THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

The cross and discipleship

The most common term used to describe followers of Jesus, both in the Gospels and the book of Acts, which describes the beginnings of Christianity for the first 30 years, is the word “disciple”. It occurs 264 times. In Acts it is Luke’s ordinary word for “Christian”, a term that only occurs three times in the New Testament and was first used by non-Christians to describe this new religion (Acts 11:26). The word “disciple” implies the commitment of a person to another individual or group. Besides the disciples of Jesus, the New Testament speaks of the disciples of John the Baptist and those of the Pharisees. The Greek word translated “disciple” also has a strong emphasis on a teacher-pupil relationship. A disciple of an individual is one who is willing to be taught or trained by that person. When we speak of Christian “discipleship” we are thinking of all that is involved in becoming an effective follower of Jesus, or, in modern terms, an effective Christian. Albert Schweitzer, the noted theologian and organist who left a promising career in those fields to study medicine, and founded a hospital and leprosy colony in the heart of Africa, said, “Discipleship is the only form in which faith in Jesus Christ can exist.”

Jesus used a number of expressive images to highlight the kind of demands he would make on his followers. He spoke about the yoke of obedience (Matthew 11:29), the cup of suffering (Matthew 20:20-23), the towel of servanthood (John 13:1-17) and the cross of execution (Matthew 16:24). We could well look at each of these metaphors, but it is the last one we are primarily concerned with here. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24, 25). Though many are called to literally give their lives for their faith in Jesus, it is plain from Luke’s account of this saying that we are to take up our cross “daily” (Luke 9:23), that Jesus was primarily speaking of the kind of commitment which involves giving up our right to run our lives as we please, and allowing him to decide our priorities and plans and our future. Our life belongs to him, and growing as a Christian involves working out more and more what it really means to call him “Lord”.

The September 2005 issue of Christianity Today tells the story of Chris and Cassie Haw, who, with a group of friends, moved into a house owned by Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Camden, called America’s most dangerous city—and one of the most polluted. They serve the basic needs of the community, and have begun a ministry to the prostitutes and addicts living across the street from their house, who need loving neighbours more than clothes. Chris tells how he first learned about social justice at Willow Creek Community Church. A group of them “started asking questions about our way of life as contrasted with the call of the kingdom. I was taught about sweatshops, injustices, homeless people, mercy to the outsider, and other things unfamiliar to me.” He learned to be a disciple of Jesus. “Willow Creek taught me that 90 percent discipleship is 10 percent short of full devotion,” he says. “I took them at their word and set out to work through giving all.”

When we think of discipleship in these terms, then there are very few of us who would dare to claim that we had given anywhere near “all”, whatever that might mean for us personally. Even such a passionate and dedicated Christian as Paul did not claim that he had reached all he could have done in his experience of and usefulness to God (see Philippians 3:10-14). However, he could say, " Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus " (vv. 13, 14).

When we first experience God’s forgiveness and love in Jesus, then we tend to think more in terms of what he will do for us. But as we grow in our understanding of what he has done for us, and at what cost, and what he has yet planned for us in the future, then we learn to trust him more and commit ourselves at a deeper level. It is the cross and our understanding of the grace of God which flows from it that provides the motivation to join the ranks of those whose aim in life is to serve their Lord in ministering to the tremendous needs existing in this world, in whatever way he should choose. “Discipleship,” says Clifford Williams, “simply means the life which springs from grace.”

Discipleship, of course, not only means doing things for him, but growing in our relationship with him. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Only by a close relationship with him through prayer, meditation on his word, and friendship with his people can he do the work of transformation in our characters so that we grow more like him. His purpose is that we should be “transformed into his image” by his Spirit within us (2 Corinthians 3:18). In The Real Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson has a significant point to make on the nature of discipleship. He says that the Gospels “are remarkably consistent on one essential aspect of the identity and mission of Jesus.” He continues:

Their fundamental focus is not on Jesus’ wondrous deeds, not on his wise words. Their shared focus is on the character of his life and death. They all reveal the same patterns of radical obedience to God and selfless love toward other people. All four Gospels also agree that discipleship is to follow the same messianic pattern. They do not emphasise the performance of certain deeds or the learning of certain doctrines. They insist on living according to the same pattern of life and death shown by Jesus.

Another significant point is made by Erwin McManus:

We have bought into the Christian lie that, ‘the safest place to be is in the centre of God’s will’...but God’s desire for out lives was never to insulate us in a Christian bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing, worry about nothing... the Christian life was never about being safe—emotionally or physically...It has always been about engaging a dangerous cruel world...with fearless love.

I would like to make one other point that I have found helpful, before moving on. There is a difference between bearing a burden, and taking up a cross. Many of us have burdens we have to carry though life about which we have no choice, whether they are physical illnesses, unhappy relationships, or anything else. The New Testament gives us clues as to where we can find help with those (e. g. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Philippians 4:6, 7; 1 Peter 5:7). However, taking up our cross to follow Jesus is a matter of choice. Richard Hays, in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, says:

The believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to Come.

Discipleship, motivated by the love of Jesus revealed in the cross, is the pathway to a life of growing satisfaction and usefulness. And Jesus promised that, where sacrifice is involved, there are abundant rewards “in this present age” (Mark 10:29-31).

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