2: Becoming a disciple

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus called Simon Peter and several others to become his first disciples with these simple words:

"Follow me"

Becoming a disciple today happens in the exact same way: Jesus invites you to follow him, and you decide to do so. You then become his follower. 

But what does it actually mean to follow Jesus?

Following Jesus

To understand what it means to follow Jesus, let's look more closely at how Jesus called his first disciples. We'll start with Peter and Andrew as told in Matthew 4:18–20:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 

Observe that Jesus not only invites Peter and Andrew to follow him, he also states the purpose for them to become his followers: so they can learn to catch people (like how they had been using their nets to catch fish). 

But they're not going to be building a following for themselves. Being a disciple isn't about collecting people for your own purposes, it's about winning them for God. It's not about building your own ministry, it's about participating in Jesus' ministry. This is important!

Note above that I specifically said "so they can learn to catch people." That's because being a disciple means you're a learner, with Jesus of course being the teacher. Remember that the goal of training a disciple is to make him like his teacher (Luke 6:40). So catching people is something you can learn to do by following Jesus.

How does this work in practice? Well, look at the lives of Peter and the other first disciples. They followed Jesus all around Galilee and the surrounding areas, listening to him preach and teach in synagogues and watching him heal the sick and demonized people. They watched him as he did these things, and they learned how to do them from his modelling.

Then he summoned them and gave them an assignment. He sent them out to do the same kinds of things that he had been doing:

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1–2)

The twelve disciples (also called apostles because Jesus had specifically called them by name and sent them out) probably took deep breaths and swallowed, and then they "departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere" (verse 6). When they returned they "told him all that they had done" (verse 10) and Jesus took them aside for a debriefing session. 

At this point in their becoming disciples, it wasn't really a mission. It was more like training—similar to a practicum or work experience program for high-school students. But that's what disciples are: students. And once disciples are fully trained, they can become teachers. But there's a catch there, something to watch out for that we'll talk about later. 

Be like Jesus

The point however is that being a disciple means we have a job to do: help Jesus gather people into God's kingdom. And the way we do our job is the same way Jesus did it: that is, by healing the sick, casting out demons, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. 

Which means we're now ready to answer the question we raised in the previous chapter, namely, what it means to be "like" Jesus:

Being like Jesus means doing the stuff that he did.

And that he continues to do, in us and through us, his Body. Because we can only "do the stuff" of the kingdom under his authority and empowered by his Spirit. We can't do any of this stuff on our own. 

What Jesus wants most

Hold on just a gosh darn moment there. Are you telling me that doing personal evangelism and praying for divine healing of sick people is all that being a disciple is about? What about helping the poor? And teaching children in Sunday School? And serving on the building committee for our church? And organizing prayer chains, and...

Yes of course, all those things are important too as we all have "gifts that differ according to the grace given to us" (Romans 12:6). After all, Tabitha was a disciple and her main ministry was knitting sweaters (Acts 9:36ff). 

But I'll bet she also tried to win her neighbors to Christ, and she probably prayed for healing when a fellow widow was ill. 

What Jesus wants most however is for more of us to respond to his call to discipleship, to follow in his footsteps doing the things that he did. After all, he didn't just train twelve disciples; he trained many more. And when he was appointing seventy-two others to go do the same things that the Twelve had been sent out to do, Jesus told them:

"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." (Luke 10:2) 

There's a double note of urgency in what Jesus said here. First, he says pray earnestly—earnestly! The underlying Greek word used here expresses the idea of begging for something that is very much needed, as in "Please, sir!" And the Greek verb translated above as "send out" isn't the same as the word used earlier in Luke 9:2 where Jesus "sent out" the Twelve. Luke 10:2 instead uses a word found elsewhere in the Gospels when referring to driving out demons. So what Jesus is actually saying here is something like this:

There aren't enough of my followers who know what it really means to be a disciple. So I beg you, please pray earnestly that God will push more Christians out of their comfort zones, out of the pews and into the streets, so they can gather more people into my Father's kingdom. 

Because the meat is in the street, as Wimber used to say. And the time is short, too. But we'll talk about that later.

Anyhow, before you sell your house and quit your job and run off to be a missionary or whatever, maybe you should begin by counting the cost. 

We'll examine that next. 

 

---> Go to chapter 3