Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the institute. To develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: You know, Leo Tolstoy tells a story of how two brothers, they hadn't been meeting each other for some years, got together for a weekend hunting.
And as they went hunting together, and they had had a good day, as they retired to bed, the younger brother, as was his wont, began to pray.
He knelt and prayed, and as he got up, his elder brother said, huh, you still do that?
And he thought about it, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and he never prayed again.
And Tolstoy goes on to ask, why is it that people can do things from habit, but it doesn't really mean very much? And then it's like a brick wall. It looks very substantial, but even with your little finger, you can just touch it, and the whole thing collapses.
Now, the frightening thing today is that there are many Christians like that.
They're good churchgoers.
Their life is obviously, you know, conventionally very good.
And yet some tragedy hits them, some pressure pushes them over.
And you're amazed to see a total renunciation or collapse of their former values and attitudes. And it's to prevent that kind of thing that we want to look this week at the subject, the devotional aspects of discipleship.
I want us, if you like, to make a note of it in these four lectures to speak on four aspects.
First is, what is Christian discipleship? That's our theme this morning, to look at, therefore, some of the disciplines that perhaps we need for this discipleship of devotion.
Then tomorrow we want to look at who are Christian disciples.
What is their character?
What are the traits of their character?
And then the third lecture, we want to look at how Christian disciples are developed, developed by their affections.
How important are religious affections for the formation of Christian discipleship?
And then finally, we want to look at how Christian disciples are bonded together.
What is the nature of their community so their disciplines, their character, their affections and their community.
And I do want to express our own appreciation for being here at Falls Church. And my friendship with John Yates is a very beautiful one. I do esteem John and Susan so much. And we appreciate the opportunity that we share within this community in also forming perhaps further community together, one with the other.
One passage that I want us to think about this morning in the light of our subject is in Matthew's gospel, chapter 11, you remember how Matthew portrays very much the distinctive traits of what are Christian disciples.
And what really Jesus is doing in Matthew's Gospel is training his disciples to a new form of learning, a new way of learning things.
And so in verse 25 of chapter 11, Jesus prays, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and the understanding and revealed them to babes.
Yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will.
All things have been delivered to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father.
And no one knows the Father except the Son. And anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him, come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle, lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
That is our Lord's promise. For the nature of what we are to contemplate this week and what we will see is distinctive about Christian discipleship this morning.
As you know, the word disciple or discipleship refer to, to a process of learning.
And of course, we can have many different kinds of disciple, depending on who the master is, who teaches us.
Or indeed we can have different kinds of discipleship depending on what we're learning, what is the purpose of the course of instruction that we are engaged in.
And so we think of a disciple primarily as a learner.
Now, of course, in our society today, with the information explosion, we tend to think that disciples are those who learn new facts, new knowledge, new data.
And so we tend to think of the learner very much in terms of academia.
We think very much in terms of notional knowledge, the kind of knowledge that will give us, Mr. Fixit, being equipped to do the how to approach the reality.
Now, the new knowledge that Jesus is talking about here is the antithesis of this.
It's a knowledge that is formational for a transformation of life.
It's a knowledge which in fact, is the total reversal of the way in which academia so often operates.
And so we begin to find that things are turned upside down when we approach the kind of discipleship that Jesus is talking about.
The idea, the metaphor, then, of the disciple is a metaphor that has been incorporated in the history of the Church, so that we think of a Christian as a disciple.
But, of course, when we speak of him as a disciple of Christ, we realize that the information, the knowledge that is being given is, as I have said, different from the ways of the world.
And of course, the idea of being discipled, therefore, involves also discipline. So we have with the idea of discipling, the idea also of making disciples. In fact, this word, this phrase, was first used, as far as we know, about the middle of the 17th century. The Puritans spoke about making disciples.
And behind it, of course, is the realization that there's a resistance to the struggle for discipling, that it's not easy.
Jesus does invite us to come to him because he says it is easy, the kind of learning we're going to learn from him.
But nevertheless, there is always a propensity not to learn.
There's a struggle of the will that we don't go that way.
And so therefore we find implicit within this the need to be disciplined harshly, perhaps in order that we may change our attitudes or our mindset.
And so instead of things coming naturally to us, we find that discipleship involves things coming with difficulty to us, that it isn't effortless, it isn't natural, what we're about to learn.
So the root word in the Greek menthano, which is spelled M A N T H A N, o, means that a disciple is somebody who, in spite of resistance, in spite of obstacles, is directed to mind something towards a new attitude, new way of looking at things, perhaps, or a new discipline, as we might say.
So there's an element of compulsion and an element of supervision that are both required in such a skill.
In other words, the individual, in spite of his propensities, has to learn to adopt to the learning process that's involved.
Well, as you know, the Greeks saw this learning process, as we do today, very much as a cognitive process.
And so their view of it was purely philosophical.
They saw, for example, that what was required in the affairs of state or in the rise of the city state of Greece, was a guide.
And so the philosopher guide, whether he was Parmenides, who was perhaps the first, or whether he was later Plato or Socrates, he needed a guide.
And the guide that was needed in the Greek state was to guide one through the socioeconomic changes, through the cultural changes that were taking place within the society.
And so in the times of Socrates, it was recognized that there were great social and political upheavals that were affecting the city state and which required, therefore, new forms of education.
And here, of course, is where Socrates is challenging the old traditional education of the Sophists.
Their view was that all that one needed was a formal education that went by rote and related to the previous structures of society.
Socrates broke with that and he broke with it because he saw the need that one should have not just simply a notional memory of things that one learned by rote, but that we should be kindled to have a sense of moral responsibility for what we're learning. One of the great problems of education has constantly been that morality and education have gone their separate ways.
And so today we find the same problem. We find that so often people say, well, you know, I'm not an expert in morality, my job is business or my job is politics, or my job is environmental affairs, whatever it is. And the result is that morality is nobody's business.
And so we pass the buck the more we have the development of professionalism in our culture. Well, Socrates saw that there was something similar going on within his own society and that it's precisely when one's going through turbulence in socio economic changes of society that morality is most needed because the familiar landmarks are being swept away. And in the unfamiliarity of, of the changes which are taking place, there is a need therefore of a fresh way of looking at things.
And so the dialectical method was the method that Socrates brought into usage to generate insights that would fit together, would shock the hearer by the questioning that was being asked, because the questions were sometimes unfamiliar. And the consequence was he called attention to what was needed and therefore created awakening of a moral sense.
In fact, Plato argued his pupil, he argued that there should be compulsory education of this kind for all the citizens of Athens between the ages of 10 and 18, and that this should be imposed upon the whole of the society.
Now, when we look to see what was the epistemology, that is to say, what was the way of knowing that Socrates was seeking to bring into being, we find that the heart of it all is that the assumption that Socrates and his pupil Plato made was that knowledge is based upon memory.
We need to reawaken the learning process at a metaphysical level.
And the assumption that lies behind this awakening of memory is that the truth is potentially within each one of us.
Each one of us, if we only thought hard enough, would recollect and therefore reflect and therefore remember that which potentially we always have in our brains.
Of course that's what we should do, that's the way we should go. So let memory be awakened.
And so the followers of Plato further intellectualized and rationalized this basic assumption.
Now, Kierkegaard in the 19th century, in a brilliant book called the Philosophical Fragments under the nom de plume of John Climachus, and of course John Climachus refers to Assyrian desert father, who is in the 6th century, and who wrote a marvelous book on the life of devotion of the Christian.
He uses this nom de plume to write his critique of the Socratic method of discipling.
And he asks the question, what is truth?
Does Socrates really guide us if we're going to be discipled to understand the nature of the truth?
Socrates, says Kierkegaard, reminds one of a midwife that really, if one is being aroused to memory and by memory recovering the truth, then it's like a midwife, the role of a midwife, delivering the baby.
The baby is potentially within one's womb, and. And all that the midwife needs to do is to deliver the child.
Socrates, in his process of learning, is doing just that. He's delivering the child the potential of truth that we have within ourselves.
But Socrates, says Kierkegaard, is only in a sense, an accidental teacher.
That is to say that the teacher, the midwife, doesn't matter. It's the baby that's all important.
And any midwife will do for that, so long as she learns to deliver.
And so Kierkegaard, of course, with a great deal of derision, says that it's this that is so falsifying of the reality of the truth.
He says, for example, what can the teacher do if the learner is not reminded?
The teacher is merely an occasion, no more, in which the truth may be delivered.
But if it's not delivered, then who is he? What is that teacher?
He's inconsequential.
But, says Kierkegaard, the whole of this assumption is on a false foundation.
The presuppositions for this way of arguing and thinking are in fact, false.
For it's only God, says Kierkegaard, who can provide the conditions for which true learning takes place.
It is God who has created man with the conditions to learn.
And as Arthur Holmes has written in a book that I would recommend you to read sometime called All Truth is God's truth. His name is spelled H O L M E S. Very much in the Kierkegaardian fashion. Holmes reminds us that we don't have the truth potentially within us.
The truth has to be given to us from outside.
We may recognize what is true when we see it, but it's not something that we potentially have ourselves.
And therefore he sees that what man needs is not so much remembrance of a potential that we don't have, but that we need repentance to have a whole new way of looking at where the truth may come from.
And so when we therefore have this change, of mindset and see things not from the Socratic point of view, but from the biblical point of view, then the consequence is we discover that our teacher is more in the nature of a savior than he is of the nature of a midwife.
That there's a need of the saving of our motives and of our attitudes and of our condition, so that we're no longer in the bondage of our own self interest and our own self will. Because primarily we need to be saved from ourselves if we would so learn of Christ.
And so such knowledge is more in the nature of redemption than. Than it is of the nature of information.
When such a learner is changed by the process of so learning, then he becomes a new creature.
This is what is called conversion. But conversion, says Kierkegaard, is not a once for all experience.
It's an experience that we need to adjust to and learn day by day.
It's a continual, constant process throughout our life.
It's much more in the nature then of a decision that we consciously make, that our own mindset needs to be transformed. There is a moment, says Kierkegaard, when this becomes crucial.
For it's that moment that's like the burst of eternity that floods into our finite lives and transforms and redirects and provides that possibility of new creation.
That eternal moment, then, of the encounter with the teacher is an encounter that changes our life.
And we discover, therefore, that the truth is in him as imparted to us.
So a true disciple of Jesus. And this is why this Quaker Guardian introduction is, I think, very helpful to Matthew's Gospel.
This true disciple, therefore, is one who discovers that he owes all to his teacher.
This is quite a different role, quite a different status from that of Socrates.
Socrates happens by chance to be the midwife.
But Jesus is absolutely vital for this new way of being orientated.
And so we find that the biblical understanding of discipleship is that primarily it's a discipleship that is to be attuned to the will of God.
It is a discipleship that requires faith to relate to his teacher with an eternal concern within his historic existence.
And so the object of such discipleship is not the teaching as such, but it is to be close to and identified with the teacher.
So more important than the teaching is the one who teaches.
That is the crux of Christian discipleship.
The process is important to know about, but what is of ultimate concern is the one who teaches.
In the Socratic method. The learner himself possesses that truth. And so his preoccupation is with himself and with his potential.
But in the biblical framework of discipleship, it's in the teacher who provides that moment for transformation and for a reorientation of life.
Now, is Kierkegaard right? Well, if we look at the.
The biblical framework for discipleship, we find he is right that if we look at the Old Testament, we find that, well, first of all, the word disciple or discipleship is very rarely expressed. In fact, I think it's Only in Isaiah 8, 16 that there is an illusion that might suggest that there were schools of prophets which had their disciples and Isaiah had his disciples. That is the illusion that is presented to us.
But why is there so little emphasis upon discipleship or disciples in the Old Testament?
Well, again, I think it's because it's not so much the process of instruction that is the focus of the Old Testament, but the teacher.
There's a sense in which, therefore, one is more preoccupied by who God is than by the process by which we learn.
And so in the book of Deuteronomy, we find that the heart of biblical instruction is based on the fear of the Lord.
The motive of our lives, as we Read in Deuteronomy 14:23 and 17:19 and other references, is that above all, it's this attitude of docility, this attitude of reverence, this attitude of fearing God that is the source for biblical obedience.
And so to live well is to live in the light of God's will, is to live in the light of God's law. So the focus in the Old Testament on law is not legalism. The focus upon law is knowing God, knowing his will.
This, then, is a summary, we might say, of Old Testament devotion. And if you want to really look at what is perhaps the textbook of devotion in the Old Testament, then a perusal and hopefully an assimilation of the book of Deuteronomy is the heartbeat of Old Testament devotion.
So to learn the law of God, not in the sense of my memory, but in the sense of by actualization, by responsiveness of heart, and by transformation of character. To learn the law of God is the ultimate requirement of Old Testament devotion.
And this, as you see, is a process of learning which is for the whole man.
It's not just simply something that is for our minds, so that we have a cerebral and a rationalistic approach to it, so that we're intellectual about it. But it is a process of the reorientation of personality itself.
For God himself, in his will, is the one around whom all the process of learning revolves.
We learn of him.
And so it's in this context Therefore, that one can begin to understand why the mentality that we have today of needing to be disciples and being discipled.
The process of discipling is unknown in the Old Testament, for the focus is, as Kierkegaard has seen, is on the teacher.
We find, therefore, that also part of the Old Testament is the understanding that Israel's faith is one of revelation.
And in a sense, this focus upon revelation, therefore has very little scope for the idea of a master student relationship.
It's not a question as to whether you want or you don't want. The question is it's there, it's being given, it's being revealed. And this is very harsh to us with our enterprising, autonomous way of thinking about things. We have to discover, we have to grasp, we have to master reality. But in the Old Testament, it's not that perspective at all.
It's the recognition that the Word has been proclaimed. This is the word of the Lord the prophets speak about. Thus saith the Lord. And the focus comes to us with a stridency, with an insistence, with an overwhelming dominance, that we either accept it or we're crushed in the rejection of it.
And so we find that the nearest approach to this idea of being a disciple in the Old Testament is the idea of being a steward.
The oracles of God.
The precious word has been given, the truth has been revealed. And therefore, in the light of that, we have responsibility, we have stewardship.
So the true matter then of discipleship is one of passing it on.
That which we have responded to, we therefore pass on to others.
And in the process, well, in the intertestamental period, we find, of course, and this is one of the reasons why we in our tradition reject the apocryphal books between the two Testaments. And we reject those books because they're marked by Hellenism. That is to say that in the period from about 600 BC or 500 BC, right up until the time of Christ, Judaism was not peripheral to the Greek world.
Judaism was in fact right in the heart of the empire of Alexander the Great.
And in the process of that period, we find that if you ask what is the difference between Israelite faith and Judaism as we know it today, or as indeed as it was found at the time of our Lord, then the answer is that Israelite faith had become saturated with Hellenistic thinking, with the Greek way of looking at things.
And so it made a tremendous impact upon it. And if you want to study more about it, then read the books by Martin Hengel. H E N G E L who is a contemporary German scholar who's done a great deal of research on the way in which Judaism owes far more from Greek thinking than from Israelite thinking.
And in the process, it was then that this Greek way of formulating things and of teaching came into Judaistic thinking.
And, of course, the Jewish faith itself, the Israelite faith itself became abstracted.
One of the marks of Hellenistic thinking in religion today, as indeed in the time of Judaism in our Lord's day, is the abstraction of thought, so that instead of the living God, God becomes a notion.
Instead of a personal relationship with God, God becomes a theory.
And even the Torah, the law, instead of being the law of God, became, as it were, the law in its own right. It's almost as if the law became deified, as if it wasn't the word of God, but had its own existence.
And so it's this abstraction that is one of the marks of so much of our own way of thinking. And one of the dilemmas that we have today is that whether we are abstracting and focusing upon our orthodoxy of faith or whether we are scholastic in our approach to faith, always the tendency is to go the Greek way and to forget, therefore, the roots of true Israelite faith.
And so when we look to see how these Jewish rabbis conducted their teaching and their thoughts, we find that it was very much in the same way of disputation, the same way of the assumptions of learning as we find among the great teachers, among Socrates and those who followed him.
And so when they lionized Moses, they saw Moses more as Plato than they saw Moses as Moses.
They saw, therefore, their rabbinic teaching of education as really being much more from Athens and from Jerusalem.
And one begins now to understand why it is that when we come to the Gospels, there seems to be an implacable hostility between the rabbis and Jesus, because the rabbis are upholding much more the Greek way of interpretation than they are that of the Old Testament scriptures.
And so we find that what became typical was that there were three circles of knowing as far as the Jews were concerned.
There was, first of all, the original text. But, you see, it had now become the text instead of the will of God or the word of God.
A text to be scrutinized, a text to be studied.
Then out of that, there was the Mishnah, which was the interpretation of the text, M I S N E H and then there was the Talmud, which was the interpretation of the interpretation. So you have really three levels of abstraction.
The abstraction of the Word from the communicator.
Then there's the interpretation of that communication, then there's the traditions of interpretation. So we have the history of exegesis associated with that as well.
And in the course of all this system, we find, therefore, that the living reality, the dynamic quality of truth that enhances life or redirects life, is lost.
And instead of which, we find the whole thing becoming so stuffy, becoming so traditional, becoming lifeless.
And so the apprenticeship of the disciple is now an apprenticeship of really mental traditions.
Now, when we read this morning from Matthew 11:29, we find that Jesus is introducing us to a new way of learning.
He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
And what is he doing here?
Well, first of all, he's doing what Kierkegaard reminds us is biblical.
He sets his own person as the source of knowledge.
Learn from me, don't learn from tradition, don't learn from observation.
It's just what Paul was later to say to the Corinthians. I have not seen on the basis of observation, nor ear heard on the basis of tradition, nor hath it entered into the heart of man in terms of the intuitive understanding that the Greeks thought was a source of truth.
But it's as the Spirit gives. And this, of course, is what Job wrestles with with his philosopher friends, because these three friends are precisely following that tendency, as Eliphaz bases so much of his arguments upon observation, Zophar does upon tradition, as Elihu does, I beg your pardon, Bildad does on tradition, and as Zophar does, on intuition.
But, says Jesus, learn from me.
But remember that no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
So Jesus is really saying, he's claiming to be the wisdom, the Hokma that is personified in Proverbs chapter 8.
Here is the personification of wisdom, not as an abstract idea, but as a living person.
And it's that living person who is wisdom, who invites us to enter into this mystery concerning himself.
Secondly, Jesus, in this claim and in this invitation, promises to emancipate all who are still under the yoke of rabbinical tradition, with its teaching of 613 different commands, their endless traditions, and all the interpretations that go with them. And he says, I will put upon you a new yoke.
Learn of me, and you will have rest unto your souls. In place of this abstract system, this legalistic system, this traditional system, this Greek way of looking at things, he says, if you come to me, I will deliver you that yoke.
Now, of course, we see something of the Living quality of how his yoke is light in comparison to the rabbinical yoke, because it's the light yoke of a personal loyalty.
It's the light yoke of seeking to do God's will.
It's the light yoke of. Of having a reorientation of heart and character so that we are able to enjoy the fullness of life that we find in the Beatitudes. And so in the Sermon on the Mount, we find there that light yoke the blessedness of those who, in terms of those eight Beatitudes, are beginning to enter richly into a new way of life.
Then there's a third thing which Jesus is also commanding to us or inviting us to enjoy in this passage, and that is to learn of me.
And in so doing, he points out that not only is the truth and the teacher, but also we find that he is both teacher and content.
He embodies what he communicates.
One of the difficulties about any teacher is that however angelic or seraphic or eloquent he may be, he does not necessarily embody that which he's communicating.
But here is one who himself is the Sermon of the Mount. So that if we look to see where is the possibility of the beatific life, it's in Jesus.
So that the portrait of the eight Beatitudes is the portrait of Jesus himself.
This is his character.
This is the One who so gives.
And so it's by association with him, it's by walking with him, it's by responding to him, it's by trusting in him.
It's by living in the reality of his life within us that this lesson is learned. So it's not a lesson on the blackboard. It's not a text of a book.
It's not some concept that our minds can wrestle with, but our wills have no inclination toward.
It's in accepting him, we accept the truth.
As he says that if the truth shall make you free, you're free indeed. But the truth is the acceptance of the one who is truth, Jesus himself.
So Jesus is saying, I'm no hard taskmaster. I'm no casuistic hair splitter. I'm no scholastic, as these schools were.
But here is the one who embodies it all.
And so you can understand now that really, as Matthew points out, to be a disciple is to follow Jesus.
To be a disciple is. Is to walk with Jesus. To be a disciple is to love Jesus. To be a disciple is to be like Jesus.
To be a disciple is to have, verily, the very life of Jesus within Us.
This, then is what the Gospels are pointing to when they point to the truth that is in Jesus.
If one therefore contrasts, and you can see how implacable is the clash between the Rabbinic schools of discipleship and Jesus understanding of discipleship, we find the clash takes many forms. One of the forms is first that rabbinic pupils could choose their own teacher.
So whoever was in fashion, whoever was more eloquent, whoever somehow had that extra inch over his rivals, was the one that one followed.
But we find that in the Gospels that discipleship takes on a new note, and that is that to be a disciple of Jesus is to discover that you haven't taken the initiative. It's Jesus who takes the initiative from you.
It's he who calls his disciples.
And so they're busy doing their fishing by the Lake of Galilee, and he commands them to drop their nets and to leave their boats and to follow him.
And so again and again, as in Mark 10, verse 28, and Luke 9:11, and in other passages, we find that Jesus is the one who initiates.
And in the initiation we find that he may call us even to face martyrdom. This is a call for life that may involve death.
And so In Mark, chapter 8 and verse 34, we find that this initiative of Jesus is one that initiates everything of our life for the rest of our existence.
And we find that also Jesus, in taking such initiative, chooses the most unlikely.
He chooses those that seem to have none of the prerequisites that you might think for discipleship.
He chooses tax gatherers like Levi in Mark 2:13, who were shunned by the pious rabbis.
We find that his association is with prostitutes and with sinners.
Gratitude in our heart that he has chosen us.
I've been regaling recently in the choice that people may have of my friendship. And it's an amazing thing. Why should somebody want to be my friend?
Thank God there is such a possibility.
But so out of gratitude. We are disciples.
We don't choose to be disciples.
We don't in our own propensities of self interest and self will, we would never have gone this way.
But that he should hook us and grab us and determine that we should be called of Him.
It's gratitude. Therefore, that is the reason why we respond in discipleship.
Then secondly, we find that in contrast to the Rabbinic way of doing things, Jesus relationship to his disciples was unique because it was wholly personal.
The role that the rabbi had was simply in pointing to the complexities of the Torah.
But here we find that the whole basis of Discipleship is the person of Jesus Christ. So being a disciple, then, of Jesus is secondly, a commitment to his person.
It's not so much the way he teaches. It's not so much what we learn that is all important.
It's our commitment to his person.
As we've seen, the truth is in him.
And therefore, as we recognize the truth, we relate to him.
Truth and his person are inseparable, and therefore we cannot distinguish one from the other.
Our commitment to him is because the truth is there, and the truth is there because of the nature of who he is.
So it's the powerful presence of Jesus is really what enables the disciples to give up everything and to do whatever he commands them.
So this personal obedience is related to the quality of. Of who he is.
Likewise, when the two were walking to Emmaus with all their minds filled with distressing thoughts and with depression and doubt, it was the presence of Jesus that laid their doubts and gave them a whole new quality of attitude and of prospect.
And so, as Kierkegaard has pointed out, Jesus transcends Socrates, because while Socrates might attract pupils by his ideas, it's Jesus who offers himself.
And so out of this, therefore follows the obedience of the disciples to Jesus.
So we find that some of the people, pupils of the rabbis, might give up a great deal for the sake of learning the Torah.
But the disciples are not only giving up everything for the sake of their training, but they're committing their lives to their master in a way that no rabbinic pupil ever did.
Because it isn't just simply learning from him with the mind.
It's believing in him with the heart and obeying him in all one's ways.
And then, thirdly, we find that Jesus is pointing out that such a discipleship may involve suffering, that there is this obligation to be like Jesus.
And of course, when we sometimes wonder why we have affliction, why we go through so many pressures if we want to have this quality, as we shall see later, of being Christlike, it is therefore the obligation to be identified with the man of sorrows, to take up our cross and to follow him.
And so we find that, therefore, this quality of suffering with Jesus is all part of discipleship.
It's part of the process that is required of us that we may, in inscrutable ways, perhaps be brought closer to his person.
And then we find, fourthly, that the mark of Gospel disciples, we might call him one of the disciples that follows Jesus, is that we become aware that such discipleship is the service of God.
Everything about Jesus is service.
And so we find that those who follow in his steps will likewise serve, but serve not philanthropically, but serve the will of God.
And so again we find that this is a mark of the New Testament understanding of discipleship. And finally, the mark of a disciple, as we have in the Gospels, is one who is an eyewitness.
It is no longer on the basis of tradition and of hearsay, but on the basis of personal experience. This is something that one has lived through and one has experienced.
And you know, one of the most important ways in which we ourselves need to be convinced of the truth is by what Christ has done for us. I've often meditated on why it is that being a witness of the resurrection was so crucial for apostolic authority.
Why was there such an authority necessary?
Well, because it was based on the existential experience of what had happened to oneself, that one had lived in the darkness of his death and apparently of the collapse of all one's hopes in the Messiah.
And then as those two walked to Emmaus and many others afterwards witnessed his appearances, they became aware that their lives were transformed because he's still alive, because he now walks with them all the time, that he's no longer held by space and time, but he's always there.
A disciple is one who therefore witnesses to the omnipresence of Jesus Christ.
And the omnipresence of Jesus Christ is not just a feeling that he's there or indeed perhaps is with them the physical reality that he was there.
But the presence of Christ is always a transformation of heart because he's different from who we are.
Kierkegaard on one occasion says, you know, the difficulty about God is that whenever God is, whenever we're aware of God, he said, we're always aware of our guilt in the reality of his holiness. We're always aware of being guilty.
But the presence of Christ is always a transforming presence, redeeming that guilt, transforming that life.
And so we still are his disciples.
When we are witnesses above all, of the character changes that have taken place in our own lives.
One of the things that we'll be talking about later this week is the need first to recognize that if we are truly converted, that conversion involves a transformation of our personality traits.
It means that where we will mean we become generous, where we were shy, we become open, where we were self centered, we become generous.
That whatever our weakness of character is we are witnesses of resurrection. That out of our own death, out of the deadliness of our own negative traits of life, there has been transformation.
Well, these are some of the qualities then that we find in the New Testament. And just before we close, let me just summarize for you. What are some of the disciplines that will help us then to follow further along this road?
This is the orientation that we get in the Scriptures that is, of course, antithetical to the Greek way of thinking around us today.
What therefore do we need to cultivate? Well, I suggest that we need both inner and outer disciplines because we live both inwardly and socially.
And first of all, I suggest that just as Jesus obviously emphasizes that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, that our primary inward need of life is to have a devotional discipline of studying God's Word.
I believe today that the devotional use of the Scripture is the most difficult discipline for our generation.
Why?
Because we're so used to mastering everything with our minds that many of us with the best will of the world, and we destroy the authority of Scripture by wanting to master it ourselves.
And so as long as we're seeking to have mastery of the Bible, we will destroy the Bible.
And so one of the worst places in which the destruction of the Bible is taking place today is in our theological seminaries.
And many a devout young student has gone into even a well established and fine reputable seminary only to find that all this new knowledge, which is exciting, has at the same time destroyed the authority of the Scripture for oneself. I have a devout friend who is a marvelous teacher. He's well known among many of you, and he confessed to me the other day that he's almost entirely lost the devotional use of Scripture.
And yet he can so devotionally stir up the hearts of others to the use of Scripture. This is a paradox.
So, Number one, and perhaps this should be on the agenda then for our discipleship of the Lord.
If there's something wrong with the way in which we're handling the Bible, perhaps we need a friend to help us to recover a meditative devotional feeding upon the Word of God.
My own struggle has been precisely in this area.
And so what I have needed is a ramp whereby I started by recognizing the art of devotional reading of other books might then eventually help me to recover a devotional use of the Bible.
But don't let other classics of devotion have any precedence over the Word of God itself.
So it may be that by memorizing a verse that's meaningful to you and living out the reality of that verse, it may be by dwelling upon one aspect of the Bible for some time that will Help you. You know, Martin Luther, every time he prayed each morning, had a triptych. It was like having the three mirrors that ladies have on their dressing table.
One mirror was the Lord's Prayer, another mirror was the Ten Commandments. Another mirror was the Apostles Creed.
And every time that Martin Luther prayed, he dwelt on one or other of these realities.
And it may be that you may spend 5, 10 years of your life memorizing and reflecting on, digesting and inwardly living out the reality of just simply the Lord's Prayer or just simply the Ten Commandments.
Or it may be that some psalms come particularly to mind.
So don't scamper through the Scripture, but perhaps have a new edition of the Scripture. And that is the addition of experienced verses of lived out Scripture as the basis for that inner discipline. So that's number one, as the psalmist could say. And perhaps a good place to start with is Psalm 119.
So we see that we meditate upon the Word day and night.
It does become a lamp to our feet and light to our pathway.
Then secondly, we need the inner discipline of a meditative stance, meditative attitude.
And sometimes we talk about meditation and contemplation.
Well, the difference, I think, is simply this, that we meditate mentally, we contemplate spiritually.
What I mean by that is that meditation is something that involves our minds, that we think, well, what does that mean? And how can I apply that and how can I feed upon that, and how does that become part of my life?
Contemplation is more like lovers holding hands where you don't do anything, you don't see anything, and yet everything happens.
And we need, therefore, that contemplative outpouring of our hearts and affection to the Lord at the same time to meditate so that we're not caught up into some mystical trance, but that we are in fact very much in terra firma. We're still earthbound, but we do so with the full consciousness of our faculties.
And the balance between those two things becomes very important for us.
Thirdly, another discipline that I think is very important for us sometimes is fasting.
Now, why?
Well, because I think that it's by fasting that we're showing Brother Ass, as Francis used to speak about his body, that foolish part of our lives that so often takes control lustfully of our lives, that the spirit is in control, and it's the spirit of God that's in control over our bodily existence.
And fasting is one way in which we show to ourselves that we're taking God Seriously, with utmost seriousness. And so, in the light of that, we want to therefore demonstrate. If you want to read a book that helps on this. David Smith, Fasting A Neglected Discipline, is, I think, a useful book. Or Richard Foster, his Celebration of Discipline, that has a number of these topics, also deals with the same subject.
And then a fourth inner discipline, I think, is a keeping of a devotional journal.
Beginning to really, in spending time with God, that we reflect upon our meditations and that we write them down.
The Puritans used to argue like this for the need of a journal.
A ship's captain would be quite irresponsible if he didn't keep his ship's log.
And a doctor would be irresponsible if he didn't write down all his case studies of his patients. And a businessman would, of course, today be in the dark if he didn't keep accounts and have them verified by the accountant.
And so if in all the professions of life, we need to keep journals, isn't the journal of the soul the most important journal of all?
So if we are taking God seriously, and we've done so from time to time, perhaps with this token of symbol of the fast, can we not also, in a more daily fashion, think of the journal as an important reckoning in our discipleship with God?
Then finally, the outward disciplines.
One of the outward disciplines that I think is most important because we are relational beings before God. And God is a God of loyalty, of loving kindness, as the Old Testament refers to Him.
Therefore, loyalty is a very important outward discipline.
A loyalty that reverences and a loyalty that is binding.
And a loyalty that indicates that the very glue of our existence, the very fabric of the Christian life, is based upon loyalty to God and therefore loyalty to others.
One of the most important events in my life was in 1961. When God gave me the grace to be loyal to one student and to meet with him on a weekly basis for a year.
I've not done that since.
But it just needed that foundation for that particular year to emphasize the tremendous importance and the fickleness of our interests and of our affections and of our relationships in the world in which we live today. That if we're going to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we must be loyal disciples.
And then secondly, another outward discipline is the discipline of obedience.
It's an inward discipline, but it's also outward in its effects.
And the necessity of obedience is because God is our commander in chief. He is the moral governor of all things.
We're under his reign.
Consequently, the touchstone of the Christian life is obedience to Jesus Christ, to follow him, to obey his voice, to therefore listen to the promptings of His Word in our hearts.
Then thirdly, there is a need to for the discipline of simplicity that God would have us as his disciples to recognize the essentials for life.
Because the nature of simplicity is recognizing what is essential.
This one thing I do, or this one thing that we may lack, this one desire that the psalmist could have.
And so a lot of the confusion of our life today is the distraction of multiplicities, the way in which really, the more distracted we are by multiples, the more idolatrous we are.
Simplicity is the recognition of the one God, and in the reality of that one God.
We therefore recognize what is essential for the direction of our life.
Well, shall we just close in prayer as we think about these things?
Our Father we pray that this orientation, which is familiar to some of us and yet dramatic to many of us, very radical as we think about it, and therefore we realize we have no resources for it.
Who is sufficient for these things?
How wonderful it is, O God, that in Jesus Christ the teacher is the object lesson.
He's also the empowering, the knowing of the lesson.
And we thank you, O God, that what you commanded us this morning to do is what you yourself have pledged yourself and promised to do for us.
We thank you, therefore, that you never mock us by asking us to do the impossible, but you always provide the means whereby we may obey your voice.
Oh, how we joy in the reality that this lesson that we're learning is a light yoke in comparison to the hard ways in which we treated ourselves.
So Lord, help us to be close to you. We pray thee in the coming days.
We ask these things through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute. In the legacy of C.S. lewis, the institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more information, please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org. thank.
