What Does Genuine Discipleship Look Like?
Genuine discipleship looks like a genuine change of one's heart, mind and actions.
At our church, a First Baptist Church in Florida, our vision statement is to “Develop Disciples who…” I remember our very first Sunday in the church, a few short weeks before my husband was hired on to the staff, and our pastor started the call and response. Every single person said the vision statement along with him, and I was completely lost.
Although the words were on the TV’s at the front, I had never experienced anything like this. But more so, I had never heard the term “disciples” in any capacity other than the first twelve that Jesus called. This is a church that helps its members by coming alongside them and teaching them to be disciples just like Jesus’ beloved John? Like Peter, who is the rock the church would be built on? What??
It wasn’t long after we got settled in the church that we realized that discipleship is a very tricky thing, one that doesn’t have a one size fits all. Discipleship looks different to everyone, and with no clear definition of what discipleship should look like, it’s hard to find the best approach.
When Dee Dee and I decided to start a program dedicated to women’s discipleship, that was the first problem we dissected. What is genuine discipleship? We decided that it was three steps.
Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
(Ephesians 4:21-24, CSB)
A Genuine Disciple has a Genuine Change of Heart
Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, (Ephesians 4:21-22, CSB)
The first step towards genuine discipleship is hearing the truth of Jesus and seeing that we aren’t compatible with Him just as we are.
There’s a phrase I heard a lot when I found myself in Christian circles, which was “Come as you are.” While I completely believe that all should come looking for Jesus, once we find Him, it’s a whole new life.
Paul wrote this letter to Ephesus while imprisoned, giving the Ephesians and ourselves a little insight on the Christian walk. This particular passage in chapter 4 is labeled “Living the New Life” in our CSB Bibles.
We are called to live a new life when we start following Jesus. We are called to pursue Godliness and sanctification, and we cannot do this without removing who we once were.
A little about me is that I struggled a lot with wanting to feel something. That struggle led to a horrifying string of decisions as a teenager that I still cringe and pray my son never finds out about. When I decided to follow Jesus on a random Wednesday night my senior year of high school, it was hard to go to school the next day and walk away from the life I had created for myself. I’ll be honest, I didn’t do a great job of it.
The night before, I was so on fire for Jesus, He died for ME and I wanted to cry and scream and love so much. But, we don’t just magically change into someone who looks like Jesus overnight. Exactly as Paul says, we have to take off our former way of life, we have to take off that old self that is corrupted and run by a deceitful heart.
We have to have a genuine change of heart.
Genuine discipleship can’t begin without that conviction to be more like Him. Once we finally accept that we can’t live the way we were, we can move on to figuring out how to be more like Him.
A Genuine Disciple has a Genuine Change of Mind
To be renewed in the spirit of your minds (Ephesians 4:23, CSB)
Step two, we have to learn who Jesus is. We have to be “renewed in the spirit of [our] minds” as Paul says.
While we know the basics initially, that He lived a perfect life born of a virgin, took on the debt of our sins by dying on the cross, and was resurrected three days later to defeat death and return to Heaven to be with the Father.
Some know even more than that when they dedicate their life to Jesus, but until we accept Him, there’s no personal relationship to it, and that is what genuine discipleship is. It’s pursuing a personal relationship with Jesus and allowing Him to make us imitators of Him.
Later in Ephesians, Paul challenges us to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1) and to know how to do that, we must first know Him. Luckily, He gave us this incredible resource that is a literal book about who He is: the Bible.
We can pursue genuine discipleship by turning to the Word to gain more and more knowledge of Him. The more time we spend in the Word, the more scripture we memorize and live by, the better we can see exactly who we are imitating. Exactly who we are made in the image of.
The most exciting part is that the more we know Him, the closer we come to acting like Him. When we see how Jesus responds to the people around Him, handles conflict and serves the people who need Him, we can respond the same way.
Even Paul is a great example, listing concepts like the armor of God later in the book of Ephesians or the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians. The more we know, the more likely we are to start cultivating this knowledge into actions.
A Genuine Disciple has a Genuine Change of Actions
And to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. (Ephesians 4:24, CSB)
The third and final step in this constant pursuit of genuine discipleship, is a genuine change of actions. After taking off our old self, renewing our mind by focusing on Him, we can finally put on our new selves. A self that is created to look like God.
When we see in the Bible that God is forgiving, we recognize that in our mind. When we see how forgiving He is compared to ourselves and CHANGE the way we’re responding, that my friends is a change of actions.
This does not come easily. Being raised the way I was, I was quick to answer most problems with my fists. I typically gave people a reason to dislike me. Then, God softened my heart and I had to learn an entirely different way to interact with difficult people. I will be the first to say that I didn’t love the process of learning these lessons. It was hard, and I spent a lot of time second guessing all of my decisions when it comes to other people. Honestly, I still do, but the Holy Spirit is here to guide us through these hard situations. To help us navigate our actions as we work with all of God’s children.
This is a process that takes our entire lives. While accepting Christ happens in one movement, a decision to follow and then a prayer, the act of learning about Jesus and imitating Him is our entire life's goal (along with telling non-believers about Jesus).
A Genuine Disciple is someone who takes the steps to be more like Jesus
All in all, there’s a fancy word that the church uses called “Sanctification.” A genuine disciple is someone who takes the time to love God with their entire heart, learn about Him through His Word and use this knowledge to act more like Him.
Sanctification isn’t something we can strive for and expect to achieve after a few years; it’s a lifelong career path that takes up the bulk of our time and efforts. It isn’t easy, but what else can we offer our God who has done everything He can to bring us corrupt humans back to Him over and over again?
I want to challenge you to do something this week! I want to challenge you to read your Bible faithfully. If you are already doing that, I want you to write down what your scripture passage tells you about Jesus/God/The Holy Spirit. Does it show you an attribute? Does it remind you just how perfect He is? And then spend the day praying for opportunities to be more like that thing you wrote down. Nothing will be the same once you dedicate each day to being more like Him.