Definition of a Disciple of Christ

(Bible study by John Myers)

Jesus says in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20: “¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Jesus gives His followers three commands: First, “Go,” then “Baptize” and then “Teach.” We will never baptize a single soul unless we first “Go” out seeking the lost.

What’s the “therefore” there for? Matt. 28:18 says all authority has been given Jesus in heaven and in earth, which gives Him every right to command His followers to “Go.”

And as we go forth under the authority of Christ, He promises to go with us as we go.

And where are we to go? To “all the nations.” Jesus begins here the New Testament era, where the Messiah is no longer sent just to the Jews, but salvation is now open to all.

So as we are going, we are to baptize new believers in Christ, the first step of works that follows faith in Christ. Also note the baptism Jesus commands is in “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Not in three names, but “the name,” a very clear reference to the Trinity and the Unity of all three persons of the Godhead.

Then once new converts are baptized, we are to teach these new believers in Christ to follow all His commands, not just some of them but all of them.

In the beginning, God told Adam and then Noah the same thing, “Go forth and multiply and fill the earth.” Now Jesus is telling his disciples to “Go forth and replicate.”

The task of every disciple of Christ is to disciple other believers. If you could wave a wand and magically replicate yourself, would your replicate be a good disciple of Christ?

We can’t expect our replicates to be of any use unless the original – us – is useful.

But note Jesus said, “Go…and make disciples” not converts. There’s a big difference.

Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest, “Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.”

Chambers adds, “Our Lord never requires the same conditions for discipleship that he requires for salvation. We are condemned to salvation through the Cross of Christ. But discipleship has an option with it”—²⁶“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. ²⁷And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27).

The “if” of discipleship is the call of Christ to every believer to take up our cross daily and follow Him, but to do so we must first make a conscious choice. And anything or anyone that hinders us from following Christ, we should “hate,” even those we love.

If we choose not to follow Jesus, Chambers explains: “This does not mean that I will not be saved, but it does mean that I cannot be entirely His. Our Lord makes His disciple His very own possession, becoming responsible for him… Our Lord is not talking about our eternal position, but about our being of value to Him in this life here and now.”

“The surrender here is of my self to Jesus, with His rest at the heart of my being. He says, ‘If you want to be My disciple, you must give up your right to yourself to Me.’ And once this is done, the remainder of your life will exhibit nothing but the evidence of this surrender, and you never need to be concerned again with what the future may hold for you. Whatever your circumstances may be, Jesus is totally sufficient.”

“Do I have a personal history with Jesus Christ? The one true sign of discipleship is intimate oneness with Him — a knowledge of Jesus that nothing can shake.”

“Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people.” Jesus says in John 13:34–35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“Never disregard a conviction that the Holy Spirit brings to you. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to bring it to your mind, it is the very thing He is detecting in you. You were looking for some big thing to give up, while God is telling you of some tiny thing that must go. But behind that tiny thing lies the stronghold of obstinacy, and you say, ‘I will not give up my right to myself’—the very thing that God intends you to give up if you are to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”

“Our Lord’s making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us — He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come.”

Chambers says a disciple of Christ “must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.”

“The natural life is not spiritual, and it can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If we do not purposely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural to us. There is no high or easy road. Each of us has the means to accomplish it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of sacrificing, and thereby performing His will,” Chambers concludes.

The New Testament Greek word for disciple carries the idea of learner or pupil. Those who encountered Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry and became His committed followers and learners were known as disciples.

The term disciple is used in the Old Testament, (Isaiah 8:16, “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.”) but finds its full meaning in the New Testament.

We see the word used extensively in the four Gospels. It is used to refer to Moses’ disciples, (John 9:28), where the Pharisees claimed to be followers of Moses instead of Jesus. The term is also used to denote the disciples of the Pharisees (Matthew 22:16).

And followers of John the Baptist are referred to as disciples. John 1:35-37 says, “³⁵Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. ³⁶And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God! ³⁷The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.”

One of these two is identified as Andrew; the other is believed to be the Apostle John. After meeting Jesus, Andrew then told his brother, Simon Peter, that he had found the Messiah and brought Peter to meet Jesus, becoming the first disciple of Jesus to witness to another about Christ. And of course, the result of that first witness by the disciple Andrew led to Peter becoming a disciple and also one of the 12 Apostles.

The New Testament usage of disciple is primarily concerned with the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. The highest concept of disciple in the Gospels relates to the Twelve, but it also includes all followers of Christ. Luke 6:13 says “And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles.” This clearly illustrates that the 12 apostles were chosen by Jesus from among a larger group of disciples who followed Him.

This larger group of disciples included men and women from all walks of life. Even the Twelve included a variety: fishermen, a tax collector and a Zealot (a member of a sect which advocated the violent overthrow of Rome). Jesus was especially popular among the socially outcast and religiously despised, but people of wealth and of theological training also followed, such as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

In the Acts of the Apostles, disciple is the accepted description of those who had come into full faith and commitment to Jesus Christ.

The term disciple took on a deeper meaning during the first persecution of Christians by the Romans under the emperor Nero in A.D. 67, according to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. “Nero even refined upon cruelty, and contrived all manner of punishments for the Christians that the most infernal imagination could design. In particular, he had some sewed up in skins of wild beasts, and then worried by dogs until they expired; and others dressed in shirts made stiff with wax, fixed to axletrees, and set on fire in his gardens, in order to illuminate them. This persecution was general throughout the whole Roman Empire; but it rather increased than diminished the spirit of Christianity. In the course of it, St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred.”

In the second persecution by the Romans, under the emperor Domitian in A.D. 81, Nicodemus and Timothy are just two of the notable martyrs who are named in Foxe’s.

By the second century it was common for people to call themselves disciples in the context of martyrdom. The primary idea seems to be that death for Christ would prove one to be a true disciple of the Lord. In the third persecution under the Roman emperor Trajan in A.D. 108, Pliny, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia (modern-day Turkey), according to Foxe’s, “Wrote to Trajan, certifying him that there were many thousands of them daily put to death.”

Concerning examination in court of Christians, Pliny wrote Trajan: “I considered that I should dismiss any who denied that they were or ever had been Christians, once they had repeated after me a formula of invocation to the gods and had made offerings of wine and incense to your statue (which I had ordered to be brought into court for this purpose along with images of the gods), and furthermore had cursed the name of Christ. Real Christians (I understand) can never be induced to do these things.”

The Roman persecutions continued unabated until A.D. 313, when they were ended by the emperor Constantine, who became a Christian himself. Secular historians of these three centuries of persecutions estimate at least 100,000 Christians died for their faith.

But during this same period of increasingly violent persecutions, beginning with Jewish persecution of Christians – which only ended with the destruction of the Jewish nation by the Romans in A.D. 70 – through the Roman persecutions which lasted 300 years, the church grew from about 120 believers in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost to an estimated 6 million Christians all over the known world by A.D. 313. Instead of stopping the church, persecution provides the most effective possible witness of the faith, people who are willing to die for the Lord Jesus Christ. The word translated martyr in the Bible is actually the same word also translated as witness.

Many Romans were converted to Christianity by sitting in the Coliseum in Rome watching the early Christians die as they calmly prayed for their persecutors and killers. What a witness! Yet today, here in America where we’re free to serve Christ without fear of great persecution, most Christians never witness to anyone about Christ.

A recent survey of those who call themselves Christians found that only 2 percent said they had ever witnessed to anyone else about the good news of the Gospel of Christ. We cannot disciple others if first they are not first told the Gospel and brought to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only believers in Christ can truly follow after Jesus.

Reasons for not witnessing are many: Fears of rejection and ridicule; lack of proper knowledge about the Scriptures to lead someone to the Lord; even timidity or shyness.

But balance all our excuses against the awesome truth that we may be the only roadblock standing between heaven and hell for each precious soul we encounter in life. If we don’t love someone enough to tell them about Jesus, then we don’t love them at all.

How can we claim to love Jesus and to be His disciples if we don’t witness for Him?

Perhaps what the church needs today to make us better witnesses is more persecution.

None of us would pray for persecution, but history proves that God is able to use this evil brought on His people to bring about good – for the church and for the whole world.

Persecution of Christians continues today. According to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, more Christians have been martyred for their faith in the past 100 years than the total killed in all the previous centuries since the church began more than 2,000 years ago.

According to the ministry Voice of the Martyrs, Christians are currently being persecuted and killed for their faith in 52 countries, from Afghanistan to Yemen.

The closest nation to America where persecution continues today is Cuba, only 90 miles from our shore. Some Arab countries today literally crucify Christians on a cross.

And according to Revelation, the time of greatest persecution is yet to come. During the Tribulation, Christians will be persecuted in every nation and will die for the faith.

An estimated 200,000 Christians were martyred in the past year, VOM reports.

Disciples are those who have identified with Jesus Christ in baptism (a symbol of death and resurrection) and have been instructed in the community of faith.

The entire theme can be summarized by saying that a disciple is:
1. A person who is a believer in Jesus Christ (Acts 11:26, “The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”)

2. One who is a learner of Christ and thus His follower or pupil. (Jesus says in John 6:45, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.”) And Jesus calls His disciples in Matthew 4:19 to “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men.”

3. A believer who is committed to suffering and living a sacrificial lifestyle for the sake of Jesus Christ. (Jesus says in Luke 14:26, 27, 33: ²⁶“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. ²⁷And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple… ³³So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.)

4. One who fulfills the ultimate obligation of discipleship — to make disciples of others. This involves leading them to faith in Jesus Christ, baptizing them, and teaching them the truths of Christ. (Matthew 28:19-20: 1⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you...”)

To sum up, a disciple is a:
1. Believer: Repentance and faith for salvation.
2. Learner: Dedicated to a life of learning more about Christ.
3. Follower: Dedicated to sacrificial Christian living (What Would Jesus Do?).
4. Servant: Identification with and service to Christ and others.
5. Witness: Telling the good news, the Gospel of Christ, to others.

(Sources: Holman Bible Handbook, Holman Bible Dictionary, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and other research by John Myers)

Submit Bible questions by email to writeme@johnwmyers.com

(John Myers has been a Christian lay speaker, Sunday School adult teacher and newspaper Bible study columnist for more than 25 years.)