Discipleship #6 - The Jesus Way

In John Mark Comer’s important book on discipleship, Practicing the Way, he argues that one of the big mistakes consumer Christianity has made was to narrowly focus the evangelistic invitation on escaping God’s judgment: 

“Do you know where you are going when you die? Heaven or Hell?” 

“I’m not sure? I want to go to Heaven!”

“Accept Jesus into your heart.”

“Ok!”

This line of reasoning is transactional because it consumes the merit of Jesus’ sacrifice and sidesteps the actual invitation Jesus offers, which is to be his apprentice (another word for disciple). Just saying “yes” to Jesus’ salvation doesn’t mean you’ve said “yes” to his invitation to be his disciple. 

To be an apprentice of Jesus requires effort under the shelter of God’s beautiful love and grace. However, consumer Christianity has taught a cheap grace that says that Christian faith is not about what you do but what Jesus has done for you. Even though this sounds right, a false dichotomy distorts what Jesus and the Apostles taught.

Jesus said we have to give up our lives and carry our cross, and Paul wrote to the Philippians, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (2:12b-13). Therefore, as Dallas Willard says in The Great Omission, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” Comer is not advocating for a works based righteousness, he’s just rejecting the idea that effort is not required in true discipleship.

People give up on their faith in Jesus for all kinds of reasons. But one of the common reasons is that they never really started apprenticing—they never built their spiritual muscles. They didn’t know what to expect and were shocked and confused when challenges came. When other attractive alternative life options were put before them, they took them. In other words, they didn’t really walk away from true Christianity but from a diluted and weak form of consumer Christianity.  

Comer says the true discipleship invitation is threefold: 

1) To be with Jesus 

2) To become like Jesus, and 

3) To do as Jesus did

When we follow Jesus's example, we will be saved to a radical new kind of life in which we become more like Jesus, experience a new heaven inside of us, and are saturated by God’s love and resurrection power. 

Peter Carolane

Senior Minister