Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

discipleship

Virtue Signalling: Good or Bad?

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What is virtue signalling?

Virtue signalling is “the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily with the intent of enhancing that person’s standing within a social group.” Jesus, while not using the terminology, definitely addresses the concept.

Good?

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

(Matthew 5:14-16 ESV)

Virtue signalling looks like a moral duty..

Bad?

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

(Matthew 6:1-4 ESV)

It also looks like the central tenet of hypocrisy.

Which is it?

Doing good deeds publicly with full knowledge that you may be seen is simply part of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple. To seek the good we must, in many cases, be public, and in doing so, this makes the good appealing to those who seek lesser goods or accidentally seek evil.

On the other hand, doing good deeds solely for social credit is bad. Most public moral criticism happens this way. We criticize easy moral targets publicly with the hope that people will like us. The internet has made this dopaminergic process available on a mass scale at micro-costs.

Summary

  1. To do good for its own sake (part of ‘the good’ is the reward of knowing God and receiving his promises, btw).
  2. To do so, we must realize that ‘the good’ is inclusive persuasive actions on the part of sincere actors.
  3. Therefore, some level of virtue signalling that invites new participants in good behavior, reinforces that behavior in those who do it already, or increases alliances amongst those who practice virtue is virtuous.
  4. Finally, virtue signaling for hedonic (pleasure seeking) reasons is sinful.

To answer the question, “Is virtue signalling good or bad?” It depends on if you’re virtue-signalling to God.

Did Jesus come to make bad people good?

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A common evangelical slogan, which I think comes from a Ravi Zacharias sermon is:

Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people live.

While I think I agree with the main point of this phrase (Christianity is not merely morality), I usually hear it said in a way that contradicts everything the New Testament says about morality. For instance, Paul says that we’ll be judged for everything we do (Romans 14:12). Jesus says to do good works (Matthew 5:14-16). Peter says to add virtue to your faith (2 Peter 1:3-5).

If we define good person carefully, based on the western tradition of moral philosophy we get something like what Dallas Willard gives us here:

The morally good person…is a person who is intent upon advancing the various goods of human life with which they are effectively in contact, in a manner that respects their relative degrees of importance and the extent to which the actions of the person in question can actually promote the existence and maintenance of those goods.

A good person then:

  1. Is intent upon advancing the good of human life such as health, sustainable pleasure, beauty, knowledge both physical and philosophical, romance, family cohesion, showing honor and gratitude to whom it is due, and so on.
  2. Aligns their intentions to advance those goods with respect to which of those goods are most important and most appropriate in various circumstances.
  3. And focuses their efforts upon the goods that he or she can actually accomplish (a math genius who is awful at being with people should avoid hospital visits).

Now, look at these New Testament passages about why Jesus came:

Titus 2:11-14 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, (12) training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, (13) waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, (14) who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Romans 8:3-4 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, (4) in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

1 John 4:9-11 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. (10) In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (11) Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

These few passages should suffice to show that Jesus came to transform our character from evil weakness to strong goodness.

Dallas Willard on the Beatitudes

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Dallas Willard‘s understanding of the Beatitudes:

It will help us know what to do—and what not to do—with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them. That should be the key to understanding them, for after all they are his Beatitudes, not ours to make of them what we will. And since great teachers and leaders always have a coherent message that they develop in an orderly way, we should assume that his teaching in the Beatitudes is a clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens. How, then, do they develop that theme?

In chapter 4 of Matthew we see Jesus proclaiming his basic message (v. 17) and demonstrating it by acting with God’s rule from the heavens, meeting the desperate needs of the people around him. As a result, “Sick folk were soon coming to be healed from as far away as Syria. And whatever their illness or pain, or if they were possessed by demons, or were insane, or paralyzed—he healed them all. Enormous crowds followed him wherever he went” (4:23–25 LB).

Having ministered to the needs of the people crowding around him, he desired to teach them and moved to a higher position in the landscape—“up on the hill” (Matt. 5:1 BV)—where they could see and hear him well. But he does not, as is so often suggested, withdraw from the crowd to give an esoteric discourse of sublime irrelevance to the crying need of those pressing upon him. Rather, in the midst of this mass of raw humanity, and with them hanging on every word—note that it is they who respond at the end of the discourse—Jesus teaches his students or apprentices, along with all who hear, about the meaning of the availability of the heavens.

I believe he used the method of “show and tell” to make clear the extent to which the kingdom is “on hand” to us. There were directly before him those who had just received from the heavens through him. The context makes this clear. He could point out in the crowd now this individual, who was “blessed” because The Kingdom Among Us had just reached out and touched them with Jesus’ heart and voice and hands. Perhaps this is why in the Gospels we only find him giving Beatitudes from the midst of a crowd of people he had touched.

And so he said, “Blessed are the spiritual zeros—the spiritually bankrupt, deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of ‘religion’—when the kingdom of the heavens comes upon them.”

Or, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.” This, of course, is the more traditional and literally correct translation of Matt. 5:3. The poor in spirit are blessed as a result of the kingdom of God being available to them in their spiritual poverty. But today the words “poor in spirit” no longer convey the sense of spiritual destitution that they were originally meant to bear. Amazingly, they have come to refer to a praiseworthy condition. So, as a corrective, I have paraphrased the verse as above. No doubt Jesus had many exhibits from this category in the crowd around him. Most, if not all, of the Twelve Apostles were of this type, as are many now reading these words.

(Willard 99-101)

This is a fairly persuasive interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. It is certainly a Biblical teaching, in the sense that in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Paul makes it clear that the gospel is for lowest of the low. But is it what Jesus/Matthew means to say? I’m not as sure as I used to be. Since the Sermon on the Mount is a presented as Jesus’ moral system, it makes sense that it would start with Jesus’ description of happiness. If I were Lutheran, I would take the “blessings” of the beatitudes as promises for believers. But the problem is that that genre of saying and the Greek word it begins with is almost always used to speak of virtues that naturally lead to specific consequences. The major counter-example is Luke’s version of the SoM in Luke 6, where the traits of the blessed are negative traits.

Works Cited:

Willard, Dallas The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God(Harper Collins, 1997)

Obligation isn’t a four letter word

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Introduction
A feature of Paul’s letter to the Romans that I’ve never noticed being explored in depth is the concept of obligation or indebtedness. I am interested in this topic because there is a great deal of hand wringing in modern Christian thought about the notion of debt or obligation to God.

John Piper, for instance, thinks that the language of obligation in the context of the Christian life and worship is akin to telling your wife that you bought her flowers out of obligation (Desiring God, 97-98). Piper even calls obligation the “mortal enemy” of worship. Similarly, Greg Boyd (Piper’s opposite), in his book Seeing is Believing seems to say something similar, “striving to be holy, loving, kind or patient means nothing if these attributes are sought as ethical ideals, or to fulfill a rule, or to meet an obligation (Seeing is Believing, 53).” These attitudes toward obligation are psychologically confusing to normal people who don’t have doctoral degrees to help them keep silly things straight. When Jesus says, “train them to do everything which I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19),” we rightly feel obligated to do what he says and to tell others of the obligations Jesus lays on them. As an aside, it is interesting that Boyd and Piper are utterly in disagreement about many things, but find themselves in complete agreement on this modern/romantic point of view.

My sense is that both of these thinkers are trying to claim that there is an ideal to be met. The ideal is having a relationship with God wherein our emotions/passions and automatic habits line up with the commands in Scripture. I agree with that this is the ideal. But in the Bible, the ideal is not the litmus test for true spirituality. In Scripture, there is tremendous dignity ascribed to those who do the hard thing that they do not want to do (see all of Proverbs).

In fact, there is no contradiction between doing your duty always and sometimes finding it to be a delight and even spontaneously discharging that duty out of pleasure. Incidentally and contra Piper’s point, Paul sees sexual encounters between husband and wife as an obligation in (1 Corinthians 7:3), but I doubt that the obligation does not carry pleasure with it. I hope that what follows gives a picture of the nature of duty/debt/obligation in Paul’s thought. In so doing, I hope that it clarifies some of the confusion that might even make people feel guilty about following Jesus out of duty or obligation.

Thesis: Obligation and duty are central features of the Paul’s picture of being a disciple of Jesus in his letter to the Romans.

Probatio and Exposition
Paul utilizes the word ὀφειλέτης in several passages:

I am a debtor to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and to the ignorant, thus I am willing also to proclaim the gospel message to you who are in Rome.

(Rom 1:14-15 BGT) Ἕλλησίν τε καὶ βαρβάροις, σοφοῖς τε καὶ ἀνοήτοις ὀφειλέτης εἰμί, οὕτως τὸ κατ᾽ ἐμὲ πρόθυμον καὶ ὑμῖν τοῖς ἐν Ῥώμῃ εὐαγγελίσασθαι.

Here Paul seems to be saying that his wish to share the gospel in Rome and (as we’ll find later) to receive assistance from the Roman Christians for a trip to Spain (15:26-30) is based on a sincere sense of obligation, not on a desire for money or public acclaim. Paul sees himself as obligated to those who do not know the gospel. Obligations carry negative connotations these days, but in reality obligation is a positive concept and in the ancient world it was certainly seen that way. The obligation Paul sees laid upon his person is such that he is able to show tremendous love and care toward people of a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and to introduce them into the Jesus movement and thus to the God of Israel.

To the one who works, the reward is not accounted []according to principles of grace, but according to principles of obligation, on the contrary, to the one who does not work, but places his trust in He Who Justifies the Impious, his faith is accounted toward righteousness [or “his faith is accounted/credited for the purpose of righteousness” which would carry the meaning in English “his faith is counted as good as righteousness”].

(Rom 4:4-5 BGT) τῷ δὲ ἐργαζομένῳ ὁ μισθὸς οὐ λογίζεται κατὰ χάριν ἀλλὰ κατὰ ὀφείλημα, τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην· 

Here Paul uses obligation in a strictly financial sense to bring a notion of ancient patronage that all auditors would know and understand into his discussion about justification. The idea is that an ancient patron could pay you justly for work or in order to boost his own honor, provide a grace/gift with no expectation (or possibility) of remuneration. The correct response to this gift would be to show loyalty or trust toward the giver (See David DeSilva, Honor Patronage Kinship, and Purity (IVP, 2000), 121-156). In this case, the gift is the death and resurrection of Jesus (Romans 4:24-45) and the show of loyalty is faith and entering into this patron-client relationship with He Who Justifies the Impious leads to justification/righteousness. As Robert Jewett notes: “faith was the response of converts to the message that Christ died for the impious, and it led to their joining small communities of faith in which righteousness became a social reality as the dishonored were restored to honor, that is, to “righteousness.”*

Therefore now, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh in order to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh you will die; if by means of the Spirit, you put to death the practices of the body, you will live.


(Rom 8:12-13 BGT)  Ἄρα οὖν, ἀδελφοί, ὀφειλέται ἐσμὲν οὐ τῇ σαρκὶ τοῦ κατὰ σάρκα ζῆν, εἰ γὰρ κατὰ σάρκα ζῆτε, μέλλετε ἀποθνῄσκειν· εἰ δὲ πνεύματι τὰς πράξεις τοῦ σώματος θανατοῦτε, ζήσεσθε. 

What seems to be going on here is that the Christian has an obligation to fulfill as a debtor, but not as a debtor to the flesh (because though Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh and was raised bodily (Romans 1:1-5, 4:24-25, 5:1-11, 6:1-4 8:1-11), it was the Spirit of God who raised him (Romans 8:11). Thus, though the body is important, not everything we do in it is good. There is sin in our members (Romans 7:5), but we are not obligated to that way of life. In fact, if we paid off our debt to the flesh, it would be like nothing other than working as a servant of Sin, who pays his workers with death (Romans 6:23)**

Give to all what is obligatory: to whom you owe tribute tax, give tribute tax; to whom you owe customs tax, give customs tax; to whom you owe reverence, give reverence; to whom you owe honor, give honor. In no way be obligated to anybody except to love one another. For the one who loves the other fulfills the Law.

(Rom 13:7-8 BGT) ἀπόδοτε πᾶσιν τὰς ὀφειλάς, τῷ τὸν φόρον τὸν φόρον, τῷ τὸ τέλος τὸ τέλος, τῷ τὸν φόβον τὸν φόβον, τῷ τὴν τιμὴν τὴν τιμήν. Μηδενὶ μηδὲν ὀφείλετε εἰ μὴ τὸ ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾶν· ὁ γὰρ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἕτερον νόμον πεπλήρωκεν.

Here Paul’s point is that being mindful of the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5-8) is not pie-in-the-sky-ism. It is rather a very practical way of life that involves making way for the gospel to influence all peoples in all nations. In this respect, the Christian is to live in proper relationships with the legal customs of the surrounding world precisely so that there is freedom to love the other, namely the Christian who is not yourself (note that the main idea is to love one another, elsewhere Paul clearly expresses A) his debt to all men and B) that Christian love extends beyond the in-group.

But, we who are capable, are ourselves obligated to bear the weaknesses of the incapable and to not please ourselves.

(Rom 15:1 BGT) Ὀφείλομεν δὲ ἡμεῖς οἱ δυνατοὶ τὰ ἀσθενήματα τῶν ἀδυνάτων βαστάζειν καὶ μὴ ἑαυτοῖς ἀρέσκειν.

Here the main point seems to be to the effect that Christian of serious scruples about dietary laws and Old Testament customs should be showed dignity by Christians who are capable of not participating in those customs. In this case, Christians who have an advantageous perspective should show due deference to their brethren of weaker conscience. This principle is based partly on the honor accorded to all for whom Christ died (Romans 14:6) and partly upon the example of Jesus in bringing Gentiles into God’s people in the first place (Romans 15:7-9).

This might also be explanatory for Paul’s reminder to non-Jewish Christians that they should not, in arrogance think ill of Jewish folk because in their arrogance they may abandon the gospel (Romans 11:15-23). Thus, within the church, Christians are to regard each other (when disagreements about Christian ceremony come up) with humility and respect, treating one another as people with burdens to bear. Paul expects this, I think, of everybody. The rhetorical move may very well be to get any Christian to think of themselves as a capable person and thus to bear his own load and that of his brethren so that everybody might be built up and that there might be peace (Romans 14:19 and Galatians 6:2-5).

For they were pleased to do this and they were debtors to them. For if they shared their spiritual blessings with the nations, they are debtors with respect to material things to those who thus served them.

(Rom 15:27 BGT) εὐδόκησαν γὰρ καὶ ὀφειλέται εἰσὶν αὐτῶν· εἰ γὰρ τοῖς πνευματικοῖς αὐτῶν ἐκοινώνησαν τὰ ἔθνη, ὀφείλουσιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς σαρκικοῖς λειτουργῆσαι αὐτοῖς.

Here Paul’s point, that I said I would get to earlier, is that the other gentile churches were pleased to offer financial aid to the poor Christians in Jerusalem. The idea here is that the gentile Christians not only served the poor out of obedience to Jesus (which would make sense to do), but in this case, served the poor Jewish Christians out of a sense of reciprocity. The Israelite nation had given them the gospel of Christ, therefore, it was fitting for the gentiles to offer material assistance during the famine.

Conclusion
The overall picture is that Christians should see themselves as being to other Christians, debtors (in imitation of Paul) to outsiders who need the gospel, and as non-debtors to the flesh. Paul also uses the term “placed in service” in Romans 6:22 to refer to the relationship a believer has to God. Certainly there is an element of joy in that in Paul’s mind, but there is also an element of obligation to God. This is naturally due to God’s nature as well as due to God’s revelation to us in Christ. It appears that being obligated toward God and others is not only a part of Paul’s conceptual world, but it is an important part that is exactly part of the process of learning to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). It is also important to note that Jesus thought that the notion of having a servant-self-image was part of the process of becoming great in God’s kingdom (Mark 10:45). Thus, it’s okay to do Christian things out of a sense of obligation. Not only that, but it might even be freeing at times because you don’t have to be in control of your feelings to know whether or not your doing the Christian life the right way.

*Robert Jewett and Roy David Kotansky, Romans: A Commentary, ed. Eldon Jay Epp, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 315.

**I still don’t know why people interpret Romans 6:23 to mean that the penalty for sin is death when the passage says that sin is like a master who pays you with death after you obey its dictates. Romans 1:18-32 does note that death is a punishment for sinning or at least it is potentially the just-dessert of sinning. But Romans 6:23 just doesn’t say what it is often portrayed as saying. I think the common interpretation is based solely on the simplification it offers for gospel tracts.

Pastors and Secular Power

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Richard Baxter saw the dangers of cozying up to political power. Ministers of the gospel, if they aren’t careful, will not only sacrifice original thought but also Biblical truth in order to avoid being ostracized, mocked, or disagreed with. Social media has made this quite apparent in the current year. For instance, as the pro-life position has become more and more subject to mockery, fewer Christians are publicly affirming it. I can think of two anti-political pastors (Greg Boyd and Josh Porter) who are “anti-political” as an expression of theology. So, they don’t really talk much about opposing abortion (as a matter of principle one should stay out of politics), but both were happy to engage in making fun of Trump and his voters on Twitter. I suspect that these strategies are more to appeal to people of a left-leaning political slant. And in fact, I’ve known many pastors personally who have taken a similar approach to ministry: mocking openly anybody in their churches that the political left finds distasteful.

Sadly, most positions are held by most people as a matter of tribalism rather than as a matter of truth. This state of affairs ought not to be, but it is. As an aside, tribalism is a human default. The primary difference between the Christian and non-Christian tribes is that our chieftain (Jesus) commands us to put truth as our top loyalty (he is the Truth). So there’s a sense in which Christians should have the most disagreements (as seeking the truth entails argument) and the most unity (as we applaud the honest search for truth). Anyway, here is Baxter’s prescient commentary on our own time:

I would not have any to be contentious with those that govern them, nor to be disobedient to any of their lawful commands. But it is not the least reproach upon the Ministry, that the most of them for worldly advantage still suit themselves with the party that is most likely to suit their ends. If they look for secular advantages, they suit themselves to the Secular power; if for the air of Ecclesiastical applause, then do they suit themselves to the party of Ecclesiastics that is most in credit. This is not a private, but an epedemical malady. In Constantine’s days, how prevalent were the orthodox! In Constantius’s days, they almost all turned Arians, so that there were very few bishops at all that did not apostatize or betray the truth; even of the same men that had been in the Council of Nice. And when not only Liberius, but great Osius himself fell, who had been the president, or chief in so many orthodox Councils, what better could be expected from weaker men! Were it not for secular advantage, or ecclesiastic faction and applause, how could it come to pass, that Ministers in all the countries in the world, are either all, or almost all, of that religion and way that is in most credit, and most consistent with their worldly interest?Among the Greeks, they are all of the Greek profession: and among the Abassines, the Nestorians, the Maronites, the Jacobites, the Ministers generally go one way. And among the Papists, they are almost all Papists. In Saxony, Sweden, Denmark, &c. almost all Lutherans: in Holland, France, Scotland, almost all Calvinists. It is strange that they should be all in the right in one country, and all in the wrong in another, if carnal advantages and reputation did not sway much: when men fall upon a conscientious search, the variety of intellectual capacities causeth unavoidably a great variety of conceits about some hard and lower things: but let the prince, and the stream of men in credit go one way, and you shall have the generality of ministers too often change their religion with the Prince in this land. Not all, as our Martyrology can witness, but the most. I purposely forbear to mention any latter change. If the Rulers of an University should be corrupt, who have the disposal of preferments, how much might they do with the most of the students, where mere arguments would not take! And the same tractable distemper doth so often follow them into the Ministry, that it occasioneth the enemies to say, that reputation and preferment is our religion, and our reward.[1]

References

[1] Richard Baxter and William Orme, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, vol. 14 (London: James Duncan, 1830), 198–199.

Common Misconceptions Concerning Christian Discipleship

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In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explains that knowing a bit of theology is important for Christians now, in a way that it was not in the past:

…In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have got a lot of wrong ones-bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted about as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected… 

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity 4.1.4

His advice lines up with that of clever-silly economist named Keynes when he explained that practical men who have no use for philosophy often find themselves enslaved by the bad ideas of those long dead.

When I was in seminary and reading “the literature,” I discovered several approaches to Christian discipleship that all seemed lacking in one way or another. Here they are:

  1. The Romantic/Internalist Approach
    This particular approach is focused almost totally on the affections or feelings of the individual. It ends up redefining almost every major Biblical word (faith, hope, love, Spirit, and prayer) in terms of internal experiences. There is a Calvinist version of this (think Jonathan Edwards or John Piper) and there is a slightly charismatic version (think phrases such as, “Jesus told me,” “I don’t feel led,” “I wish I was more ‘on fire’ for God”). I find this approach unhelpful because it focuses almost totally on trying to control or aim the passions so that good deeds will happen which is nearly impossible.[see note a bottom] Or, much worse, this approach equates the passions/emotions with God’s will! In the first instance, believers going through a dry spell feel unfaithful to God. In the second instance, the hamster wheel of self-justification is given free rein over the mind and will.
  2. The Externals Approach
    In this approach, the idea is that getting people to conform in observable ways to good Christian behavior is synonymous with discipleship. While the Bible is clear that externals will come into line, it must be recognized that a system which focuses on external signs of obedience as the goal is precisely what Jesus criticizes over and over again in the gospels. Many of the ways that this system manifests itself include many good things and some made up things: getting people to dress well, getting people to give to their church, getting people to believe right dogmas, getting people to not say cuss words, speaking in tongues, dancing in church, not dancing in church, getting people to come to church regularly, getting people to vote for and against certain things, and getting people to do all sorts of other things.   It is not the case that motivating people to do external things is bad, but basing Christianity on a few easily observable external behaviors misses a large portion of what several of the things concrete, but non-obvious things Jesus said to do: love God, love neighbor, pray in secret, give in secret, fast in secret, deny oneself, show hospitality, call God Father, love enemies, over come lust, wash the inside of the cup, forgive those who apologize to you, reconcile with those you hurt, ask God for forgiveness with humility, become servants of all, be wise as serpents, be innocent as doves, and so-on. This approach often, though not always, comes with a simplistic view of salvation by grace alone. It either says, “Salvation is by grace alone, therefore the words of Jesus aren’t as important as simple faith,” or in certain denominations, “Salvation by grace alone is false, you’ve gotta do good works to go to heaven, so conform to our list of good works.”
  3. The Event Approach
    This one is a combination of the first two because it is based on generating feeling and motivation by means of events. The event approach is utilized most often in mega churches and youth ministries. Discipleship, in this case, is defined as occurring whenever people show up to events. Discipleship is really really happening if even more people come. In mega-church situations, discipleship is centered around the pastor’s vision for a larger church. In youth-group situations, discipleship is built around having bigger, better, and more exciting programs to keep the kiddos motivated.

I’ve talked about this before, but I think that the central idea in Christian discipleship is simply learning from Jesus, because he is meek and humble-hearted (Matthew 11:26-30). The Bible refers to this reality in several ways:

  1. Paul calls it “the obedience of faith,” which I take to mean the obedience which comes from trusting God’s self-disclosure in the gospel message of Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:1-7)
  2. Jesus elsewhere says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples…” The idea is coming to inhabit (in the same way that one inhabits a home and comes to know it, tend to it, and reap the benefits of living there) his whole message about himself, God’s kingdom, God, and how humanity should respond and relate to God. (John 8:31-32)
  3. Peter says, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Here, discipleship seems to mean to respond to God’s grace increasingly and learn from gospel teaching and experience what Jesus Christ wants you to know. (2 Peter 3:18)
  4. James says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” The word, in James is pretty clearly the gospel message about “the faith of our glorious Lord, Jesus Christ.” (James 1:22-2:1)
  5. John says that “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk as he walked.” For John, the claim of Christian religious identity is born out by means of personal adherence to the way of Jesus Christ. (1 John 2:6)

My point, in all of this is that it would seem that the most valid understanding of Christian discipleship is hearing the words of Jesus and trusting him enough to put them into practice. So the approach to discipleship in our churches should probably revolve around teaching:

  1. What Jesus said and did (including what he said to do).
  2. What the gospel authors interpreted that to mean.
  3. What the other New Testament authors interpreted Jesus’ life and message to mean.
  4. What the Old Testament means in relationship to Jesus (see Matthew 7:12 and Luke 24).
  5. How to actually put Jesus’ teachings into practice.

Points one and five are especially important because many people do not actually know what Jesus said. Secondly, when they do know, it can be very daunting to try it out without any guidance from contemporary brothers and sisters or those of times past. Pastors and Sunday school teachers have the unique opportunity to make this information available to the members of their churches. Sadly, I fear, the misunderstandings seem too obviously true to most people.

Note: The more ancient approach to Christian sanctification was the idea that habitual obedience and faithful response to God’s grace is the means that God’s Spirit uses to shape the human heart. One can see this echoed in C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard, but it is explained rather thoroughly in older luminaries like Thomas Aquinas, Richard Baxter, Thomas Brooks, St. Gregory, Horatius Bonar, Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, and so-on.