Portrait of a Disciple
We talk a good deal at CTK about being a disciple of Jesus and about joining him in making disciples. All this talk naturally leads to the question: what is a disciple?
The short answer is that a disciple is a follower of Jesus who is growing in faith, hope, and love. The Apostle Paul highlights these virtues in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” To the church in Corinth who was arguing about gift and abilities and who was divided into factions based on their preferred church leader, Paul points them to these three virtues as the true indicator of spiritual maturity.
In our own day, much talk of being a disciple is on what one does. You can see this in all the talk of spiritual practices and disciples that we should be doing privately. Then, publicly, we laud those who put their great gifts and abilities on display for many to see. It seems that we, like the Corinthians, need a corrective. We need to focus again on who we as disciples are becoming, not merely what we’re supposed to be doing. By God’s grace, our goal in discipleship is to become like Jesus so that we can more fully share in his relationship with our heavenly Father. We are to be growing in faith, hope, and love.
Faith.
The whole of the Christian life is lived by grace through faith. We begin to follow Jesus by grace through faith, and we continue to follow him by grace through faith.
First, being a disciple of Jesus begins by faith. In Galatians 2:16, Paul explains,
Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
To be justified means to declared righteous by God. It is God’s announcement of our righteousness. The image here is of God as a judge, and he is announcing the verdict at the end of a trial. Yet, the verdict is more than merely “not guilty.” The announcement is “righteous" — one has done what is right.
This declaration can be true of sinners like you and me through union with Christ. By faith and through the Spirit, we are made one with our Lord so that what is true of him is now true of us. This is a one-time, , punctiliar act. It happens at a moment in time. It is irreversible. It is God’s declaration, so like his promises, it will never fail.
Paul contrasts two ways to seek justification: “by works of the law” and “by faith.” Seeking to be justified by works of the law means that we try to keep God’s law in order to earn our standing before him. Being justified by faith means trusting in the work of Christ.
The author of Hebrews defines faith, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Faith, then, is more than agree to a set of facts. It’s trusting in what God has done. Resting in his promises. On faith, Martin Luther, declared: “Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”
Second, we continue to follow Jesus by faith. Paul continues in Galatians 2:20, adding that the whole of the Christian life is by faith:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Faith is not a one-time exercise. We continue to follow Jesus in this world by grace through faith. We do not begin by faith only to carry-on by our own efforts and abilities. Paul lambasts the Galatians for trying to follow Jesus in their own strength:
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Gal 3:1-3).
Discipleship that began by grace through faith is to continue by grace through faith. What began by God’s grace will continue by his grace.
The whole of the Christian life is lived by grace through faith, and so to be a disciple of Jesus is to be one who is growing in faith.
Hope.
Followers of Jesus are filled with hope. Jesus’s disciples are to be people of hope. Paul explains in Romans 8 that followers of Jesus have the hope of glory. In 8:18, he explains,
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
As great as suffering is in our world, it is nothing compared to the glory to be revealed. As he unpacks in 8:16-18, followers of Jesus are to be heirs of a glory that is beyond comparison with anything in this world.
It is the glory of the new creation (8:19-23). We have hope for a new creation, where all is made right. The biblical image is of the lion lying down the lamb. Peace and harmony are restored to all of creation. It is a return to Eden, but even more than that, it’s Eden perfected.
It is also the glory of our complete resurrection (8:23-25). We look forward to the day when our redemption is fully realized. When Christ returns we will be adopted as sons (8:23). We will be brought fully and finally into the life and love of God. Our bodies will be redeemed and glorified (8:23). That is to say, our bodies will be resurrected and glorified just like Christ’s body.
The Christian’s hope is not an escape from this world, but the redemption of this world and our bodies. It is the world and our selves, our bodies, perfected as God always intended. The hope of glory is an earthy, physical hope—a hope beyond compare.
Suffering, however, is the surprising path to this glory. Paul sets forth this connection between suffering and glory in Romans 8:16-17.
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
As we share in Christ’s sufferings, we will come to share in his glory. We live the Christian life in the way of Jesus, so sharing in his sufferings is the way we share in his glory. He was crucified, dead, and buried and then he was exalted. This is our path as well. As Paul says in Philippians 3:10, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
A follower of Jesus is growing in hope as we come to see more and more clearly that the hope of glory far exceeds anything we have in this life, and God can even work through our suffering to lead us to this glory.
Love.
A follower Jesus is marked by love—love for God and love for neighbor. In an attempt to trap Jesus, a religious leader in his day confronted him with the question of the greatest commandment. Jesus responded,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matt 22:37-40).
Following Jesus means that we are growing in our love for both God and our neighbors. This love is a response to God’s love. “We love,” the Apostle John emphasizes, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). God is love, and so we come to love him and love others by experiencing that love for ourselves.
God’s love for us is seen most clearly in the cross of Christ. As Jesus explains, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). About his own love, Jesus testifies, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
As we experience the love of God in Christ that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we will grow to be more loving toward God and toward others. Scripture makes plain that no one can divide loving God from loving others:
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:20-21).
To follow Jesus means we have experienced his love, and we have experienced his love then we are being transformed by that love into people who are growing in their love for God and neighbors.
