Christian and Disciple

[This is the second part of a multi-part post.]

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Mt. 28, 19-20; NIV)

In the [first part of this post series], I reported that I misunderstood the so-called “Great Commission” all my life. The result was a guilty conscience every time this Bible passage appeared anywhere. That changed only when I saw what Jesus really wants from his followers. He does not say, “Make people Christians”, but “Make people my disciples”.

Of course, the question immediately arises whether Christian and disciple are not the same. Well: at the time of the New Testament, it was. But the meaning of the word Christian has changed over the past two thousand years. So, let’s take a closer look at the words Christian and Disciple.

1.1 What is a disciple

What was a disciple at the time of Jesus? It is not what we today commonly understand by a Christian.

A disciple was much more than just a student or an apprentice. From the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus called disciples to follow him. Two examples:

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said […] At once they left their nets and followed him. (Mark 1:16-18; NIV)

As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. (Mark 2:14; NIV)

The Gospels repeatedly report on these vocations.¹

This sentence: “Follow me!” was not simply an invitation to become a student of Jesus. If Jesus had wanted students, on the Sabbath he would have reserved seats in the front row of the synagogue for them, so that they could hear his sermon clearly. Or he would have founded a school, an academy, as had long been the custom among the Greeks in those days². There his students would have come to him, and he would have lectured to them.

But Jesus wanted more than students. He didn’t just want to impart knowledge to them: he wanted to make disciples of them. This concept was central to his work. And so, the Greek word for disciple, μαθητής (mathetés), occurs a full 281 times in the New Testament. The entire ministry of Jesus was based on the idea of discipleship. Yet Jesus did not invent the concept of discipleship himself. It was quite common in his time. Already in the fifth century before Jesus, the Greek historian Herodotus described the relationship of disciples to their masters.³

So, Jesus wanted more than students; he wanted followers, disciples.

1.2 Being a disciple costs

Let’s take a closer look at the difference between a disciple and a student. We see it in Simon, Andrew, Levi, and all the others Jesus had called: they did not meet with Jesus for three hours a day to listen to his teachings. No, they left everything and followed Jesus wherever he went.

The disciples had to let go of their own plans. To follow Jesus, they left behind their whole lives: everything they had worked for, their businesses, their families. So, becoming a disciple was a very radical step at that time.

Why? It has to do with how a disciple was trained. Jesus taught his followers by sharing his whole life with them. He traveled with his disciples, he ate with them, and he lived with them. 24 hours a day, the disciples learned to consciously imitate their master.

And that is exactly what a disciple wanted, for that he had left everything. He wanted to learn as much as possible from his master, and so he imitated as much as possible everything his master did.

There is a beautiful picture of how far this could go. Do you remember the story of the disciples sitting alone in the boat, and then they see Jesus approaching them on the water? Peter, the most daring of the disciples, immediately tries to do what he sees Jesus do. He steps out of the boat to go to him, and Jesus can just grab him before he sinks. For me, this is a picture of how seriously Peter took his decision to emulate Jesus as an example. To learn everything from him.

So, this is a disciple: someone whose focus, whose attention is completely on his master.

Since Jesus no longer lives as a human being on this earth, for most people becoming a disciple no longer means leaving everything behind. But it doesn’t make the challenge for us any smaller. For us, too, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, our focus, our attention must be completely on our master. Our goal in life is then to imitate Jesus as accurately as possible.

In the “Great Commission,” Jesus addresses exactly these people: His disciples. Their task is to help others to become His disciples as well.

1.3 Christian

At the beginning I said: A disciple is not what we colloquially understand by a Christian. So, let’s take a look at how the word “Christian” came to be, what the word originally meant, and how its meaning has changed over 2000 years.

While “disciple” occurs over 280 times in the New Testament, we find only three times the word Christian.⁴ The book of Acts tells us how the word came to be:

26 […] The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. (Acts 11:26; NIV)

So, in the beginning, there were disciples. And after people saw how much their life was shaped by Jesus, that they reflected the Christ, they called the disciples Christians.

At that time, a Christian was still the same as a disciple. But is that still the case today?

In the mainstream churches, a Christian is someone who was (usually) baptized as a baby. The Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM), for example, states: “Christians today are called all people who are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”⁵

In our free churches, being a Christian requires a one-time decision for Jesus and baptism. And that is good and right. Jesus himself says that we should baptize. He even had himself baptized. But when we say, “A Christian is someone who is baptized,” we have a completely different understanding of the word “Christian” than the people in the New Testament.⁶

Author Justin Gravitt clarifies the problem:⁷

[The word “Christian” is] now a term of belief more than behavior. It no longer indicates someone who looks and acts like Jesus, but is more commonly used of someone who has intellectually accepted the tenets of Christianity. Instead of being recognized by their actions, today’s Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus as their personal Savior and who identifies with the Christian religion.

What does all this mean for our understanding of the “Great Commission”?

Obviously, it was not Jesus’ goal for his disciples to get others to “pray the sinner’s prayer,” as churches call it. He wants us to be disciples ourselves, Christians in the original sense. And then we should help people on the way to becoming disciples of Christ themselves.

In the next post, we will look at how Jesus imagines this exactly.

By then. Be blessed!

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Eber2002
Jochen Eber - [Die Katechese der Alten Kirche: Eine Einführung; ihre Bedeutung für die Gegenwart]; abgerufen 2021-09-17.

Gravitt
Justin G. Gravitt - [What’s the Difference? Christian vs. Disciple]; abgerufen 2021-09-17.

EKM2005
Evangelische Kirche in Mitteldeutschland (EKM) - [J wie Jünger], 2005-06-16; abgerufen 2021-04-20

Cover photo: Lyricmac at [English Wikipedia]. [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.