Discipleship as a Means of Grace - Brad Anderson
Discipleship matters, and it is your responsibility to make disciples. The term discipleship can be relatively ambiguous. When one uses the word, it can range from one’s personal walk with Jesus to an intentional step by step process one believer walks another believer through to grow in Christ. The Greek term matheteuo—to make disciples—is used to understand the process of salvation as we see it in Great Commission (Matt. 28:19) which includes conversion, baptism, and a life of growth in Christ. One could bookend Jesus’ life of ministry as the making of disciples [“Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19)] and then sending them to make disciples (Matt. 28:19). In the end, discipleship includes the act of conversion along with the steady, paced, life-long training of one to think, feel, and act like a Christian.
Discipleship is a means of grace in so much as one’s engagement in another life in Christ makes it necessary to lean more and more on Christ. As Dallas Willard says, “If I am Jesus’ disciple that means I am with him to learn from him how to be like him.” Each disciple has died and that person’s life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). While passing on “the deposit” (1 Tim. 6:20) the disciple-maker echoes the words of Paul, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), and hopes to say with Paul again, “and you became imitators of us and of the Lord” (1 Thess. 1:6-7). The way we know that one belongs to the Lord is that “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). A disciple, therefore, is a follower of Jesus that points others to him as one grows in him seeking to convert others to Christ and help them grow in him.
To know Christ is to grow in him (Lev. 19:2, Eph. 5: 1-2, John 13:15, Phil. 2:5, Rom. 14: 7-8). As Bonhoeffer declares, “When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ” and they way of discipleship is a way of obedience to Christ.
As we mature in Christ, our desire should be to help others mature in him as well. Inevitably, as David Mathis states, “The disciple’s own enjoyment of the means of grace in God’s word, prayer, and fellowship serves to fuel them spiritually for pouring out into others.” The hope is for each generation of believers to invest in the next in a life on life manner. This person to person relationship is a means by which every believer, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, may be a channel of God’s grace to one another. This process of sanctification is practical and moral growth of learning to live the greatest commandments: loving God and loving others. This central divine love is seen lived out in living God’s law in obedience and growth in Christ (1 Cor. 13; Col. 3; 1 Pet. 2, 2 Pet. 1:1-15; 1 John 3:1-5:5).
The discipleship process, then, is to make followers of Jesus, helping them to observe all that Jesus has commanded (Matt. 28:20) because being united to him, by his gracious work in us, we are becoming more like him. Disciples of Christ share a special fellowship with both God and his covenant people where it is our joy to know that he is making all things new (Rev. 21:5). While there are many great churches, programs, and parachurch organizations out there to assist you in your growth, the question remains: are you a disciple maker helping others grow in their walk with Jesus?