Tuesday, February 26, 2013

the disciple's career



I’m musing this morning on discipline – Christian discipline.  Not the discipline of training a child in the way he should go – though as a mother of young children, discipline of that sort requires much of my time and sincere effort.  Not the discipline that a congregation exercises toward a member who walks in unrepentant sin (see 1 Cor. 5).  I’m musing on what must be the careful, disciplined life of the follower of Jesus Christ.

                Are you a Christian?  Then you are a disciple.  “Discipline,” writes Elisabeth Elliot, “is the disciple’s career.”[1]  Christ gives those who would follow Him a three-point assignment:  1) Deny yourself.  2) Take up your cross.  3) Follow Me (Matt. 16:24).  We live in the 21st century in a “free” and wealthy society.  But we cannot “coast” and claim we are Christ’s.  One who follows Him leaves self behind and enlists in spiritual warfare.

You and I each have sins against which we must fight.  Jesus died to save us from those sins.  Do I mean that He saved us from the eternal punishment that was ours?  Yes, but more than that.  We are saved from our sins.  Are you prone to lust, whether lust of the sexual kind or lust for wealth or notoriety?  Stop looking, stop coveting: you’ve been saved from that.  Are you quick to gossip or to slander your neighbor?  Shut your mouth, and turn away from those who would whisper in your ear: you’ve been set free from that (Romans 6:18).  Are you prone to outbursts at 8:15 on Monday morning when no one seems to know where they put their other boot and the bell rings in 10 minutes?  The fruit of the Savior’s Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…  And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:22-24).

Consider 2 Peter 1:3-9:

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.  But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.  For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”

A disciplined life is a fruitful life.  Our Lord said, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8).  The fruits that a disciple brings forth are good works.  Our works don’t save us.  “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.   For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. 2:8-10a).  But God “expects us to work, just as the designer of a precision instrument…expects the thing to work.  It is no great credit to the instrument if it does.”[2]

Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?  Live a disciplined life, that you might bear much fruit. 


[1] Elliot, Elisabeth.  Discipline.  I plan to consider discipline of specific areas of our life in the next few columns.  Many of my ideas will be gleaned from this book.
[2] Ibid.

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