Why Discipleship? (part I)

“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Discipleship is an important practice to pursue for three reasons: first, because relationship is God’s covenant plan for the growth and maturity of his people; second, because this discipleship the example which Christ practices and teaches and it works; and third, because discipleship is the way in which people and church as a body grow concurrently (Stay tuned for parts II and III).

PART I: God's Covenant Plan for the growth and maturity of his people:

In Genesis, in the final act of creation, God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). Inherent in this first statement is the idea that God is completed community unto himself; this is reaffirmed in the theology of the trinity, God in three persons, in perfect community, or perichoresis, with himself. Man, because he is designed in God’s image, is also made for community. The second thing which God tells us about man is that “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). And so God makes for him a helpmate, to walk with him, share his load, and literally, to “help” him. In other words, man was designed both to walk with God and to walk with others.

Two things can be learned from Genesis about the practice of discipleship: first, man was made for both horizontal (with one another) and vertical (with God) community; inherent in his DNA is the need for community to be an integral part of any process which he undertakes. Second, the curse results in a loss of both horizontal and vertical community (Genesis 3:8-24). Therefore, the work of redemption is a return to the created order (Cloud 37) in which we are called back into two relationships: relationship with God and relationship with others. This return to relationship is both the end and the means to the end of the redemption from sin. In other words, the end result of our redemption is that we are restored to right relationship with God and each other. Yet, the method by which we are brought near to salvation is also relationship (both with others and with Christ). Cloud and Townsend put it this way (122): “Independence from relationship is independence from God himself, for he is present in his Body; it is also independence from the way he designed us to grow… Biblical growth is designed to include other people as God’s instruments.”

Discipling is simply the art of relational growth. It is from this basis of relationship that we as Christians receive our call to discipleship.