***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: There are two aspects, great aspects of the Christian life which are set forth in the New Testament. There are of course many ways of looking at it, but one way of looking at it is to think of the Christian life in its passive aspect, and in that we see ourselves being saved by grace, by the free gift of God. We see ourselves in the model of Paul as dead in trespasses and sin, and a dead person is not one who can get up and raise himself from the dead. But on the other hand there is the active aspect, and we see this in many parts of the scripture, and this is the part which I want to emphasize this evening. There is the aspect which is set forth so lovely, in such a lovely fashion, in the opening of the 12th chapter of Hebrews, where Paul, or the writer of the epistle, says, Wherefore seeing we are encompassed about with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Here the Christian way is likened unto a race, one in which in order to win the race we shear off not only the sins, and this is a very illuminating passage because it brings to light that not all hindrances are sins, some are just weights, and we lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and we run with patience. All of those words are important. We could spend a long time just going through that and stressing each one, but what I want to say to you tonight is that in our day the emphasis in viewing the Christian way has largely turned to the passive aspect. We are not a church, we are not a people, which by and large stresses that unpopular word discipline. Discipline is thought of in a way which associates it with works, not with grace, bad news, not with good news.
And yet when we look into the New Testament we find that the overwhelming term used to refer to the followers of Christ is not Christian but disciple. The word Christian occurs three times in the New Testament, three times. The word disciple occurs two hundred and sixty-nine times. It is the disciple who was called Christian. When the church had spread on its way in fulfilling the word and prophecy of Jesus himself, had spread to Antioch in Syria, some of the power of the gospel just bubbled over and some people got so carried away that they started in preaching to Gentiles. Can you believe it? And the Gentiles didn’t have any more sense than to get converted. And since they were not Jews, they didn’t know what to call them. Right? What have they called the Christians up to this point? Jews. Did you know that? That’s what they were called because they were Jews. Good reason. But now they couldn’t call them Jews. The disciples had all been Jews, with a few exceptions of course, there had been some marginal cases like the half-breeds up in Samaria had gotten converted, a few Philistines down the coast aways had gotten converted, a Roman here and there, but now it became such an outstanding thing that the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. The reason they were called Christians is because they had to have a new name for them. They couldn’t call them Jews. The point of my stressing that verse is to say that so far as the New Testament gives us an explication of the term Christian, it is that the Christian is a disciple that you can’t call racially a Jew. He did not fit that peculiar complex, which indeed is not a race, but he didn’t fit that peculiar cultural complex of Jewishness. He was a Gentile, so they had to get a new name. But it was the disciples that were called Christians.
Now as far as the New Testament is concerned, no one but a disciple is rightly called a Christian. There’s nothing wrong with the word Christian. It’s a perfectly good word, and it is used in the scriptures, and it can be made perfectly precise. But I must tell you that today the term Christian has moved away from the energetic concept of a discipline, because to be a Christian in the New Testament is to be involved in a discipline. It is not something passive. It is a race. It is a battle. It is a course of studies. It is a contest. But this is not presented today in many situations as what it is to be a Christian. To be a Christian is simply, in many quarters, to believe that Jesus died for your sins. Just to believe it. What comes after that is more or less optional. Would you like to be serious about it? There will be a place in the church for you. If you don’t care to be particularly serious about it, there’s a place in the church for you too. Now, I’m not saying what we should do about that. This evening I’m simply wanting to call your attention to this contrast between Christian and disciple that has grown up in our time. Many of us, if we are asked whether or not we are religious, might reply, yes, we are Christians. Would we feel comfortable by replying, we are disciples of Christ. We are disciples of Christ. We are enrolled in Christ’s school.
In Hebrews chapter 6, there is an interesting passage which contrasts the foundations of the Christian faith and the fulfillment of the Christian faith. And I want, in contrasting the Christian with the disciple, to use this as a kind of launching pad, and then I want to move to some passages which tell us what a disciple is and spend most of our time there. But let’s just look at this momentarily. Chapter 6 of Hebrews, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection or completion, not laying again the foundations of repentance from dead works, of faith towards God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
Do you see this list of six things? Now if you will look at this list, you will realize, I believe, that this pretty well exhausts the scope of much of our teaching and preaching in our churches. Indeed, some of this is not even dealt with. For example, the preaching of eternal judgment is left aside because it’s puzzling to many people, and I’m sympathetic to those puzzles and I don’t make light of them. It’s difficult to handle in our time, and consequently it is left aside. You find many churches which teach only the love of Christ. You’ll find in many cases there is not even any sense made out of repentance from dead works. Indeed, if you look at this list of six things, you’re apt to find that only one is taught with any thoroughness, and that is faith towards God. And this is often presented as if it were the total message upon which the life of the church and the redeemed community of God were to be built.
Now it is indeed refreshing to look at this list, but what I want to say to you now is that this is only the foundation. Back in Missouri where I was raised and in much of the Midwest, some of you may have seen this sort of thing, you will have a person, and there in many places of course, especially in Missouri, they don’t have building inspectors who come around and tell you what you can live in and what you can’t. And so it was a very common thing there to see a person who wanted to build a house but didn’t have enough money, and so they would just dig a hole and essentially pour the basement and put the sub-flooring in, and instead of going on up with it, put roofing paper over that sub-floor, and they had a house. Any of you ever see that? And Missouri people being like they are, many people would live in that foundation until they died, see? The rest of the house just never would get built. Now in fact that’s not a bad idea really. The basement was a good place for them to live in, it was easy to heat and easy to keep cool and all of that. But I’m afraid that what we have for many of our churches is only a foundation, at best only a foundation. And indeed not a complete foundation if you look at this list.
I might call your attention to something which may puzzle you. In the second verse of the sixth chapter of Hebrews you see the laying on of hands. And this is listed as being among the foundations of the faith. The laying on of hands has become a curiosity in the church of our time, a puzzle. The function of the laying on of the hands in the early Christian community was extremely fundamental. It was regarded as being an element in the foundations of the faith. That’s something to think about.
Now I don’t want to get hung up on the foundations here tonight, and so I’m going to go on, see. Whether to perfection or not is something else, but I’m going to go on. And if I don’t get the house built, I’m at least going to try to put up a little bit of the scaffolding or something like that. But I want to call your attention to that, you see, because in a way I think we have here the contrast between the Christian and the disciple. There are many people today who are not disciples and who don’t think in those terms at all, but want to be Christians. And I rather like to think that these are people who have been introduced into the foundations of the faith and have accepted them in some measure, but have never been taught about discipleship.
And now to contrast with this, I want to turn you to what is called the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. This church, which Jesus Christ founded upon himself and which he is building, is given a great commission to go into all the world, to all kinds of people, and there to do something to them. I want you to look at the list of things that they are to do. 19th verse of the 28th chapter of Matthew. Go ye therefore, and disciple all nations. Now the old King James Version I seldom quarrel with, but this is a very bad word. It often uses the word teach. Teach all nations. Now I think it is right to say that there is not another occurrence of the word English word teach in the King James Version. There is not another occurrence of that term used to translate the verb to disciple, to make a disciple of. Manfano, to make a disciple of. Now that word occurs twice in the New Testament, both times at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. It refers, in its transitive use, it refers to one person making another a disciple. It has an intransitive use in Matthew 27, 57, speaking of Joseph of Arimathea, and there the use is to say that he discipled himself, he made a disciple of himself to Jesus Christ. These are the only occurrences of this term, and the word teach is commonly not used to translate any variant of the term disciple or the corresponding term in the Greek. Disciple over and over is simply that phrase or that word, the verb or the noun form of the verb manfano, mephasis, and that’s the common term for disciple.
Now what does it mean? It means to enroll as a student. It means to enter into a process of agreement to receive instruction and to grow. And when in the Great Commission we are told to make disciples of all people, we are being told to enroll them in Christ’s school. They are to enter into a process of training and of formation in which they are going to become transformed people.
We don’t handle this well, I’m afraid, today in general in our churches. We tend to believe that indeed when a person is converted they receive a sealing of the Holy Spirit and that somehow it works out from there, we’re not quite sure how. But I want to point out to you a very simple fact. When Jesus was here on this earth, he made disciples and he called them to be with him. In Mark 3 you will see that after a night of prayer, after some time of ministry, he called twelve and it says he called them to be with him. And they were with him through a period of training and growth and development in the course of which they were transformed beyond recognition. They became different kinds of people.
As I said this morning, we tend to read the scriptures as if it were talking about something which was going on somewhere else in heaven or in the future or in the past, whereas we must understand that the heart of the Christian life is here and now. Being a disciple is something that translates into your feelings, into your choices, into your powers, into the place you live and the place you work. It translates into the manner in which you use your bodily expressions, your eyebrows, your tongue, your hands to communicate the spirit that is within you. That is the heart of the Christian life.
Have you ever wondered why people were so drawn to Jesus? I am sure it is right to say in some sense, well, he was the Son of God. Well, but dear friends, do you understand that he was only the Son of God in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren, among many sisters? That’s the only reason he was the Son of God. You are to be as he was. The disciple is to be as the master. That transformation is not something that is going to happen merely because even with the best of intentions we have had an experience and joined a church or come to believe we are Christians. We are required to come into a process of learning from Christ in the course of which the events of our daily life are used to refine us so that we bear the family resemblance. And we are one among those many brothers and sisters of whom Jesus Christ is merely the firstborn.
And then we are as disciples of Christ to go to enroll others in that school. Now I want to take the rest of my time to just go over some features of the disciple. What is the disciple like? And I’m going to rather hurriedly refer to some passages of Scripture, and I’m not going to try to go to the bottom of them, but to leave them in your mind and under the administration of the Holy Spirit, if you wish to learn what these mean, you will be able to learn and they will bless you in that learning.
First of all, let’s look at Luke, the fourteenth chapter, the twenty-sixth verse. Luke 14 26. You will observe that Jesus in this passage is teaching in such a way that he is causing people to go back and not follow him. He has a great multitude of people following him in verse 25. And there went great multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren, I can be his disciple. I hate my father, I hate my mother, I hate my sister, even hate myself. So I make a good candidate.
Jesus did not teach in that way. Jesus always taught in such a way as to leave people with a puzzling concept which they would continue to work on until they came to the truth. Jesus is not teaching us to hate anyone. John the Apostle tells us in his letter that if any man hate his brother, he doesn’t know God, period. It doesn’t matter if he’s made five confessions of faith, been baptized thirty times forwards and backwards, joined the church, and healed five people. If he hates his brother, he does not know God, period. I didn’t say that. John said that. He that loveth knoweth not God because God is love. Jesus is not telling us to hate. He’s teaching us that there must be a certain contrast between our devotion to him and our devotion to others.
And he continues to say, verse 27, And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Now what is bear his cross? We tend to forget that in that time, one of the most common sights, in an urban setting, if you wish, was to see a person carrying their cross out to be crucified on. Varying estimates have been made as to how many young Jewish men, for example, were crucified during the reign of the Roman government over Jerusalem. And it runs into the tens and hundreds of thousands. You could get killed for almost anything. In fact, you could get killed for nothing. And the cross was simply the current mode of execution. It was like the firing squad or the electric chair, the gas chamber or whatever is used, the noose, to hang people.
Now, when a person took up their cross, there was a great division between everything else in their life, because they were severing the ties. They were laying aside all of the burdens because they were going to die. And Jesus uses that metaphor. Can you imagine what it would be like to be free of all of the worries of paying your bills and taking care of your car, worrying about your children or your parents, or whether you’re going to get a job, or who’s going to marry you or not marry you, or who’s going to do this, that, and the other? Well, you see what the cross does, it suddenly suspends all of that. The person who has taken up their cross to go out and be crucified on it is no longer worrying about whether they’ve got a flat tire. And that’s exactly what Jesus is saying. He’s saying, if you’re going to come after me, you have to suspend those things, see? Let them rest. You take up your cross, and that cuts you off from controlling and manipulating and managing all of these millions of things which entangle you.
And again, in verse 33, so likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Now the person who takes up his cross forsakes everything he has. He no longer has a claim on anything. He no longer is concerned and worried about it and trying to use it for one thing or another. He has cut himself off from it.
I want to try to put in very simple terms what this means. Jesus is saying to us that if we would become his disciple, we must give up our rights of self-assertion. We must lay aside that knee-jerk of self-righteousness, of assuming that I should have my way, that I should get what I want, because if we don’t, we can’t learn his lessons. Now what he’s saying to us is something like this. You know, for many years I read that as, if you don’t do that, you are a naughty boy and I won’t let you. That is not what he’s saying. In general, Jesus’ teachings are never like that. He is saying something more like this. If you don’t know how to do fractions, you cannot do algebra. If you don’t know how to do algebra, you can’t do differential calculus. He’s saying if you don’t know how to find a wrench, you can’t fix a carburetor. He’s giving us a precondition of learning from him.
As long as we are set in our self-assertion and our assumption of self-righteousness and the absolute necessity of having our own way, always thinking when anything is in question, it is right for me to have my way, and if it doesn’t go that way, complaining and groaning and moaning about it and spoiling myself with bitterness, I cannot learn from Christ. I cannot profit from his lessons. And that’s what Jesus is saying.
Now the disciple of Christ is a person who has forsaken everything that he had in that sense. So many mistakes have been made about this verse. One has been that in order to be a disciple of Christ, you have to get rid of everything you have except your clothes. Now of course if you were consistent, you’d have to get rid of those too, but there are other things which hinder that. Because after all, you have your shirt too, don’t you? And your tie and your shoes. Now if forsaking means you get rid of them all, then we’d all have to become Christian nudists. It doesn’t mean that. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to get rid of your car. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to get rid of your house and have no money. It does not mean that at all. It means that you have to hold those only at the disposal of God. And you can get rid of everything you have and still be terribly possessed by them. There are many people who are more possessed by the riches they do not have than some people are possessed by riches they do have. The poor man’s griping envy and covetousness is worse bondage by far than the rich man’s dependence upon his wealth.
If you don’t forsake everything you have, you cannot be my disciple. The mark of a disciple is that they have forsaken everything that they have. Now I would love to just expatiate on that alone and go into details as to what that means and what kind of freedom that comes with that. You see, that’s the freedom of the cross. The cross completely sets us free. As Paul says in Romans, we serve God as those who are alive from the dead. We have been through it all. We are set free. Someone who thinks that I should be in bondage to maintain my reputation or whatever it is that people in this world believe they must maintain, I’m entirely free of it. I’m not in charge, thank you, because the cross has entered between.
And because of that, I can see things now in the teachings of Jesus, and you can too, which the person who is not free from those burdens cannot see. The person who is not free from those burdens will say, huh, love my enemy? What kind of nonsense is this? The person who has entered into the school of Christ and has accepted the cross and has forsaken everything he has says, you know, it’s much better really to love your enemy and much easier to love them than it is to hate them. Hatred is a form of bondage. Hatred is a form of bondage. I believe it was George Washington Carver who said, I will not allow any person to diminish my soul by causing me to hate them. Hatred is one of the worst forms of bondage in this world, but as long as you think, well, how could they do that to me? You’re going to be in bondage to it, and you cannot enter the school of Christ and receive his teachings because you will think they are utterly impossible.
On the other hand, if you have entered that school, you will understand it’s perfectly easy for them to do that to you. How could they cut me off in traffic? Everybody gets cut off in traffic. It’s easy to cut you off in traffic, right? It’s no big deal. How could they be angry with me? I’ll be angry with them. It’s easy to be angry with you. Jesus says, you know, offenses come from all sides. James says, we offend all in many things. We’re all offensive. We can only live on a different basis. We all offend. Everyone offends. I offend. And if I offend, you know you do. And so the great freedom of the cross enters. And we walk into a realm in which the teachings of Jesus make perfect sense. Now I understand what you do when you have a square number and you have to multiply it by a sum. How do I know that? I only know that. That only makes sense to me if I know arithmetic, so I can do algebra. If I can’t do arithmetic, I look at A plus B times Z squared, and I say, what? And the person who says, what? Love your enemies, is in the same position. They have no comprehension, because they think they are carrying the world on their shoulders.
Let’s look at another passage, John 8.31. John 8.31. This passage is associated with one which everyone seems to know, a verse which everyone seems to know. Verse 32, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. That’s only the last half of the sentence. One of my colleagues the other day was saying, the way that read was, according to a Chinese philosopher, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you flee. And I thought about that, and I thought that’s a pretty good reading, you know. I think there are a lot of people operating on that assumption today. In fact, using a few falsehoods might make you flee.
But the important thing to understand about that verse is that it is the second half of the whole sentence, and the first half of the sentence reads this way. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him. Now notice those are people who believed on him. And if you wish, I’m willing to say those are Christians. He says to those that believe on him, there is a little something more to it. Namely, if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. Now disciples are those who continue in the Word of Christ. The Word of Christ is where we meet Christ and where we meet God.
Look with me briefly at John 14 23. This is a concerned man by the name of Judas, not Iscariot, and Jesus has been telling that he’s going to go away, and the disciples are all concerned as they are rightly concerned, they should be concerned. How are we going to contact you? Judas says to him, Lord, 22nd verse, Lord, how is it you’re going to contact us? How will you manifest yourself unto us and not unto the world? And Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man love me, he will keep my words. Now will you tie that in with the passage in John 8 31? If you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. To continue in the word is to walk in to keep the words of Jesus. Now you say that is impossible. You’re teaching work salvation. You want us to get a bunch of laws and keep them, the laws that Jesus gave and then we’ll be saved. No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m simply saying that Jesus here tells us that if we want to be in touch with God, we will continue in his words. We will walk in them. We will find it not only possible but actual.
Now there is a paradox here because the truth is we cannot walk in the words of Jesus unless we are in contact with him. But also we cannot be fully in contact with him unless we walk in his words. We do not meet him elsewhere than in the way of his words. And if you wish you can form a paradox and say now that is impossible. Somewhat as one says, it is impossible to learn to swim. Because if you can’t swim, you will drown. On the other hand, if you can swim, you can’t learn because you already know. Therefore it is impossible for you to learn to swim. Now we all know that that isn’t right because we all learn to swim. My oldest brother took me out in a snake infested creek when I was four years old on his shoulders. I loved my brother and trusted him up to that moment. And he swam out from under me and forthwith I swam immediately. And I’ve been swimming ever since.
Similar to the old sophist paradox that you can’t learn anything. Again, because if you don’t know it, you won’t recognize it when you find it. But on the other hand, if you already know it, you can’t learn it because you already know it, so you can’t learn anything. Now a similar paradox is here. We cannot do the words of Christ, because if we try, we will fail. On the other hand, if we’re doing them, we must somehow be already in touch with Him, and we don’t need to do them, so we’re left free. These are paradoxes of life. Life is like that. As Robert Browning says, a man’s reach exceeds his grasp, else what’s a heaven for? We touch many things we cannot grasp. And that’s the way life is. That’s the way we grow. We grow into things we can’t manage, a young person’s growth into sexuality, for example. It is there, and it is so real. But how do you manage? There’s the desire to be with a young woman or a young man, to make friends, and to know them fully. And yet, how can you do it? And life is like that.
All Jesus says here is simply, if you want the manifestation of God, if you want to be able to know Him, you walk in my words, and there you meet Him. And Jesus says, if you continue in my word, then you are disciples indeed.
Let me give you another passage. John 13, 38, 34-35. John 13, 34-35. A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, because you have love one to another. That is a disciple. The love which Jesus has for us, we have for one another. That’s the mark of a disciple. That kind of love leads to the laying down of a life for a friend. We often think that you lay down your life when you get killed. But no, no. We lay our lives down mainly by living in a certain relationship to other people. We give our lives to our country, not just by going and getting shot in the head for our country, but by living in such a way that our country is better for it. We give our lives to our friends, not just by getting killed for our friends, but by living in such a way that our friends are better for it.
The new commandment is love, and the new enabling is love, and this is the mark of the disciple that they have loved one for another. I want to tell you, it is not the mark of a disciple that they all believe the same thing. It is not even the mark of disciples that they all believe the truth about Jesus Christ and his relation to God and the way he died and the way he was resurrected and where he is now. That is not the mark of a disciple, and I challenge you to find any place in the Scriptures where it says it is. Find any place. The mark of the disciple is love for one another.
Again, in John 15, 8. Reading with verse 7, we tie in with the words which we have just used about continuing in his words. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. The disciple is a person who bears much fruit, and for all practical purposes, if you want to know what fruit is, you can just give or write down beside that Galatians 5, 22, and 23. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, kindness, meekness, faith, temperance. That’s the fruit of the Spirit. Now, to be a disciple is to bear much of that.
One other verse, Luke 6.40. In the thirty-ninth verse, he says, And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? Shall not they both fall into the ditch? And now verse 40 says, The disciple is not better than the master. In other words, if you take someone as master, then so far as you’re their disciple, you’ll only be able to come up to their level. The disciple, as disciple, is not better than the master. If you are learning automobile mechanics from a certain person, then so far as you’re learning from them, you can’t learn anything more than they know. And that’s what he’s saying here. The disciple is not better than the master. On the other hand, everyone that is completed the training, everyone that is perfect, shall be as his master. The disciple is one who is Christ-like.
In John 14, we read these words. Verily, verily, I say unto you, twelfth verse, He that believeth on me, the works that I do he shall do also, and greater than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father. John 14, 12. The works that I do shall he do also. These are the marks of the disciple. When we enroll people as disciples, we are bringing them in to that kind of life, which is described in the verses which I’ve read to you tonight.
We go to them and we disciple them. Now, one of the main problems of successful churches is over-recruitment. In our time, what success means in a church tends to breed more success. The bigger the church, the more people will come to it. Jesus enunciated it in a very simple law. He said, To him that hath shall be given, and them that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath. Now, that’s true of almost everything in life, and that’s exactly what Jesus meant to say. If you’ve got a lot of money, it’s easy for you to make a lot more money. If you don’t have any money, you can’t even hold on to what you’ve got. If you have training in some area, it’s easy for you to build on that. If you don’t have much training in that area, it’s dreadfully hard for you to get any more, and you have to lose what you’ve got. And it’s exactly the way, the whole way of the world. This is God’s world. He created it according to certain laws, and that’s one of them. And churches that are big and successful in the common popular sense tend to get bigger and more successful. There is nothing that succeeds like success, and we tend to over-recruit and under-train in our successful churches, and that’s because we don’t make disciples in those churches. If we disciple people, there will be a different kind of process that sets in. It will not mean that we will not have large groups, but it will be a different kind of process altogether. And this is what Jesus sent us to do, to disciple people.
And now I want to close by simply saying how you disciple people. How do you make a disciple? I’m not going to give you the scriptural basis of this, but I can challenge you to read the teachings of Paul and all of the others in the New Testament to see if it is not true. I want to tell you very simply, we make disciples by saying to them, follow me as I follow Christ. Follow me. Follow me. This may upset you because you may think we are supposed to tell people to follow Christ. But you see, if you’re a disciple, you are following Christ. And if someone is following you, they are following Christ too. You cannot make disciples if you are not willing to assume the responsibility of saying, follow me.
Now the world does not do that. The world says, don’t do what I do, do what I say. Did you ever hear that? Don’t do what I do, do what I say. Paul says in Philippians 4, he puts it just exactly the way that he puts it in many other passages, and we must learn to say humbly and in dependence upon God. Philippians 4 verse 9, those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace will be with you.
Now you say, oh, that would make me proud. You just try it and see how proud it makes you. If you want to get rid of pride forever, all you need do is say to someone, the things you have heard and seen and learned in me do, and the God of peace will be with you. That’s what we’re to say to our children and we’re to say it to our neighbors. We’re to say it to those who work with us. We’re to say it to our friends in the Christian fellowship. And as we do that, we will then begin to see people drawn in to a form of fellowship that will indeed triumph over the whole world. And the Church of Christ will go forward as the disciples of Christ make other disciples and walk in the way of learning in the school of Christ, in which he said, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the season.
I wonder if we couldn’t sing a few verses of number 278 this evening as we close our service. Just the first three verses, please. Number 278. Let’s stand together, and if there are decisions to be made of any sort, I will certainly be glad to meet with you here at the front. There’s going to be business here afterwards, but we can go out into the side room if you wish to talk or to pray about any matter which is on your heart this evening.
Long my heart has sighed for thee, long has evil reigned within. Jesus sweetly speaks to me, I will cleanse you from all sin. Here I give my all to thee, friends and time and earth restore, soul and body thine to be, holy thine forevermore. Let’s sing the last one, please. I am trusting Lord in thee, blessed Lamb of Calvary, humbly at thy cross I bow. Give me Jesus, save me now. Shall we bow for benediction? Lord, we are mindful of the words of this hymn. Here we give our all to thee, time and friends, and earthly store, holy thine to be. Make this the word from every heart here this evening, and help us to realize the dimensions of salvation which are in your life and in your death that we have not realized to this point. And now may your grace go with us, accompany us in every aspect of our lives, teach us, uphold us, rebuke us, correct us, strengthen us, and bring us evermore into that continuing in your word in which we are your disciples indeed and in which we meet face to face with you and your Father. Amen.
If you all have a seat for a few more minutes. Well, I can stand it if you can, is the best way to put it. In fact, I just happen to have a few other things I wanted to say. I find that many people really can’t believe it when you say to them, the way to disciple another person is, say, follow me. It goes deeply against many things that we have learned in churches and so on. I think what I’d like to do is just take a few passages in which we find Paul just saying these kinds of things and just go over them with you.
In 1 Corinthians 4.16, he’s talking about his relationship to the Corinthians, of course. In the earlier verses, he says, Though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers. For in Christ I have begotten you through the gospel. And in verse 16, he says, Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
Look again at 1 Corinthians 11.1. Now, again, you have to remember that our chapter divisions are not in the letter which Paul wrote, and you have to look at the previous verses to understand the full meaning of what he’s saying. He’s speaking about the way he ministers, the way he works, and concludes with verse 33 of chapter 10 by saying, Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many that they may be saved. And then he immediately says, Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
Again in Ephesians 5.1, we find the directions vary. Here he says, Be ye followers of God, as dear children. Be ye followers of God. Now, how do you follow God? It’s a little difficult. That’s why Jesus came into the world, and that’s why you and I are extensions of the continuing incarnation of Christ in this world, is so that people can follow God by following us.
In Philippians 3.17, Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example. In other words, get to know those who are making me Paul, their example in life, and together, follow along together after me. Be ye, the Greek word is sumimites, be ye co-followers of me. And notice those who are doing the same. Mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example.
In 1 Thessalonians 1.6, and of course 1 Thessalonians is perhaps the earliest letter, which Paul wrote. You have this then as a testimony from his early, very early writings, 1 Thessalonians 1.6, and you became followers of us. Isn’t that interesting? He doesn’t just say you became followers of Christ. You became followers of us and of the Lord. You became followers of us and of the Lord, 1 Thessalonians 2.14. For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. Now this is an interesting passage because Thessalonica, you know, was quite a distance around the Aegean Sea, or around the Mediterranean Sea from Judea. But in this passage, Paul says you became followers of the churches in the Holy Land, as it were. You became followers of the churches in Judea.
One more passage, Hebrews 6.12, verse 11, he says, And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, that ye be not slothful, but be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Now if you look at these verses together, you will see that God, Jesus, the churches, and Paul, and his friends, me and us, are all put in the same position. But, as the commercial says, where the rubber meets the road, the real contact between the person who is being discipled and God and Jesus Christ and the church is you, it is me. And we go to these people and we say very simply, follow us. Follow us.
I hope you will remember that, because in fulfilling the Great Commission, we must remember that the first step is to make disciples, to enroll people in the school of Christ. Now if we don’t know how we do that, then we can’t carry out the Great Commission. If we are shaky in our minds about what we are doing and whether or not we should be followed, we can always say follow us. And if we’re shaky about us, we can always say follow Jesus. But if we have to say follow Jesus when we are not doing it, or when we don’t believe we are doing it, or when we lack the confidence as to whether or not we are doing it, our word will be of no effect in general. It will be useless for those to whom we speak.
That’s why it’s so important for us to be ready to say, follow me. And if we ourselves do not have the competence and the confidence to say to anyone, follow me, then of course we should get that, shouldn’t we? And that’s what the church is for, is to help people come to the place where they can with all confidence say, follow me as I follow the Lord. The ministry is given to the church not to convert the world. The ministry is given to the church for the perfecting of the saints. Ephesians chapter one. I’m sorry, chapter four.