Why Discipleship Makes Sense
(To do: Add verses for all of these and the commentary below.)
- This comes naturally from believing that God exists and created the entire universe and everything that was ever created.
- In addition, God gave us the Bible to tell us about Himself, the world He created, His expectations for us, and how He interacts and has interacted with the world.
- God further states in the Bible that all have broken His rules (sinned against God) and what is more, the wages or consequences of sinning against a Holy and all powerful God is death.
- The Bible explains that after we live life on this world we will each end up in one of two eternal destinations: heaven with God or a lake of fire apart from God.
- The bad news, however, is that all who have sinned (which is everyone) would be heading for the lake of fire, also referred to as the "second death", because those are the "wages" we have all earned by sinning against God.
- The good news, the "gospel", is that God in His mercy made a way for us to avoid the wrath that we all deserve in the lake of fire through the atoning death of Jesus, God the Word Himself, on the cross dying and suffering separation from God on our behalf.
- The Bible tells us that only a few find that narrow path to salvation, that merciful way that God created for us, and everyone else travels the wide road to destruction in the lake of fire. The Bible clearly says God gives us grace of His salvation, which is completely undeserved and unmerited, based on our faith, our heart.
Because of 1-7, our first order of business I believe is finding and walking narrow way ourselves. We have to develop that faith, the heart. Our world sees "faith" simply as something we say we believe but the Bible in James defines faith as the type of belief that actually produces action thus "faith" without works is dead and not recognized as a saving faith by God. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing the sciptures essentially hearing the Bible (and since the printing press now electronic media it is widely available so we can also read for ourselves in all major languages) and God miraculously opening our eyes to see Him and His truth. Sometimes instead of using the word faith and risking being misunderstood I have started to say "world view" because to me that implies a belief so core to our being that it dictates how we choose to live, but essentially this is how the Bible seems to define faith.
This is where discipleship comes in. I am thinking discipleship includes a) learning about God and Jesus through studying the Bible, b) drawing closer to God and Jesus while learning more about them from the Bible, and c) trying to follow after Jesus in the manner he commands in the Bible. I belive that once someone accepts 1-7 the relative value of our normal life in this world is diminished and the only thing that actually becomes prioritized is those steps of discipleship: seeking to learn about, seeking to draw close to, and seeking to follow after God. If we accept 1-7, it doesn't even make sense to choose not learn about God the Word, the one who first created us and our world then became one of us to pay our sin debt that we are powerless to pay. Fear alone should be sufficient to drive that behavior in us. Similarly, it is only natural to want to draw as close to God as possible as a number one priority out of love and gratitude for what God has done for us. Finally, it only makes sense that we begin to do the things that God commands, even though we still fall short and sin, out of gratitude and love for God as well as a strong compassion for the plight of others. It is our reasonable service.