Imitating Jesus

The example of how followers of Jesus should relate to one another is found in the Trinity. Jesus instructed his disciples that they were to love one another after the pattern of his relationship with the Heavenly Father (John 15:9-12). For eternity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have loved one another with a familial love and have brought delight to one another as witnessed at the baptism of Jesus:

“ When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)

The beauty of love among the Trinity overflows to a love for mankind. We are responders to this love that empowers us to love others. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:16) “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)­ God’s love for and delight in your disciple is his basis for relating to others.

Making disciples of Jesus requires simultaneous efforts on your part to help your disciple learn how relate to God and how relate to people. As he deepens his understanding of God’s love for him he will deepen his relationship with people and as he deepens his relationship with people he will discover new measures of his relationship with God.

It is not possible for your disciple to separate his relationship with God from his relationship with people, as hard as he may try. To understand your disciple’s relationship with God you need to look no further than how he relates to people, including his parents and siblings. His relationships serve as a mirror for him and a window for you to understand how he relates to God. John, in no uncertain terms, irrevocably ties our relationship with God to our relationship with people when he writes:

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21)

It is a contradiction to give the appearance of having a relationship with God and yet have discord, jealousy, selfishness, dissension, hatred, and envy with people. Your disciple’s relationships will either expose a facade of religion or affirm a genuine relationship with God.

In closing,

• Making disciples in community gives your disciple the opportunity to learn how to love others and to receive love from others.
• Making disciples in community gives you the opportunity to observe how each disciple relates to the others.
• Your community’s relationship with one another is an indication of how the community as a whole is relating to God.

Man was created to participate in beauty and not just to be an observer. A lack of beauty rarely comes to mind when dealing with personal problems but when other approaches with your disciple have failed an absence of beauty should be considered.

There is beauty in belonging to others of which the Psalmist writes in Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” To paraphrase, being united to others is a beautiful thing.

This beauty flows from the eternal love between the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God designed man to enter into this beauty by being connected to Him and His other children. But sin in the Garden of Eden brought shame and a separation between God and mankind and man with one another, which resulted in ugliness.

A relational breach demoralizes and creates a void of beauty in a person which will compel him to desperately seek out perverted and distorted forms of beauty to compensate for this vacuum. This search will lead him to self-destructive attitudes and behaviors such as pornography, flirtation, sex, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, materialism, etc.

Your disciple will become confused and frustrated over the contradiction of this behavior. He desires to love, belong, and please the Lord and he is aware that his behavior is sinful and self-destructive but he continues it anyway and he does not understand why. He soon discovers that his self-determination and self-control cannot compensate for this void of beauty.

The nature of God moved Him to restore man’s relationship to Him and mankind’s relationship with one another through the death of Jesus.  So once where there was sin, shame, hatred, and discord there now can be the beauty of unity and peace. Although the story of relational restoration through the gospel is familiar to your disciple the implementation of this reality may prove difficult. A large part of the disciplining process is helping your disciple understand the beauty of how he is restored to God and how he can now be connected to others.

In closing,

• Only make disciples in the context of community. It is in community that they will experience the beauty of belonging and how to love others.
• As a community discuss how the group can help each member understand how he or she belongs to the Lord and to the others in the group.
• Communicate regularly to your disciple how he belongs to his heavenly Father and also to the others in the community. (e.g. Tell him what you have heard from others in what ways they appreciate him.)

Each Tuesday evening our group of disciples has dinner together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This past week during our table discussion there was a frank honesty about our childhoods and how each of us had felt like we had not belonged anywhere while growing up. We had lived a detached existence.

Making followers of Jesus must be done in a group. A large part of the disciple making process is accomplished through my disciple learning how to interrelate with his brothers and sisters in the family of God.  I have wondered how much of Jesus’ training of the twelve was achieved through the disciples learning how to live together for three years vs. the “classroom” instruction of Jesus. I have also wondered how much of the teaching of Jesus flowed out of the conflicts between the disciples not too dissimilar from a parent using sibling discord as a teaching moment for his children.

The essence of our God is the familial interconnectedness of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Their identity is found in the eternal love bond to the other persons of the Godhead. Because we are created in the image of God a disciple can only come to understand his identity and purpose by integrating into a family context with his heavenly Father and his spiritual siblings. In contrast, our culture pushes him toward individualism and independence, which can only lead to confusion and ultimately self-destruction.

Just as a my disciple cannot know himself or understand his giftedness apart from being in this family context, so I cannot know my disciple apart from seeing him interact with his spiritual siblings.  His relationship with God is not visible to me which means he can deceive me into thinking he has a good relationship with God when in reality he may not.  One way I can get a glimpse into my disciple’s relationship with the heavenly Father is through seeing how he relates to others and how others relate to him.

How I view my disciple has a powerful effect upon him. It is impossible to hide from another what I truly think about him. A channel of subliminal communication between my inner man and the hearts of others transmits my true thoughts and feelings no matter how hard I try and conceal them.

My disciple is a child of God who is the apple of His Father’s eye so my view of him and care for him should be such that it pleases his heavenly Father. Even how I speak of him to others is important because God is listening in on all my conversations. One way for me to express love to God is to love and honor His child.

Between the Borst and Quigley families there are six young children in our group in Chicago. This was their first week of school so at our family gathering we prayed for each child by name asking the Lord to bless them and protect them this school year. Now I am not sure in ten years that any of the children will remember that we prayed for them last night but I doubt their parents will ever forget that moment. Matt and Stacey Borst, Jeremy and Julia Quigley all love their children and one way to love them is to love their children. Recently Matt told me that nothing gets to his heart as a dad than for someone to love his kids.

I am sure that the heavenly Father’s heart swelled with delight when Paul told his disciples in Thessalonica: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19).

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you” (1 Thessalonians 3:9).

 

Parents and disciple makers get it wrong when they try and form a person’s character by outward conformity.  It is putting the second thing first, the cart before the horse.  To make a disciple of Jesus begins by engrafting him into a group (family) where he belongs and then out of this belonging will flow the character of Jesus. It is the first thing.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “…you can’t get second things by putting them first.  You get second things only by putting first things first” [1]. It is fruitless to try and get your disciple to live by kingdom values or to have a right attitude if he does not understand to whom he belongs.  You will become frustrated and you will frustrate your disciple if you do not begin by helping him unite to God and to a people, which I would argue are inseparable.

Man is created in the image of God, which means he was designed to belong.  When your disciple feels disconnected his behavior will become erratic and often self-destructive as he seeks to compensate for his detachment.   He will attach himself to some inappropriate group through inappropriate bonds to give the illusion that he belongs somewhere and to someone.

When Jesus called his men to follow him, he was also calling them to belong to a group of 12 other men. Jesus formed a community not only because it flowed out his nature but also because he knew that for his disciples to live as God intended they must belong to one another through bonds formed by love.

In closing:

• Rarely do I disciple someone apart from being with him in community.
• A large part of the discipling process is teaching your disciple how to love and receive love and how to serve others and to be served in community.
• Starting a discipling community is difficult as seen in Jesus’ disciples’ relationship with one another.  It is more difficult than starting a bible study, small group, or maybe even a church plant.  It takes months and years rather than weeks.  The process does become easier as your disciples learn how to love one another.

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[1] C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 280.

 

To love requires time.  To disciple is to love, therefore disciple making necessitates time.  To make a disciple is to say, “I will spend time with you.” When Jesus said, “follow me” to each of his disciples, he was saying to him, “I want to spend extended time with you.” He who is too busy cannot love and therefore cannot make disciples.

Jesus chose to spend three years with his small band because he was not only going to instruct them about love but he was also going to cultivate the group so that they could experience what it is like to be part of a group that loves one another.  (Notice that others came to Jesus asking to be his disciple but he kept the number at twelve.)

Here in Chicago we pace our growth based on how many people we can disciple and on how many people we can love.  We are surrounded by millions of people and tremendous need so we must be extra careful not to “swamp” our canoe.  At the moment that a group has more people to disciple than there are disciplers they become “swamped.”    The same is true with love, when there are more people to love than our group can love effectively; once again we have allowed the boat to be “swamped”.  Once the group is “swamped” with too many people I am convinced that there is no effective way to “unswamp” the canoe.

Around 80% of the children who are raised in an evangelical church will leave Christianity at college [1].  If the number were 50% we should be concerned, but at 80% alarmed. Yet churches seem to be more concern about their numerical growth than they do about losing their own kids.  Churches spend thousands of dollars on church growth conferences, consultants, and materials searching for the key to their expansion, while spending comparatively few resources to help parents with their marriages or on how to disciple their children.

In many cases if a married couple volunteers for ministry in their church, they will be required to have some type of training and be under the apprenticeship of an experienced leader for a period of time.  But when a couple announces to that same church that they are expecting their first child they will given little or no training on how to raise that child.

There is something inconsistent about strategizing on how to reach our community and the world when we are unable to reach our own children.

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[1] Glen Schultz, Kingdom Education; 2002 Southern Baptist Council on the Family.

 

Making disciples of Jesus is best done in the context of your home, whether for your natural children or your spiritual children.  Disciples are the children of God; therefore the home is an ideal environment for a disciple to experience, (1) the parental nature of God, (2) what it means to belong to a family, (3) how to love and serve others, and (4) how to attach to brothers and sisters.  Children can witness what it means to follow Jesus by observing the daily lives of their parents in various circumstances.

In the West we tend to compartmentalize our lives, often separating our ministry from our home.  Even when ministry is conducted in the home, it tends to be done as a “study” or “meeting” rather than being a family gathering.  (In the many small group training conferences that I have attended, never did “family” or “a meal” enter the discussion.  A house was only a convenient place to hold a meeting.)

Some Benefits of Hospitality:

• Hospitality provides you an opportunity to serve your disciple.  (Serving is another way to say “I love you”.)
• Hospitality opens up your life to your disciple.  (A person’s home tells a lot about a person.  I have been in very few homes of pastors or church leaders.)
• Hospitality provides your disciple an opportunity to observe how you relate to your wife and children.
• Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to serve others and to learn how to share.
• Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to love others and for others to love your children.   (A hug from a 4 year old will melt any heart.)
• Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to observe how you minister and interact with others.
• Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to belong.
• Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to serve.  (Help cook, help clean up, help with the children)
• Hospitality provides you an opportunity for you to observe how your disciple relates to others.

While looking for ministry methods, Christianity has the tendency to skip over the Gospels and dive into the book of Acts and Paul’s letters.  Yet it is in the Gospels that we have four accounts of God coming to earth to show us what God is like.  “When Church Was a Family” by Joseph Hellerman is one of the more thought provoking books I have read in a while.  He writes:

“The earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the one time in the history of humanity when heaven fully and finally came to earth.  In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have the opportunity to see the question What is God like? answered in the flesh-and-blood world in which we live.  During His incarnation Jesus not only procured our way to heaven.  He also shows us how to live on earth.  Now we can pattern our lives after Jesus.”[1]

The answer to What is God is like? as seen in the Gospels is love.  At the baptism of Jesus the heavenly Father breaks silence and declares his love for his Son.  “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17) Here we discover the family love bond between the heavenly Father and Jesus.  This familiar love becomes the basis for Jesus love for his disciples and the disciples love for one another.   “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” (John 15:9) “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

While reading the Gospels our Western eyes are drawn to ministry methods and we can easily miss the relational component of Jesus’ approach.   Imitating the methods of Jesus without the family love element will result in a sterile religion rather than a dynamic spiritual family.  It is essential for your disciples to understand that God relates to them as a Father and they are to relate to him as a son.  This understanding is the basis on which your disciples are to lovingly relate to one another as brothers.  The brotherly love your disciples have for one another is a window for the world to see into the heavenly Father’s love for Jesus and their perfect unity. “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23)

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[1] Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2009), p. 62.