Copyright © 2006-2008 Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., D.Min.
The classic passage that describes making disciples is the Great Commission - "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Therefore go, and make disciples (matheteuo) of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Mat. 28:18b-20). The number of sermons and books on this passage must be innumerable. First, notice that the source of all authority is not tradition, nor the Pope, nor the Bible, but Jesus Christ. He must be the central focus of our disciple-making. But how does disciple-making (matheteuo) relate to practical ministry?
Our modern paradigm of discipleship is to teach another person how to pray, study the Bible, how to memorize key Bible verses for witnessing, how to win souls, and how to raise funds so that we can go all over the world doing these things. Once we've done this, we are convinced that we have made new disciples of Jesus Christ. But are they disciples of Jesus, or are they just followers of our half-Gospel methods? Is that how Jesus made disciples? "Our existing paradigm acts like a filter," writes Daniel Maxton: "Any data that does not fit the existing paradigm does not get through it. Because the filter has the effect of concentrating the information that does get through, the impression is created of even greater support for their paradigms than really exists."1 So the more books we read, the more sermons we hear about this form of disciple-making and the more we go to remote places, the more we are convinced this is the way Jesus did it!
But "the whole Christian faith," continues Maxton, "is built around the concept of shifting paradigms. The word repentance, metanoia, means to change your mind or look in another direction."2 So let us now repent of our half-Gospel mistaken methods, shift our paradigms and change our minds to conform to the mind of Christ. How did Jesus Christ make disciples, and how did He command them to do the same?
Meditate Word By Word On These Verses:
Mat. 28:18-20.
In Mat. 10:1 and 7-8, we read - "He called to himself his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every sickness. ...As you go, preach, saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!' Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Freely you received, so freely give.'" Jesus clearly commanded them to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, but He also commanded them to cast out unclean spirits, heal all kinds of disease and cleanse the lepers. By the way, the verb "go" here and in the Great Commission is a participle ("as you go" or "going"), not an imperative: we are not commanded to be always jetting around the globe to some remote countries; rather, it could be translated, "wherever you go or happen to be, do" (imperative) such-and-such. We waste huge amounts of jet fuel, time and money and we exhaust ourselves physically simply traveling around, imagining that by this we are ministering to the Lord! Modern technology can enable us to communicate the Good News and keep in touch with our coworkers, mission headquarters, family and friends, with an efficiency and effectiveness that was almost unimaginable even just thirty years ago. It is imperative that we use the Internet to proclaim the Kingdom of God; otherwise we will let this amazing tool go to the devil.
In all of the synoptic Gospels, whenever Jesus sent out His disciples, He commanded them to perform practical ministry as well as to preach the Good News (Mk. 6:7-13; Lk. 9:1-6; 10:17-19). Teaching these forms of practical ministry are part and parcel of making disciples! And in the Great Commission, He commanded His disciples to do the same. He did not tell them to only teach others soul-winning, Bible study methods, how to lead a worship service or to form small groups; He also commanded His disciples to "teach them (others) to observe (carry out) all things that I commanded you [to do]." And what was it that He commanded His disciples to do? To do practical ministry right along with preaching the Good News! The word "observe" in the KJV and other translations gives entirely the wrong impression, that you can be a passive observer of Christianity, like a spectator in the stands of a sport event. It has been said the definition of a football game is twenty or so people running around on the field desperately in need of rest, and sixty thousand people watching from the stands desperately in need of exercise! Christianity is not a spectator sport. The N.T. word "observe" means to carry out, to fulfill, and to do what Jesus taught His disciples to do.
Question:
1. In the Great Commission (Mat. 28:18b-20), what is one very important but often omitted concept?
(Only one of the following answers is correct.)
This commission was not intended for us, but only for the 12 Apostles. This means we don't need to do anything, only sit in the pews, observe the preacher and sing nice songs.
The verb "go" in the original is in the form a a verb participle ("when you go" or "going"), and not in the imperative tense - this means we don't have to go anywhere.
We are not commanded to continually travel around the world to the most distant lands; it would be better translated as: "Every time, when you go somewhere or wherever you are located, teach! (imperative tense) them (other people) to observe (carry out) everything that I have commanded you to do (practical ministry)".
As we learn later in Acts 6, the Apostles became overworked when the Jerusalem church grew to number in the thousands, so they had to spin off part of their ministry by forming a new position, that of deacon. But this division of labor caused by explosive church growth does not mean that the rank-and-file disciple maker or the pastor of a small church can conveniently forget about teaching their disciples how to minister in a practical way. We aren't all leaders of mega-churches with such a division of labor as in the huge Jerusalem church of the first century!
Another passage in Matthew's Gospel illustrating this relationship between discipleship and hands-on ministry is Mat. 9:37-38 - "Then He said to His disciples (mathetes), 'The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers (ergates) are few. Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest.'" The word ergates means "a toiler; figuratively a teacher: - labourer, worker."3 So the disciple (mathetes) is commanded to pray for more laborers (ergates) like himself, i.e., he is to multiply himself in the lives of others by making disciples.
St. Paul echoes this multiplication process in 2 Tim. 2:2 - "The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit the same to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also." Then he uses the analogies of a soldier, an athlete and a farmer. The image of a farmer or field laborer that Jesus and Paul used is certainly one of a person who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. How many twenty-first century disciple-makers would get their hands dirty by planting and harvesting crops, or cleaning manure out of a barn, or carrying a bedpan, or changing a diaper for an incontinent handicapped person? Wouldn't they prefer building a nice library full of books on three-point sermon preparation and leading touchy-feely groups, so they can sit in their leather-upholstered chair behind a mahogany desk in front of that impressive library and feel very important and holy? These passages cry out for a change in our paradigms!
Although the disciple must be a person who is ready to get his hands dirty in hands-on practical ministry, we must guard against anti-intellectualism and belittling specialized training. Higher education is important: it forms us as persons and opens our minds to new ways of understanding and ministering that the untrained mind can't quite grasp. But this higher education must include learning how to conduct practical ministry. Some people, even some Christian leaders, think that practical ministry is something anyone can do if they have enough life experience. This is not true! Jesus taught the multitudes in parables, but they couldn't understand: "Then Jesus sent the multitudes away, and went into the house. His disciples came to him, saying, 'Explain to us the parable of the darnel weeds of the field'" (Mat. 13:36). So the disciples received additional instruction and education. Then Jesus asked them, "Have you understood all these things?" (v. 51) "Do you get it now?" - asked Jesus. They answered "yes," even though they didn't quite get it, and wouldn't until after His death and resurrection. But they were learning.
Then Jesus said, "Therefore, every scribe who has been made a disciple (mathetes) in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a householder, who brings out of his treasure new and old things" (Mat. 13:52). Here we see that the disciple is compared to a scribe, a highly-educated person. He is skilled in relating the "old things" - Scriptural principles - to the "new things" - modern techniques of practical ministry. The English word "disciple" has the same root as the word "discipline," and it requires intellectual and physical discipline to become a disciple.
Question:
2. What does it mean to become a disciple of Jesus Christ: to be a really intellectual student, or a disciplined follower? Explain your answer.
Disciple-making is a process of sifting and winnowing. The wheat is sifted and the chaff is blown away. The educational process involves a certain attrition rate. Expect that some will drop out. In Mat. 16:24-26 Jesus spoke some hard words that had this sifting effect: "Then Jesus said to His disciples (mathetes), 'If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life?'" These hard words cut across the grain of today's easy-believism. Many people confuse free grace with a free ride. Yes, God's grace is given freely, but accepting it involves the cost of discipleship: denying yourself, taking up your cross and crucifying the old fleshly nature.
In my Agape-Biblia revision of the Russian Bible, I use the words "forget about himself"4 instead of "deny himself" in these verses, because in the Eastern Christian mindset self-denial and asceticism can become a very ego-centered life that is quite proud of the achievement (podvig in modern Russian) of super-spirituality. The word podvig in the Soviet era became completely distorted, used as "a great accomplishment for Socialism." The focus must not be on self, on how much wealth or spiritual or social status one has given up, but rather on Jesus. Joseph of Arimathaea is a good example of this:
"When evening had come, a rich man from Arimathaea, named Joseph, who himself was also Jesus' disciple (mathetes) came. This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus' body. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given up. Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed" (Mat. 27:57-60).
Here was a wealthy man who is called a disciple! This passage disturbs those super-spiritual would-be disciples who think that they must be poor, wear shabby clothes and smell bad in order to follow Jesus. This may simply be a mask for laziness, of which poverty is the natural result. But this Joseph was certainly not one of these. Although wealthy, he made the decision to follow Jesus and he had counted the cost - by going to Pilate to ask for Jesus' body, he was putting his own life on the line by sympathizing with an executed man. Then he offered up his own tomb for Jesus' burial. So Joseph had his eyes on Jesus, not on his own wealth or self-importance.
Question:
3. How does discipleship relate to grace, and why do we need to forget about ourselves (deny oneself)?
(Only one of the following answers is correct.)
Grace is the Protestant doctrine of unmerited favor of God. But discipleship is Orthodox asceticism, a great accomplishment of self-negation, for example wearing heavy chains or sitting many years atop a column.
God's grace is given freely, but to receive grace implies paying the price of discipleship: denying onself, taking up one's cross and crucifying the old fleshly nature. We must forget about ourselves like Joseph of Arimathaea did: not to consider one's wealth (or one's poverty) as the most important thing, but to follow after Christ.
Grace is a free ticket to heaven, but discipleship means trying to earn eternal life; therefore the two are incompatible.
The book of Acts contains several turning-points in church history. One such crux of history is in Acts 11:20-26, when persecution arose after Stephen's martyrdom, some anonymous Greek-speaking Jews went to Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch. Until Antioch the disciples had shared the Good News only with other Jews, but while in Antioch they spoke to the "Hellenes," the Greeks, and some of them believed in the Lord Jesus. Thus the Gospel broke through the race barrier, which was accomplished by some disciples (mathetes) whose names we don't even know! When the Apostles in Jerusalem got wind of it, they decided to try to get the situation under their control, and sent Barnabas up to Syria, where Antioch was located. In fact, the Antiochian Orthodox Church is the oldest extant church in the world today. The mother church in Jerusalem vanished when the city was destroyed in A.D. 70, but the church in Antioch remains to this day.
As John Piper explains in his book Let the Nations Be Glad! this persecution was not necessarily bad for the church, because it led to spreading the Good News to the nations -
"The lesson here is not just that God is sovereign and turns setbacks into triumphs. The lesson is that comfort and ease and affluence and safety and freedom often cause a tremendous inertia in the church. The very things that we think would produce personnel and energy and creative investment of time and money for the missionary cause, instead produce the exact opposite: weakness, apathy, lethargy, self-centeredness, preoccupation with security."5
But a very important phrase in this story is v. 26b: "The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." Why is this phrase so important? Until this time, the followers of Jesus Christ were simply called disciples. At this crux of history, the term "Christian" was invented, and was used in a derogatory sense: "little Christ-people." But over the course of centuries the meaning has shifted, and this semantic drift has distorted our paradigms. Today we speak of the "Christian world" referring to Europe and America (although even the term "post-Christian" is inaccurate because Europe and America have never been fully Christian in the true sense). A person can call himself a "Christian" in a vague sense of a respectable, church-going, good citizen. But to call oneself a "disciple" today seems to imply a higher level of commitment.
The two terms, however, were synonymous in the first century. If you were a Christian, you were a disciple. Conversely, if you weren't a disciple, you weren't a Christian. But we've developed a form of two-tier Christianity: on the lower level we have "just Christians" who might go to church once or twice a month, or might not if the weather is too bad, or if it's too nice and sunny to stay inside. They might even put a few dollars or euros in the offering if they have some small bills to spare. Then on the higher level we have people called "disciples" who have "gone off the deep end" into some kind of "religious extremism," as the secular world may see it. But this dichotomy is completely false: a Christian must be a disciple! If you're not a disciple, you are not a Christian. It's as simple as that.
Question:
4. Is there a difference between the concepts "Christian" and "disciple" in Acts 11:20-26? Explain.
John MacArthur, in his outstanding book The Gospel According to Jesus, explains this further -
"This dichotomy, like that of the carnal/spiritual Christian, sets up two classes of Christians: believers only and true disciples. Most who hold this position discard the evangelistic intent of virtually every recorded invitation of Jesus, saying those apply to discipleship, not to salvation.
...On the contrary, no distinction has done so much to undermine the authority of Jesus' message. Are we to believe that when Jesus told the multitudes to deny themselves (Luke 14:26), to take up a cross (v. 27), and to forsake all and follow him (v. 33), his words had no meaning whatsoever for the unsaved people in the crowd? How could that be true of One who said he came not to call the righteous but sinners? (Matt. 9:13)."6
We who are truly disciples, followers of Jesus Christ, "little Christ-ones," must purge our minds of this false paradigm. Jesus calls us as sinners, but He calls us to repent and turn from our sinful, self-centered lives if we really choose to follow Him.
In summary, every disciple, every Christian, is one who participates in hands-on practical ministry, one who is not afraid to take risks. The Apostle Paul is a good example of this:
"But some Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there, and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul, and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But as the disciples stood around him, he rose up, and entered into the city. On the next day he went out with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the Good News to that city, and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many afflictions we must enter into the Kingdom of God. When they had appointed elders for them in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they had believed" (Acts 14:19-23).
Paul's preaching was met with a hail of stones in Iconium, where he was dragged out of town and left for dead. But when the disciples came around, he picked himself up and went on to the next town, to preach in Derbe. There they made many more disciples, warning them that to follow Christ would mean going through many afflictions. Then they made a loop back to the churches they had planted, and appointed elders in each church. So Paul's example of faithfulness through persecution and his exhortation encouraged them to "hang tough" in the faith when the going would get rough. That is the life of discipleship. But it is also important to notice here that the early church had a definite hierarchy of ministry: they appointed elders as leaders in each church. Even though every believer is a disciple and every disciple is to become a minister, this does not eliminate the need for structure and leadership. Remember the awful consequences of Korah's rebellion against the leadership authority of Moses (Num. 16:3). The style of leadership, however, is servanthood, as we shall see later.
Question:
5. Are you ready to become a disciple, to take up your cross and follow Christ?
Yes, I'm ready! /
No, I don't want to!
Endnotes:
1. Maxton, Daniel, Parenting Daughter Churches: A New Paradigm for Medium-Sized Congregations in the Baptist General Conference, (Pasadena, CA, doctoral thesis, School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1994), 245.
2. Ibid., 33.
3. Meyers, Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries, op. cit.
4. Hosken, Robert, ed., Agape-Biblia, (www.agape-biblia.org, 2000).
5. Piper, John, Let the Nations Be Glad!, (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Book House Co., 1993), 97.