{"id":916,"date":"2019-03-21T09:33:59","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T09:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/?p=916"},"modified":"2019-03-18T18:48:38","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T18:48:38","slug":"the-road-to-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/2019\/03\/21\/the-road-to-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Discipleship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following was written by guest writer Jerry Harvill.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few aspects of the Christian culture\nare more idealized but less understood than discipleship. Humpty Dumpty\nvocabularies abound, in which, like Humpty’s approach in Lewis Carroll’s tale,\nwords mean “whatever (we) choose them to mean; nothing more, nothing\nless!” The plethora of religious cults attracting followers worldwide\nteach us that a fill-in-the-blank approach to discipleship is both arbitrary\nand dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is true discipleship? We need a\nfresh and accurate biblical definition that exposes the full weight of its\nmandate. Let us first examine modern barriers to following Christ, and then the\nDivine pattern for discipleship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MODERN BARRIERS TO DISCIPLESHIP<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The road to discipleship is lined\nwith hazards. The better we understand these pitfalls the more likely we will\nbe to navigate safely past them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aesthetic Admiration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first roadblock to true\ndiscipleship is the virtually unanimous respect with which men speak of Jesus.\nEven when it was fashionable to proclaim the death of God, it was also in vogue\nto acclaim the life of Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This aesthetic admiration is not an\nasset precisely because in an environment of universal celebration there is no\nlonger anything distinctive or perilous in praising Him. Vague admiration dulls\nHis sword, blunting the original outrage of His mission and innoculating us\nagainst the sting of His demands. We substitute homage for obedience. We give\nHim praise instead of surrender. Paul S. Minear says of our times,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it is true that Jesus has never\nhad a better press than today, it is also true that rarely has there been less\nknowledge of his commands and less inclination to obey them. Recognition of his\ngreatness has served as a substitute for reckoning the costs of discipleship.\nHigh time that disciples declared a moratorium on praise and an open season on\na more honest study of what his demands require. Paul S. Minear, Commands\nof Christ <\/em>(Abingdon Press, 1972), p. 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aversion to Authority<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second major barrier to\ncontemporary discipleship is the anti-authority posture of our times. The very\nidea of obeying commands raises hackles today. Modern man assumes that freedom\nis a supreme value and that assersions of authority destroy freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than submitting to others,\npeople today look to self as the highest authority. The watchwords of the\nmodern cult of self are self-knowledge, self-esteem, and self-actualization.\nThe philosophy is self-assertion, and the goal is self-determination. The god\nMe is intolerant of old-fashioned virtues such as discipline and self-denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cultural Change<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third barrier to discipleship is\nthe wide gulf of cultural change separating first-century Galilee from\ntwentieth-century America. The daily problems facing citizens of New York or\nNashville or San Francisco appear wholly different from those of ancient\nCapernaum. What concerns do a 747 pilot and a Tiberias fisherman share? What\npressures are common to modern life in the “fast lane” and the\nlifestyle of Hebrew shepherds?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These changes affect more than\nexternals. The meaning of words, of ideas, and of actions has shifted\ndecisively so that critical adjustments must be made in our thinking before\nbiblical terms and concepts can be seen to relate to our modern experience.\nMany are so burdened by the rigors of those adjustments that they abandon the\nwhole project. Alan Richardson, writing in the Cambridge History of the\nBible<\/em>, reports a “gradual decay of the ordinary Christian’s sense that\nhe can read the Bible for himself without an interpreter and discover its\nunambiguous meaning.”Alan Richardson, The Cambridge History of the\nBible <\/em>(Cambridge: University Press, 1963), p. iii. He argues that\nthe Bible has come to be regarded as a book for experts only, requiring\nelaborate training in linguistic and historical disciplines before it can even\nbe understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The net result of the cultural\nalienation which many now feel from the language and the priorities of the\nbiblical world is the widespread abortion of discipleship. It is seen as an\nantique, a fossil of a bygone age, no longer functional in an era of\nmicroprocessors and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defective Models<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fourth barrier to authentic\ncontemporary discipleship is the distorted role models visible today. For many\nmoderns the institutional church is a liability instead of an asset to\ndiscipleship. Francis Schaeffer warned, “I am convinced that in the\ntwentieth century people all over the world will not listen if we have the\nright doctrine, the right policy, but are not exhibiting\ncommunity.”Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th\nCentury <\/em>(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1970), p.\n73. Albert Camus, the French existentialist, saw the role of the Church in\nthe modern world more clearly than some theologians. He wrote, “What the\nworld expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and\nclear\u2026 in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could arise\nin the heart of the simplest man.”Quoted in Bruce Lockerbie,\n“Laughter without Joy: The Burlesque of Our Secular Age” (Christianity\nToday, <\/em>Oct. 7, 1977), p. 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead the Church has skeletons in\nher closet\u2014the skeleton of disunity, the skeleton of hypocrisy, the skeleton of\nsuburban isolation, the skeleton of guilty silence on world issues while\nheadlining minor concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the Jonestown fiasco\nand its wake of aversion to anything smacking of cultism has almost made\ndiscipleship a dirty word. By confusing true Christianity and false religion\nmany have reacted against legitimate evangelism and discipling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together these four deterrents pose\nformidable obstacles to authentic discipleship. We must remember that we, too,\nare products of our times; we, too, must negotiate these barriers. None is\nexempt. In fact, self-deception may well be the greatest hazard of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

THE DIVINE PATTERN FOR DISCIPLESHIP<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

What we need today perhaps more than\never before is an authentic, definitive pattern to follow. We need a flesh-and\nblood demonstration of exactly what discipleship is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is precisely what we have in\nthe Incarnation of the Son of God. His coming is the pattern for our going; his\nmission the definition of our own. “Peace be with you! As the Father has\nsent me, I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21). “As you sent me into the\nworld, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they\ntoo may be truly sanctified” (Jn. 17:18\u201319).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding discipleship is in\nfact understanding the mind of Christ, and practicing discipleship is following\nthe footprints of Jesus. We are on the right track, therefore, when we define\nthe demands of discipleship not in terms of what we think or feel but in terms\nof what the Cross meant to Jesus. In Him is God’s pattern for discipleship. In\nHim is the start and the finish of our faith (Heb. 12:2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the divine model for self-renunciation, self-adaptation, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice. Here is divine demonstration of the demands of discipleship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Renunciation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can never be said that Christ\nrequires of His followers what He did not give; that His demands exceed His own\npersonal investments. In Paul’s fourfold summary of what the Incarnation meant\nfor Jesus we see God taking His own medicine; we see the unique Son refusing\npreferential treatment in order that through His experience of suffering He\ncould be equipped to represent us in Heaven (Heb. 5:8\u201310). God Himself has shown\nus the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The text says literally, “Himself\nhe emptied<\/em>” (v. 7). We should not see the idea of emptying in\nterms of discarding something. Rather, I suggest we see this passage in the\nlight of Is. 53:12, “he poured out his life unto death,” and\nthat we understand the “emptying” in the sense of total personal\ncommitment and total self-denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, it is vital to note the\nemphatic word order in this verse. The word order of the original Greek points\nto His humiliation as voluntary, self-imposed. No one took anything away from\nChrist; what He renounced he renounced of His own will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this verse we begin to see the\nmind of Christ on discipleship. Everything touching self-advantage or\nself-display must go. There is no limit to self-humbling as long as anything\nremains that may be poured out. In His self-emptying, Jesus shows us that the\nmost divine act is to give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How shockingly Christ’s act\ncontrasts with contemporary demands for personal rights. The only person in the\nworld who had the right to demand His rights, waived them! His attitude reveals\nthe self-seeking hidden within our exclamations, “I don’t have to put up\nwith this!” How many conflicts and church splits would be prevented if our\ndiscipleship contained this voluntary renunciation of personal rights? Could we\nhold grudges and at the same time “put up with anything” for the sake\nof the gospel (1 Cor. 9:12)? Jesus poured it all out, emptying Himself. Let us\nremember His words: “No servant is greater than his master \u2026” (Jn.\n15:20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Adaptation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus thoroughly identified Himself\nwith the human situation. He was not an angel pretending to be man; He was\ntruly one of us in both essence and detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not upper echelon humanity\nthat the Son of God incarnated, but slave-man. A play on the word morphe<\/em>,\n“nature,” accents this point as we see Him who was “in very\nnature God” (v. 6) now “taking the very nature of a\nservant” (v. 7). Jesus paid the full price in adaptation in order to\nbe our Elder Brother (cf. Heb. 2:14\u201318).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the strongest possible\nmandate for disciples who are servants. Here is the strongest possible\nimperative for a Servant-Church. When our churches are content to pamper\nthemselves and to merely “hold services,” we have forgotten our\ncalling and we are lying against the divine model we claim to love and follow.\nThe “mind of Christ,” which we are to imitate (Phil. 2:5), demands\nthat we roll up the sleeves of our faith and get dirty in the work of redeeming\nmen. No smug suburban isolation; no concern by proxy. Here is a shattering call\nfor the middle-class, status-conscious American Church to “empty”\nherself in world service and to “be willing to associate with people of\nlow position” (Ro. 12:16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Self-Surrender<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Philippians passage goes further\nby affirming explicitly Jesus’ humiliation: “he humbled himself”\n(v. 8). The term tapeinophrosune<\/em>, “lowliness,” was\ntransformed by the Cross and redefined by the Gospel. From ignoble, scurrilous,\nsecular connotations it became one of the great words of the Christian\nvocabulary under the influence of Christ’s radical new policy of greatness.\nJesus taught that to be great in His Kingdom is to be servant of all. In His\nservice the way up is down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tapeinophrosune<\/em> describes a condition of unselfconsciousness in which\none has a humble opinion of oneself. It is the opposite of egotism,\nself-seeking, and assertiveness. One of the definitive features of Jesus’\npersonality was humility (Mt. 11:29). It is not surprising that His supreme act\nof love and service is described as lowly surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More specifically, the term means in\nthis context a willingness to seek others’ advantage instead of our own. Paul\nexhorted, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in\nhumility (tapeinophrosune<\/em> ) consider others better than\nyourselves” (Phil. 2:3). The whole Christological section that follows is\nbut a practical application of the Incarnation to enforce this lesson of\nhumility in Christian discipleship. The intended message is plain: your\nattitude toward serving others should be the same as that of Christ Jesus;\nmodel your thoughts on His.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many of us are more likely to\ndefend our own interests than to humbly defer to others? Yet one of the marks\nof the Spirit-filled man (or church, or organization) is not self-assertion,\nbut submission. H.A.A. Kennedy once observed, “It is a strange phenomenon\nin religious history that intense earnestness so frequently breeds a spirit\nmingled of censoriousness and conceit.” H.A.A. Kennedy, Expositor’s\nGreek Testament <\/em>(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912), p. 433. May\nthe Lord hasten the day when our earnestness is matched by our humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Sacrifice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verse 8 goes beyond saying that\nthe Son of God surrendered to the extent of dying. At its climax, it asserts\nthe most awful of deaths as His sacrifice: “Even death on a cross?”\n(v. 8). The type of construction Paul uses here stresses the kind or\ncharacter of Jesus’ death: death-by-crucifixion. A.T. Robertson says,\n“Here is the bottom rung in the ladder from the throne of God. Jesus came\nall the way down to the most despised death of all, a condemned criminal on the\naccursed cross.”A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New\nTestament <\/em>(Nashville: Broadman, 1931), p. 445.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our consumer culture indulgence,\nnot sacrifice, is the norm. Sadly, instead of challenging this spirit of our\nage in the name of Christ I see the Church smuggling consumerism into\ndiscipleship under religious labels! Christianity and Madison Avenue’s\n“good life” become hopelessly confused. In our churches bigger is\nequated with better, motion with growth, and success with celebrity. We pamper\nand indulge ourselves while we preach about sacrifice and praise self-denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Incarnation of the Son of God is\nthe divine model for true discipleship. To have the “mind of Christ”\nis to know the rigors of demanding servanthood. To follow Him is to practice\nself-renunciation, self-adaptation, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice. Surely,\nfor the Christian to see his Elder Brother pouring Himself out in total\nsacrifice is to learn not only what each disciple ought to do, but also to\nlearn why he must do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PUTTING ON THE MIND OF CHRIST<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Here, then, is both the problem and\nthe solution. The flesh that frustrates our desires to serve the Lord according\nto “the attitude of our minds” can be effectively overcome only by\nputting on “the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and\nholiness” (Eph. 4:23). Both the model and the means for the demands of\ndiscipleship are found in the mind of Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By modeling our thoughts on His we\ncan overcome the threats of aesthetic admiration, aversion to authority,\ncultural changes, and defective models. By adopting as our goal the mind of\nChrist we will know that His loving, coming, and serving is the mandate for our\nloving, going, and serving. In Him we will find the pattern and the power for a\nlife of self-renunciation, self-adaptation, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Jerry Harvill<\/strong> was a minister for the Churches of Christ for\ntwenty-three years. He teaches speech and journalism at the University of\nKentucky in Lexington. This article is adapted from “The Cost of\nDiscipleship,” which appeared in Spiritual Life<\/em>, Fall 1985.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following was written by guest writer Jerry Harvill. Few aspects of the Christian culture are more idealized but less understood than discipleship. Humpty Dumpty vocabularies abound, in which, like Humpty’s approach in Lewis Carroll’s tale, words mean “whatever (we) choose them to mean; nothing more, nothing less!” The plethora of religious cults attracting followers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,239,240],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}