Primacy of Discipleship

How can we know that discipleship is really the first, the most important call that comes from God to people, including and especially to “believers”? That it is the primary lens through which we can and must view everything “Christian”?

Jesus and the New Testament speak of disciples all the time, but only three times of “Christians”. When Jesus calls a man, he always calls him to follow him – as his disciple. Those from the wider crowd who need a miracle from him he calls to faith, but those who are to be or who want to be close to him personally he calls to discipleship, to the life of a disciple. The former is evangelism, the latter is life in the new covenant with God.

In his farewell discourse, Jesus teaches and encourages his followers to become his disciples (Jn 15:8). A fully trained disciple becomes like his Teacher (Lk 6:40). And after the resurrection, Jesus gives the universal call to discipleship as his last word and as the definition of the mission of the Church (Mt 28:18–20).

It is a simple vision of imitating Jesus, which we also see in the epistles (Eph 5:1–2; 1Pe 2:21). Of learning, of apprenticeship, so that we become like the master. This imitation of Jesus happens mainly by imitating the examples of older (1Co 11:1; 1Th 1:6), more mature disciples who are at least a few steps ahead of us in following Jesus (Ac 20:35; 1Co 4:16; Php 3:17; 1Th 2:14; 2Th 3:7,9; 1Ti 4:12; Titus 2:7; Heb 6:12; 13:7; 1Pe 5:3; 3Jn 1:11). Because of this, the writer of Hebrews simply expects that people who have believed in Jesus for a while should already be “teachers” (Heb 5:12).

The family terms used in the community of Jesus point in the same direction: brother, sister (1Ti 5:1–2), but also fathers (1Jn 2:12–14), older ones/elders (1Pe 5:1,5), etc. It is normal and expected in a family that each child will grow up to be a young man and that one day he himself will be a father. A family that did not expect this of its children would be totally perverse. Why should it be any different in the church, which is the family of Jesus (Mk 3:33–35)?

The vision of discipleship – of becoming disciples or apprentices of Jesus, imitating him in practice, living as he did in the power of the Spirit, and ourselves becoming examples for others to observe and imitate in practice, and where each one is expected to grow up to be a “father” or “teacher” of others – this “vision” is therefore not a new idea, but just a faithful summary of the whole New Testament message.