Third Purpose of the Church: Discipleship
Philippians 2:5-13; John 15:4-8
by The Rev. Ajung Sojwal

We are now in the third week of our preaching series on the purpose of the Church. In the first week we looked at worship as the most important purpose of the church and what it means to truly worship God. Last week we talked about the second purpose of the church as being in and encouraging fellowship. Today, we will look at Discipleship as the third purpose of the Church.

In the early days of our marriage, when we were still a little insecure about each other as most newly weds are, my husband would half jokingly tell me, “don’t ever leave me, but if you do leave, I will just have to follow you!” For many of us, Christian discipleship is easier said than done, and is often deeply confusing and scary. The most commonly misunderstood aspect of discipleship is that it is seen as being synonymous with the confession of faith in Jesus. However, If we look at all the instances where Jesus calls his first disciples, the stories are stark in that they are devoid of long conversations or even an attempt on Jesus’ part to present himself as someone worthy of following. Jesus sees the two brothers, Simon and Andrew and merely tells them, “follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They immediately leave their nets and follow him. The same thing happens with James and John. Later Jesus meets Levi the tax collector and he tells him the same thing, “follow me” and Levi follows Jesus immediately. The response of the disciples is an act of immediate obedience to Jesus’ call. In fact, it is only after the disciples leave everything to follow Jesus that they slowly begin to see and understand Him as the Son of God, the promised Redeemer of the world. So confession of Jesus as Lord is not necessarily the same as being his disciples.

In the letter of James, he says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” The Gospels have stories about the evil spirits recognizing Jesus as Son of the Most High God. So you know what I mean when I say that a confession of faith in Jesus does not necessarily mean we are disciples. Knowing about Jesus, knowing about doctrines, knowing about God’s grace and forgiveness of sins or even believing that Jesus is truly the Son of God does not make us his disciples. Being a disciple, or to be a follower of Jesus is difficult because it calls for nothing less than a complete attachment to Jesus above and beyond everything else in life. This is the reason why Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” What he means is not that we should hate everybody else in order to be his disciples, but that there is immense cost in following him.

Christian discipleship requires a reshaping and remolding of our very persons into becoming more like Jesus. And if we look at Jesus’ life as the model, we know that He gave everything of Himself for us, even to the point of death so that we may have life. So now, when we look at Jesus’ description of his disciple as the one who hates even his family in order to be considered worthy, we know that he is not talking about hate, he is talking about a totally selfless love, love that brings life to others. So at the core of being Jesus’ disciple lies the embrace and practice of God’s own everlasting love. Since by nature we are selfish beings, discipleship involves a personal transformation initiated by Jesus himself to make us more like Him, who has shown us divine love.

Paul in his letter to the Philippians summarizes what it means to be like Christ and to love like Christ when he says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” What is not said here is the fact that Jesus loved and obeyed even to the point of death because that love was powered by hope. Jesus’ hope was for forgiveness, for healing, for reconciliation and finally the hope of transformation. He carried and embodied that hope not for himself but for us.

Jesus saw the fishermen who would become his first disciples and gave them a much larger and deeper meaning of what it means to fish, he gave them hope of not only filling their stomachs, but a hope to gather and bring in lost people, to feed the hearts and souls of people. He called tax collectors like Levi and gave them the hope of saving people for God instead of just money for the treasury. Jesus mingled and ate with the so called sinners of that day not because he wanted to spite the self-righteous lawyers, priests and elite of the society, but because he saw hope of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation with God where others did not. Jesus sought out, touched and healed the sick and the dying because he loved and hoped for such people to become witnesses of God’s glory instead of being rejected and shunned as bearers of God’s punishment. Jesus also took time to get away from the crowds and the activities of the city to spend time with God the Father because his deepest desire and joy was to listen and obey his Father, who is also our Father. To be Jesus’ disciples call for the same kind of passion, the same kind of love, the same kind of compassion, the same kind of humility, the same kind of courage, and the same kind of hope he had as he walked through our broken and sinful world. A tough call, but that call comes with authority and hope.

And however difficult it may sound to be Jesus’ disciple, the moment we decide to follow him, he will lead the way just like he did with his first disciples. There will be questions, doubts, even persecution but the reward of being called and molded to become the beloved children of God will far outweigh any hardships we happen to face on the road of discipleship. Discipleship has no meaning without a master and Paul is very clear in his encouragement, “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” And that is the good news for us today, that we need not feel that discipleship is a lonely venture. God will enable us for all good things. And in the community of the church, God has given us the blessing of being in the company of fellow followers. We become isolated and lonely only if we allow ourselves to be so, and at the same time, if we call ourselves to be Jesus’ disciples, we will find the lost and the lonely to embrace them as our brothers and sisters. In every community God has given different gifts to different people just so that we can help each other as we try to understand and live out the life of discipleship.

Jesus gives us the promise of his presence as the very source of our life when he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” In our obedience to follow Jesus we are not taking on the burden of becoming the tree, nor the vine to produce fruits. We are like Jesus says the branches. The vine is what produces and makes possible the roots, the vine is what draws out the nutrients from the soil, the vine is what holds the branches and fruits together, and the vine is what makes the branches and fruits possible. Jesus our vine wants us to grow and bear fruits.

In the Hollywood movie “Karate Kid,” Daniel the white kid goes to Mr. Miyagi to learn karate. Mr. Miyagi takes Daniel on as his student, but for the longest time Daniel does nothing that looked like karate to him. Mr. Miyagi makes him wash his car, carry water from one place to another, scrub the floor and everything else that never makes much sense to Daniel or to the viewers of the movie. But toward the end of the movie we begin to see that all those things that Mr. Miyagi made Daniel do were in fact training him to use the different parts of his body and his mind to become an expert in karate, but above all it is the discipline and commitment of Daniel to stick with his master that finally makes him the Karate kid. In our world, it does not make sense to love and give selflessly to others, it does not make sense to believe and hope in God as we deal with pain, disasters and brokenness, we want instant solutions, and we want quick fixes. It makes even less sense to count others better than ourselves and to look for the interest of others, but if we truly want to be a child in God’s family that is exactly what He is calling us to do, to trust Him in our decision to follow Him. In obeying God we must trust and believe that He is doing the working of transforming us. My dear brothers and sisters, let us let us love like God, and take courage to walk with Jesus when we hear him say, “follow me.”