What Does it Mean to be a Disciple?

Lately I have been thinking about what it means to be a Christian, and more specifically what does it mean to be a disciple of Christ. Some of the books I have been reading lately provide some interesting perspectives on that topic. Most recently I was reading about this topic in a book titled Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others by Todd Hunter. Bishop Hunter writes in a section entitled The Problem with Getting Saved the following provocative words:

It seems to me that many Christians have been imagining the wrong story concerning God and his people, and thus they come up with less-than-helpful ways of thinking about the Christian life.

The story [commonly told] is one in which the forgiveness of sin is the sole plot line. The plot line moves toward the final resolution of “who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.”...

Here is the first problem: that story rarely produces actual followers of Jesus. At best it produces “forgiven people” — and even then I think forgiveness is only understood in a very shallow way. I believe that in responding to Jesus, people do not merely receive forgiveness of sins so they can go to heaven. Rather, they are forgiven so they can begin a different kind of life, a cooperative relationship with God, a new and eternal kind of life right now (which ultimately includes heaven).

To state this a little differently, to say that being a Christian means thinking the right things about Jesus so that you can go to heaven after you die is missing the main point. Jesus came to transform lives, to change the way people relate to God and each other right now, not just after this life is over. N.T. Wright, one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, said in an interview with the Wittenburg Door magazine:

The point of following Jesus isn’t simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. We’re called, here and now, to be instruments of God’s new creation, the world-put-to-rights, which has already been launched in Jesus and of which Jesus’ followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents.

Being a Christian is not just about believing the right things so that we will be brought to the kingdom of heaven, its about doing the right things so that the kingdom of heaven will be brought into the world through us. Living out our faith is not a way to get saved, it is a way to be agents of salvation for the world around us.

What does living out our faith look like? While it is fair to say that this question can be answered as many different ways as there are people of faith, there are some general answers that can be identified as being applicable for all. The starting point for answering this question is love - as Christians we are called to love God with our whole being and love others as we love ourselves. This love is not having warm and fuzzy feelings for someone, rather it is being committed to the others’ well-being. Jesus gives some concrete examples of what this kind of love looks like in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25: feeding the hungry, giving clothes to those who have none, taking care of the sick, visiting those in prison. In each of these examples those who do God’s will are caring for those less-fortunate than themselves through simple acts of kindness and compassion. Being a disciple of Jesus means caring for those in the world that need help.

In Canada we do some of this collectively, through Government institutions such as our health care system, and through other agencies like Canadian Lutheran World Relief. More locally we do this through providing some funding for places like Indian Métis Christian Fellowship and Regina North-Central Family Centre. There is an advantage to pooling our resources to assist such agencies, but this does not exempt us from also acting as individuals to show love to others.

What about love for future generations? I grew up with predictions of the second coming of Christ happening any day. The sad consequence of that emphasis has been less of an urgency about tackling problems that will impact the future of the world - specifically I am thinking about how we impact the environment. How does it show love for future generations if they inherit a world destroyed by pollution? How does neglect for the environment show love for God’s creation, and thus God? How does being a Christian shape our decisions about how we consume the world’s resources?

One simply action in this area is to be intentional in buying food grown locally. Another is to reduce power consumption by taking shorter showers, turning off unnecessary lights, and walking or biking more. There is nothing specifically Christian about these actions - many non-Christians do such things as well - but for Christians we make such choices out of our call to love God and others. Being a disciple of Christ does not mean simply believing something about God for the future, it means working with God in the present to help God’s kingdom come.

Just as Jesus ushered in the kingdom of God through many acts of love and compassion, so too are we his followers called to do the same. The process of bringing in the kingdom is slow - bit by bit, person by person - but it is happening, all over the world this is taking place at this very moment. The specific actions we choose to do because of our faith may not seem like much, but as agents of Christ we can, and do, make a difference, even if we don’t see it at first. Being a disciple of Christ is not just about believing, it is about doing, about living our lives with Jesus at the centre. It is taking the love Christ shared freely with us and sharing it with all the world. It is not just a head trip, it is a life journey!