Discipleship - Part 2

Introduction

Jesus said: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)

This is the second in a series of articles on Christian discipleship. As my guide I'm using the book Discipleship by David Watson and today we look at chapters 2 and 3 of the book entitled "Called into God's Family" and "Creating Community".

God's Family - The Jesus Community

David Watson points out at the beginning of his chapters on the Church as God's family and as a living community of people that God is concerned for every individual person. Any form of Christianity that ignores the individual has something lacking I believe. Yet Watson also points out a parallel truth that God does not want us "to stay in isolation, but to join the new community of God's people." In other words, though treated as individuals, we are never left as individuals by God. We are God's people in the plural.

Watson makes big claims for the church, but no less big than the claims of the apostles! He says that a church which learns how to be a caring, sharing community in this world of so much alienation, selfishness and greed can indeed turn the world upside down.

In this respect, it needs pointed out that even the church, great though it is, is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an even greater, more glorious end in God's plan and purpose. As Watson says, the church is the way in which God will achieve "the fulfilment of the much wider plan that God has for the whole of creation."

Though written in the early 1980s, I could not help but feel a resonance here in Watson's vision with that of N. T. Wright.

God's plan is much bigger than "saving souls from hell for heaven" which is what some evangelicals have a tendency to reduce the gospel message down to. No, God's plan is monumentally greater even than that. It is to redeem, restore and renew the entire creation, including humanity but not limited to humanity. Watson offers a brilliant quote to sum this up from the Swiss Catholic theologian, Hans Küng: "God's kingdom is creation healed."

In order to be the catalyst for that healing in creation, the church also needs to experience reconciliation and healing within itself. In this respect, Watson believes that unity in the church is vital. He is adamant: "The existence of over 9000 Christian denominations throughout the world is an insult to Christ, a denial of the gospel, and the greatest hindrance to the spreading of the Kingdom of God."

Again I thought I could hear distance echoes of Tom Wright here, but it is hard to justify the many fractures, schisms, splits and plain old-fashioned falling outs that rend the body of Christ into thousands of little "churchettes".

Yet unity cannot be at the expense of truth or honesty and certainly not at the expense of love. The New Testament is clear that there are doctrinal and practical lines in the sand that separate true disciples of Jesus from false teachers. One only has to read letters like 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude and John's epistles to see that. But even so, there is a world of difference between dividing over fundamental issues of the gospel and dividing over all sorts of secondary matters.

Above all though, for there to be unity, we need to look not at grand visions of organisational union or federation, but being committed to the people around us on a Sunday morning. We need to be committed to each other in love. That's the only way we can become a community where all barriers of class, race, age and sex are broken down and destroyed once and for all (Ephesians 2:11-20).

But as well as unity within, there needs to reaching out to the world through evangelism. Again, though, Watson is clear that evangelism's final goal is not saving a soul, but building a community of redeemed people.

And that Christian community will stand out because it has very different values from the world around it. It is a community of sinners, not perfect stained-glass saints. It is real, living, difficult at times. But a community where love and tolerance of each others faults can revolutionise our work and witness to the world. It is above all, a community of the cross, trying to live out Christ's sacrificial love in our locations and in our time to those around us who are in terrible danger of perishing.

We cannot do it on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to live as the church. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves as the church every day. But it is a vision where love will win out in the end. For as Watson defines it: "Christian love, agape, is unconquerable benevolence, invincible good will." When we live it out neither we, nor our churches, nor the world, will ever be the same again.

Next time we will look at what it means to "make disciples" and how we need to live by the Holy Spirit as Christian disciples (chapters 4 and 5 of Watson's book).