Quotes about Discipleship

We do not just hear what Jesus said to do and try to do that. Rather, we also notice what he did, and we do that too.

There is a widespread notion that just passing through death transforms human character. Discipleship is not needed. Just believe enough to "make it." But I have never been able to find any basis in scriptural tradition or psychological reality to think this might be so. What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death? What would one do in heaven with a debauched character or a hate-filled heart?

Every single thing that Jesus taught us to do was something he had put into daily practice in circumstances just like ours.

For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship.

Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.

Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists in loving our enemies, going the "second mile," turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully—while living the rest of our lives just as everyone around us does.

And in this truth lies the secret of the easy yoke: the secret involves living as he lived in the entirety of his life—adopting his overall life-style. Following "in his steps" cannot be equated with behaving as he did when he was "on the spot." To live as Christ lived is to live as he did all his life.

A disciple is someone who is learning by going through the process of change. All the things that we moan about and talk on and on about, such as pornography, divorce and drugs, are things that can be dealt with effectively only by bringing change into the mind and the spirit, into the will, into the body and into the fellowship of the person. Then people come out saying, "Who needs that stuff? I've got something much better than that.

He has made a way for us into easy and happy obedience—really, into personal fulfillment. And that way is apprenticeship to him. It is Christian "discipleship." His gospel is a gospel for life and Christian discipleship.

If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all…. One reason why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.

His Heart, Our Heart As disciples (literally students) of Jesus, our goal is to learn to be like him. We begin by trusting him to receive us as we are. But our confidence in him leads us toward the same kind of faith he had, a faith that made it possible for him to act as he did.

The "Western" segment of the church today lives in a bubble of historical illusion about the meaning of discipleship and the gospel. We are dominated by the essentially Enlightenment values that rule American culture: pursuit of happiness, unrestricted freedom of choice, disdain of authority.