Restless, discontent, and fearful, our culture feverishly seeks change. The blessed church of our Savior also desires change, though not for its own sake but that the whole world may be transformed by the splendor of his glory. Many within her beautiful walls see huge cracks in her doctrinal foundations and gaping holes in the walls of her faith, practice, and worship; they wish to repair them. Some are more outward looking and encourage the church to be engaged with the surrounding culture that she may recover her God-given position as the light of the world. Both works are good and necessary. Yet, important questions must be asked and answered as we seek reformation, or else the trumpet call of reformation will not give a certain sound. How should we go about engaging the culture or seeking renewal within? What is our guide? What instructions has the Lord given us so that we may relate to the men and times in which we live wisely? One word captures his will: discipleship.
His departing words to his apostles were: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:19-20). His command assumes, first, his absolute, universal lordship over all things (v. 18). We do not go forward in our own name, strength, or agenda. There is one King, the risen Jesus of Nazareth, and his word alone is our guide. Thus, our Lord’s command to “go” can only be fulfilled if we go as representatives of his kingdom, of his dominion, of him. As Christians, our engagement in social, educational, and political causes, indeed, whatever we do, must be specifically kingdom focused, Christ-confessing, and Bible-directed, for his reign determines everything. As his lordship embraces “all things,” so we may rightly engage anywhere and everywhere, pressing his claims and word upon the totality of man’s life and activities.
Our thoughts immediately run to the most obvious places where positive change seems most likely, relevant, and useful. Politics comes to mind, as do media, education, and cultural issues more directly impacting the family and morality. Our Lord first goes to baptism. This means several things. First, he assumes that man is fallen, and being fallen, he is unclean. Baptism points to his need for inner cleansing and regeneration. Man is corrupted at the deepest levels of his soul, and he will corrupt everything he touches. Second, our Savior declares war upon the many futile utopias that fallen man fervently seeks, hoping thereby to escape the claims of God’s law upon his life and to erect a God-excluding Babel. These utopias abound. Primitivism, naturalism, and classicism (get back to the past, nature, a simpler way of life) tend to resurge in times of perceived cultural degeneration. Others pursue the chaos of Baal worship, which is thriving today in pornography, sodomy, incest, and live-in relationships; through descending into the very abyss of darkness and depravity, man seeks freedom, meaning, and control. Some prefer science and magic, which often go together, with man at the helm of nature, either analyzing and desupernaturalizing it or manipulating and controlling it to understand the world without reference to God and his word. Many bow before statism and corporatism, which are typically in an uneasy league with one another, the one to control and the other to fund fallen man’s desperate hubris. Even the family unit can have utopian leanings, for the family finds its salvation not by self-directed efforts to control its children, preserve its authority, and isolate itself from evil but by entering fully and submissively into the gates of Zion, our Savior’s church. Third, before man can serve God and find meaning anywhere, and avoid utterly destroying himself, he must be regenerated by the power of God’s Spirit and made a willing servant of his enthroned Messiah. He must not only be confronted with the claims of the gospel but also must personally confess, “Jesus is Lord.” He must look to the Lamb of God for cleansing. This is our King’s most fundamental and defining command: to labor for the salvation of the lost. Without this, all else is in vain, for his reign is neither based upon nor moves forward upon a foundation of common-grace cooperation with the city of man. It humbly labors for lost man to repent, be cleansed by Christ’s blood, and become part of the City of God.
The way our Savior’s work of salvation and renewal proceeds in history is through “teaching them,” which literally means “to make disciples.” Here we encounter an obstacle to our desire to solve problems. We are in a hurry. We have forty, perhaps fifty mature years of active, healthy ability. Since we tend to interpret history in terms of our limited life spans, this tempts us to take shortcuts, settle for patch-work, quick solutions to multi-generational sins and problems that usually require corresponding lengths of time to address and resolve. After all, one cannot put God, sanctification, and biblical change on a clock. Then, anyone who has ever done much teaching knows that learning requires personal involvement and patient, step-by-step instruction. Real teachers do not focus on test results, which usually indicate short-term memory capacity and give an artificial sense of accomplishment that feeds arrogance and veils a deep ignorance. This is our culture. To disciple this culture will require determined effort, earnest prayer, faith, and courage. We would like for a thirty-minute discussion, a short, inspiring video, and a set of instructions to bring everyone up to snuff. But how can such efforts undo or even begin to address living souls that have often been utterly deprived of Christian male leadership in their homes and communities, received no examples of humility, service, and prayer, but were given free reign from their earliest days to indulge appetites, attitudes, and actions that have only fed their corruption and settled them into determined, if sometimes nice and friendly, rebels? And this problem is particularly acute since our culture’s social agenda is largely set by fervent women who normally operate outside the God-appointed authority structures he has established for the home, church, and society. Discipling this culture necessarily involves discipling men to function as servant-heads and being willing to incur the displeasure of the females in their lives if necessary to honor the living God. This catastrophe squarely faces the church, for while we normally “let the men have it,” a significant number of Christian men are utterly stymied by their wives’ unwillingness to submit to Jesus Christ.
But our Lord knows all this far better than we, and this is the reason he commanded “go, disciple.” Ingrained, destructive thought patterns must be replaced with Holy Spirit-taught ones. Only prolonged exposure to the word of God, which is his power unto salvation, can effect this transformation. The old, destructive habits of shattered image-bearers must give way to fullness of life in Christ as God’s new creations. This simply cannot be laid out in five minutes or even five years. Discipleship is life-long, for each ray of gospel light reveals another root of corruption that must be torn away by the word of God and prayer. Yet, do men even know how to pray unless someone teaches them, unless they hear biblical prayer in the public assembly of God’s worshipping people or in Christian homes led by men seeking to come under Christ’s headship? Our need for discipleship is deep and pervasive. Becoming a disciple of Christ is not a matter of simply layering a few spiritual principles upon a foundation of rebellion and autonomy. We must be made new men and women in the totality of our lives, and only consistent, persistent discipleship can accomplish this.
Discipleship requires personal involvement in the lives of men. There is a certain degree of danger here that those seeking to make a disciple will themselves be discipled by worldly thoughts and ways or that our compassion for the needy will make us soft. This is the reason that only maturing disciples of Christ, ardent lovers of Jesus Christ, those who are living by his word and crying after his grace and mercy, will ever make disciples of men. The secret of making disciples is that we ourselves are much in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. Discipleship, then, is not a Tuesday evening activity; it flows from a life of consecrated allegiance to Jesus Christ in our thoughts, words, and emotions, so that the reflex of our Christ-filled hearts is readiness to lead others where he has led us.
Discipleship begins within the congregation, especially today, for the church is very, very weak. The younger require loving, personal attention from more mature and especially older believers. We must repent of the disdain and skepticism we often feel toward those who come into our midst or grow up among us and manifest sinful tendencies and behavioral patterns. Is this surprising? If we are farther down the path of discipleship, it is all of grace. The weaker will only be brought along the path if we remain in awe before the cross of our Savior and are struck with amazement by the Lord’s compassion to us. Then, rather than condemning them for the very sins that only God’s grace enabled us to overcome, we shall reach out to them, encourage them, open God’s word with them, and sow seed. It will take time to germinate and flower. Discipleship requires patience. It can be a frustrating labor. It often requires going back over the same ground again and again – like it required with us when the Lord Jesus sent someone our way. Have we lost our sense of need of being discipled?
Discipleship is required in “all things” (v. 19). In our church culture, everything from attire to relationships, doctrine to government is in need of rebuilding. Along what lines? The dominant spirit of our age is a sort of hybrid spiritual-libertinism, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” with “I want my best life now.” We know little of submission, bending our wills, in fact, renouncing them, and placing ourselves under the authority of our Lord. I fear that when many churchgoers hear “Seek the Lord,” they subconsciously add, “So I can get what I want,” or “So I will feel better about my circumstances.” We need to be discipled in the posture of the psalms: what it means to cry to the Lord according to his word, meekly trust his promises without being presumptuous and impatient, and wait upon the Lord rather than rush ahead after a few minutes of prayer. We need discipleship in service: opening our homes with a hospitable spirit, regardless of our economic circumstances – a crust of bread with a fellow-lover of Jesus Christ is better than a feast with the friendliest unbeliever in a Southern Living home. We need older believers looking out for those who need discipling, without waiting for an official church program, which may help the process but cannot substitute for its natural, winsome, energetic operation in our midst – nothing is more natural to the disciple of Jesus Christ, a believer who is seeking to be taught by him, than to look out for others who need to be taught in his word. We need the entire body of men to go after the wayward young man in the congregation and the same with respect to godly women discipling the younger. The issue of discipleship comes down to a passion to see Jesus Christ and his word honored everywhere – not from arrogance, tradition, fear of “my family” being tainted by outside influences, or making disciples in our own image – but from a sincere love for him. If we are walking with him, he will reach out through us, for it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20). Yet, we are so often self-absorbed, focused only upon our own lives, families, and needs, that the discipleship spirit is quenched. In its place, an ugly, complaining, and narrow spirit fills the vacuum created by our lovelessness – toward him.
There is nothing romantic about discipleship. Some men and women, even in the church, do not want to be discipled and require confrontational discipling about their need to be discipled. While God’s grace brings a fundamental teachableness in all whom he draws to himself, the poison of autonomy is deeply rooted and, now, loudly heralded in our culture. However great the difficulty, there are no untouchables – all men must be discipled in all things that our Savior has commanded. Sometimes, your discipleship efforts will drive a person away, for they do not want to bring their life under the authority of Jesus Christ but want “religion” and “church” to validate their stubborn, unteachable spirit. We may spend hours and hours with a church attendee, or even a member, only to see them finally refuse our efforts and walk away. Our hearts ache, as did the heart of our Lord over Jerusalem. Discipleship, like every other area of our Christian walks, involves cross-bearing. But those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, for “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (v. 20). It is our Savior’s cheering, strengthening presence with us that sustains the church’s multi-generational, multi-millennium discipleship efforts.
If we would make disciples of men, we must walk more closely with our Savior. It is the Lord of glory that draws men to himself through us, but only because he is in us. O, may he be! Seeing the condition of the world and the church of which are living stones, should we not constantly pray: “Lord, help me to comprehend something of the height, width, depth, and breadth of your love. Indwell me by your spirit. Break me more and more. Help me to disciple my spouse, my children, my fellow strangers and pilgrims, and my world. Only you can do it. Only you can make me your disciple so that I may disciple others.” The fields are still ripe unto harvest; the crown awaits the conquest. May the Lord raise up to be faithful workers in his field and through our humble efforts draw all men and nations unto himself. The nations will be discipled. The cross and throne of our Savior guarantee it. His Father has promised. The farthest coasts shall obey his law.