Discipleship

by P. Luck, Leicester | Category: General | Jan 1968

"Follow Me. And he forsook all, and rose up and followed Him" Luke 5.27,28).

So Luke records the call of Levi to discipleship. Fishermen

also left their nets, their boats, and their fathers-they forsook all, and followed Him. Written like this, the emphasis may appear to he on the negative side of leaving things. But why did these men do it? To follow Him!

Disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ were, and are, His followers, those who are anxious to learn of Him and follow Him and practise His teaching. Robert Young gives the meaning of a disciple as a "taught or trained one", " a pupil". We do not know of compulsory education in the Lord's time; those who were taught voluntarily learned from their tutor! One of the earliest truths we learn after salvation is that disciples should be baptized. Why were we baptized? To follow Him. That was the thought which filled our being. At that time the negative side did not loom too largely in our minds; we were following Him, and that was sufficient. Rightly so, we had counted the cost of leaving certain things behind, but we were glad to see them go in order to know the joy of following our Lord and Master, and of keeping His commandments by being added to a church of God, with a desire to continue "stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2.42).

When the early disciples were called, they perhaps knew little of Jesus of Nazareth, but they were willing to learn and keen to follow. This is the essence of discipleship. So soon as this characteristic fails, we are no longer disciples, however old or young we may be, however long or short we may have been on the disciple pathway, however little or much we may have learned along this journey. As the text on the front cover of Needed Truth proclaims:

"If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples;... " If ... then.

It is right to count the cost. Discipleship is a challenge, a high calling, something not to be undertaken lightly or laid down easily. We follow One who desires men and women of conviction, not wavering "like the surge of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed". This call is not to a soft life lived almost indistinguishably from the ways of the world, that were no challenge at all. To the scribe who said he would follow the Lord withersoever He went came the words, "The foxes have holes... but the Son of Man hath not

To another, the Lord said, "Follow Me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead", and to all, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me" (Luke 9.23). These things we know and gladly accept in principle when we start out as disciples,

Yet little do Thy saints at best

Endure, 0 Lord, for Thee;

Whose suffering soul bore all our sins

And sorrows on the tree.

Even so, picking up a cross every day makes us weary sometimes-when we lose sight of Him whom we are following. We are not promised better treatment than our Master received at the hands of those in this world. Did they accept Him willingly into their homes and social circle? Did they appreciate His appraisal of their business methods and motives? Did they understand His preaching and even His acts of kindness? Did they not think their own ways and thoughts better than His? Those who are truly His disciples must, to some degree, feel this attitude of unbelievers, feel a certain weight of separation. The Lord was often away on the mountain-top communing with His Father while the world and even His own disciples slept comfortably at home. However, as disciples, we willingly follow Him and the closer we follow the sweeter will be our communion with Him, and our separation will not become isolation. The disciple is sent into the world, and responds to the need of the world around; he yearns after men and women for their souls as our Lord had compassion on the multitude. They saw His loving compassion and responded to a degree. He was never isolated from them and their needs.

The number of the Lord's disciples in His day fluctuated considerably. Sometimes we read of the, multitude of His disciples, and yet at the crucifixion there were not many more than the eleven apostles and beloved womenfolk associated with the scene. Where had they all gone? They were not abiding in His word. He had told them truth which they found difficulty in accepting. "This is a hard saying"; they said, "who can hear it?" (John 6.60). Their willingness to learn and follow had met a stumblingblock, and had ceased, for "upon this many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him". Perhaps today, this is still one of our weak spots. We read the Word, hear ministry, or a word of kind exhortation is dropped in our ear, and our reaction is, "This is a hard saying". Is it hard because our own heart is becoming hard because we are not abiding in His word? It may be that the artificial stimuli, which the disciples of this world are currently offering in the form of drugs with all their sordid associations, repulse us, whereas the single thought, "This is a hard saying", crossing our mind, scarcely troubles us. Let us beware! Let us seek on bended knee to remain willing to learn of Him and practise what we learn. No force will keep us in discipleship if we are not pliable in God's hands. A student, willing to learn from his tutor, accepts new truths and principles as they are taught if he wishes to progress. If the attitude becomes one of lassitude, not wishing to learn, or of destructive criticism, it will not be long before the student is a failure. So with the disciple, but how much more disastrous when the Tutor is the Holy Spirit.

The Lord, as Son of Man, found joy in His disciples as they closely associated with Him. Consider the comfort it must have been to join the boatload of faithful disciples whilst all the people of the country of the Gerasenes round about were asking Him to depart from them. Think of the gratitude He would know as He saw heavenly truths being accepted by His disciples, as evinced by Peter's expression, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God". Among the saddest words the Lord spoke were those addressed to the twelve as He saw the rest going back and walking no more with Him: "Would ye also go away?" (John 6.67). Are these words coming down the ages to us in this day of declension? Peter has been criticized much, but here his true disciple character bursts out, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life".

Some ancient worthy periodically asked himself the question, "For what purpose am I here?" We in the house of God would do well to ask ourselves the same question.

P. Luck, Leicester | Jan 1968
General