea: discipleship is a process.
It is absolutely Christ who saves us, and it is absolutely his power that enables us to live like he lives.
That doesn’t mean, though, that there isn’t room for us to grow.
Read with me verses 5-7...
Here’s where it gets interesting. While our salvation and security are based exclusively off what Jesus has done, there is an aspect of our growth as disciples that calls for our effort.
Did you see what he commanded us in verse 5? “Make every effort...”
You and I need to work at growing as disciples. That doesn’t contradict what we have already said, though, because we are using the power God supplies based off the relationship we have where we are partners in the divine nature.
Peter then goes on to list attributes we need to develop as a part of or growth as disciples.
The attributes Peter lists here are not completely sequential, as though you have to master the one before you move on to the next.
They build on each other in some ways, but you will need to grow in each of these throughout your life with Jesus.
Be careful about how you think about this list.
To put it one way, resist your temptation to gamify our discipleship with Christ.
Do you know what gamification is? It is the way apps have made everything into a game. You have different levels, and you need to do this to unlock that reward or that next stage.
Think about apps like Duolingo or some other kind of learning or self-help app.
You even see it with your rewards app for Chick-fil-a and other restaurants—you only need so many more visits or so much more money spent to unlock this new level.
We need to be careful that we don’t bring that same mindset into our relationship with Christ. As we said, this isn’t about mastering a new skill set; it is about growing to honor the God we know and love and are related to.
It isn’t that you need to log so many minutes praying intercessory prayers to unlock the next level of super praying.
You don’t get coins when you share the gospel that you can spend on cool new looks or anything.
Don’t reduce it to that any more than you would reduce your marriage or your relationship to your kids or friends to that same approach.
We don’t have a ton of time to dive into each of these concepts, but let’s go through them quickly:
Faith - The basis of our relationship with Christ is that we respond in faith to his sacrifice on our behalf. If you don’t have faith, you don’t have a relationship to God.
Goodness - As you grow to trust God more, your life should start to look more like the way he lived his life, so you are going to start doing more good and stop doing the wrong things you were doing.
Knowledge - Growing as a disciple means we are going to grow to know God better, know ourselves and others better, and know what kind of character God wants to develop in us.
Self-control - As I learn more about how God calls me to live, I learn better to use his strength to stop doing what I shouldn’t do and start doing what I should.
Endurance - Self-control for a little bit of time is good, but growing as a disciple means learning to draw on God’s power over the long haul. Discipleship is a marathon, and it requires endurance to walk with him faithfully for years.
Godliness - Continued growth in living a life that honors God; living a life the looks like Jesus.
Brotherly affection - As we talked about with fellowship, as I grow as a disciple, I should grow in a love for other disciples. You and I should share a brotherly love for each other since we are brothers and sisters in Christ.
Love - He culminates his list with love, which is the umbrella virtue that everything falls under. Growing as a disciple is growing to love God and others more and more.
Look through that list for just a second. Do any of those stand out as one you need to work on right now?
What do you need to do differently to live that out?
Now, quickly look at verses 8-9 with me.
There are more aspects to the Christian life than just what Peter mentioned here, and there is more for us to do as a church than just the six things we have gone over for these last 12 weeks.
However, if we continue growing in these areas, we will continue to live lives that bear fruit for Jesus. In other words, we will show that he is in charge of our lives and will do what he created us to do.
Did you see the alternative? It isn’t that we lose our salvation, because as we said at the beginning, our relationship with God is based on what Jesus did for us, not what we do ourselves.
Instead, we live life forgetting that our sins have been forgiven.
We lose the joy, the meaning, and the benefit of walking with Jesus.
I don’t want that for any of us today.
The church leadership is talking more about how we can be more intentional with our disciplemaking, but how are you doing as a disciple today?
Have you started that journey with Christ? Have you recognized that he is in charge, or are you trying to do this on your own?
Look back through those qualities…which stood out to you most? Is there one you haven’t been practicing recently?
What is one change you can make this week to take a step as a disciple?
Remember, you aren’t just checking boxes or unlocking the next level of something. Instead, you are deepening your awareness and experience with the God of the universe who loved you so much that he died in your place and rose from the dead and drew you to himself.