What is discipleship?

Have you ever tried to summarize for those in your care what the Scriptures teach about the behavior of real disciples, about the everyday lives of those who follow him?

It’s an important subject, most of us would agree. But nowadays it’s hard to discuss without people interpreting such summaries as volleys in the culture wars.

Summaries of Cross-Shaped Discipleship

The Bible is full of moral admonition for disciples—abiding in Christ, putting his kingdom above all, living by its ethics even among our enemies, and so on. It seems to me, though, that when we look to the New Testament for summaries of genuine discipleship, three kinds stand out: (1) statements about the way of the cross (and the cost of discipleship), (2) summaries of the Law and the Prophets, and (3) new commandments about practically fleshing out love for God and neighbor.

I want to underscore what Jesus said of cross-shaped discipleship—the first of these three kinds of summative pronouncements:

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. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? . . . Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? . . . So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–28, 31, 33; cf. Matt. 10:37–39; 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23–27)

The second kind of summary is also well known, taught frequently by our pastors and others. When tested by a Pharisee—“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”—Jesus answered,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matt. 22:34–40; cf. Mark 12:28–34, Luke 10:27)

Many of us know Jesus summarized the Hebrew Scriptures by encouraging disciples to love God and neighbor.

The third kind of summary, though, receives less attention in discussions of discipleship. Jesus’s and the apostles’ new regulations for fleshing out love for God and neighbor day by day—though fairly familiar to avid Bible readers—receive short shrift in all too many congregations. One reason for this, perhaps, is because the commands stress sacrificial work on behalf of those in need—whether or not we’re personally connected to them.

Discipleship in Word and Deed

During much of church history, these rules were remembered in relation to Maundy Thursday, when Jesus told the Twelve: 

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35).

On one hand, this seems like a recapitulation of his summary of the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 22:38–40). In this instance, though, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet to show what he meant. And as they went on to inculcate this teaching after Pentecost, they often specified its practical application in the love of the forlorn.

As the disciple, John wrote from Asia decades later,

I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. . . . Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. . . . By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 2:7, 9–10; 3:16–17)

This was called “the royal law” or “law of Christ,” and many viewed it as the leading characteristic of Christ’s followers. “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” wrote the apostle Paul. “Bear one another burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 5:14; 6:2). Or in the words of James, half-brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well” (James 2:8).

Discipleship is not merely about sharing spiritual experiences with others. It’s about living in obedience to the King.

When James summarized “true religion”—a religion that is “pure and undefiled before God”—he described it this way: “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). This accords with the final separation of sheep from goats, which Jesus will oversee when he returns. Of his sheep, he says: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. . . . Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:35–36, 40).

Reclaiming Costly Love

Disturbingly, recent surveys suggest only 20 percent of Christians believe caring for widows, orphans, and strangers is important to practice their faith. Only 44 percent recall hearing a sermon about caring for the vulnerable. How can this be?

Let’s pay due attention to the third kind of discipleship summary. It’s not just for “liberals” or “social gospel” Christians—it’s for careful Bible readers, lovers of the Lord, and doers of the Word. Let’s not claim to follow Jesus without hearing, teaching, and doing what he says.

Discipleship is not merely about sharing spiritual experiences with others. It’s about living in obedience to the King.

D. Sweeney