A disciple is a willing adherent to his master’s beliefs who then goes and spreads those beliefs. That involves having a master, wanting to follow and learn from him, practicing what he did, and spreading his beliefs. In principle, Christians have a common understanding of the first two pieces: having a master and following him. We tend not to use discipleship terminology though and instead change following Jesus into obeying Jesus. It sounds like the same thing, but “following Jesus” implies no threat of punishment, while “obeying Jesus” does. I prefer discipleship as this communicates the willingness to serve, and it happens to be the language Jesus used. The image I get of an obedient convert is one that has me complying to avoid punishment. But that’s not what we were taught.

Jesus said “follow me,” not “follow me or else.”

Because of this distinction of following versus obeying, when we come to the third part of what it means to be a disciple we completely miss the point. Because we obey to avoid punishment we fail to internalize the concepts and instead become afraid to fail for fear of punishment. We don’t actually believe “there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.” We secretly add in, “as long as we comply.” This is heresy. When we do that we are trying to justify our salvation by our works; we try to prove we really shouldn’t be punished.

Have you ever heard someone use the question “are you sure you’re saved?” That plays on the fear that we haven’t earned our salvation, that you ultimately haven’t done the right things or enough things to justify claiming you are saved. What we need to do is throw out that faulty imagery altogether and replace it with the imagery of discipleship. We practice what our master practices because we want to and because we want to get better at it. “Faith without works is dead” isn’t “salvation without works isn’t salvation.” But that’s what most think it says. What if it is just stating the obvious: that being a disciple means practicing what our master practiced? What if that has nothing really to do with salvation?

Finally, in spreading our master’s beliefs we see where the subtle change from following to obeying leads us. There’s a certain air of despair about preaching the Gospel. As if I am responsible for the salvation of others. And that as long as I get some confession out of them I’m good and I can move on to the next group of lost souls. Because we’re acting out of fear – fear of people going to Hell – we never take the time to practice following Jesus nor do we call others to follow him either; only that they confess.

We’ve changed the focus from following Jesus to escaping His wrath.

Maybe we should believe God when he says “salvation belongs to the Lord.” Again, I think we secretly add “unless someone doesn’t hear because I didn’t tell them and then maybe I’ll be punished and they’ll go to Hell.” By changing “following” to “obeying” we strip the good news from the Gospel.

I bring all this up – what turned into a whole post – to say that my intent is never to condemn or coerce; instead I offer my advice to fellow, willing followers of Jesus. You won’t go to Hell, or have God’s blessings withheld, or any other nonsense like that if you disagree with me.