1.MARKS OF DISCIPLESHIP Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. MATTHEW 7:21 In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death. Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional that the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all. It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ—that He died for our sins and rose again—and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he “takes” Him as his personal Savior. The idea of His lordship is completely ignored. The absence of the concept of discipleship from present-day Christianity leaves a vacuum that we instinctively try to fill with one or another substitute. I name a few. SUBSTITUTES FOR DISCIPLESHIP Pietism. By this I mean an enjoyable feeling of affection for the person of our Lord that is valued for itself and is wholly unrelated to cross-bearing or the keeping of the commandments of Christ. It is entirely possible to feel for Jesus an ardent love that is not of the Holy Spirit. Witness the love for the Virgin felt by certain devout souls, a love which in the very nature of things must be purely subjective. The heart is adept at emotional tricks and is entirely capable of falling in love with imaginary objects or romantic religious ideas. In the confused world of romance, young persons are constantly inquiring how they can tell when they are “in love.” They are afraid they may mistake some other sensation for true love and are seeking some trustworthy criterion by which they can judge the quality of their latest emotional fever. Their confusion of course arises from the erroneous notion that love is an enjoyable inward passion, without intellectual or volitional qualities and carrying with it no moral obligations. Our Lord gave us a rule by which we can test our love for Him: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him…. If a man love me, he will keep my words…. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings” (John 14:21, 23–24). These words are too plain to need much interpreting. Proof of love for Christ is simply removed altogether from the realm of the feelings and placed in the realm of practical obedience. I think the rest of the New Testament is in full accord with this. Another substitute for discipleship is literalism. Our Lord referred to this when He reproached the Pharisees for their habit of tithing mint and anise and cumin while at the same time omitting the weightier matters of the Law such as justice, mercy and faith. Literalism manifests itself among us in many ways, but it can always be identified in that it lives by the letter of the Word while ignoring its spirit. It habitually fails to apprehend the inward meaning of Christ’s words, and contents itself with external compliance with the text. If Christ commands baptism, for instance, it finds fulfillment in the act of water baptism, but the radical meaning of the act as explained in Romans 6 is completely overlooked. It reads the Scriptures regularly, contributes consistently to religious work, attends church every Sunday and otherwise carries on the common duties of a Christian; and for this it is to be commended. Its tragic breakdown is its failure to comprehend the lordship of Christ, the believer’s discipleship, separation from the world and the crucifixion of the natural man. Literalism attempts to build a holy temple upon the sandy foundation of the religious self. It will suffer, sacrifice and labor, but it will not die. It is Adam at his pious best, but it has never denied self to take up the cross and follow Christ. Another substitute for discipleship I would mention (though these do not exhaust the list) is zealous religious activity. Working for Christ has today been accepted as the ultimate test of godliness among all but a few evangelical Christians. Christ has become a project to be promoted or a cause to be served instead of a Lord to be obeyed. Thousands of mistaken persons seek to do for Christ whatever their fancy suggests should be done, and in whatever way they think best. The what and the how of Christian service can only originate in the sovereign will of our Lord, but the busy beavers among us ignore this fact and think up their own schemes. The result is an army of men who run without being sent and speak without being commanded. To avoid the snare of unauthorized substitution I recommend a careful and prayerful study of the lordship of Christ and the discipleship of the believer.
AW Tozer. Discipleship: What It Truly Means to Be a Christian--Collected Insights from A. W. Tozer (pp. 2-5). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
AW Tozer. Discipleship: What It Truly Means to Be a Christian--Collected Insights from A. W. Tozer (pp. 2-5). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
