Believer or Disciple?

The Great Commission of our Lord is to go and make disciples, not believers.  The most important number in the Church today – the most critical statistic – is not the number of people who attend, it’s not even the number who believe in Jesus.  The Bible tells us that even demons believe!  The most vital gauge of the health, strength, and longevity of the Church is only this: the number of disciples being made...

Transcript

The Great Commission of our Lord is to go and make disciples, not believers.  The most important number in the Church today – the most critical statistic – is not the number of people who attend, it’s not even the number who believe in Jesus.  The Bible tells us that even demons believe!  The most vital gauge of the health, strength, and longevity of the Church is only this: the number of disciples being made.

Belief is merely the first step along the road of discipleship.  Belief is not the end goal.  “Becoming a Christian” or “getting saved” or “accepting Jesus” (or whatever phrase your faith tradition might use) – that’s just the starting point!  Jesus described this moment in a person’s life as being “born again”.  When a new baby is born into the world, its date of birth is not the purpose and pinnacle of its life.  Its new life is just at its very beginning!  It’s the same for becoming a believer in Jesus – that’s just the very beginning of your brand-new life in Christ.

God’s promise in Acts 2:38 is that when we place our faith in Jesus, He places His Spirit in us.  When we turn from sin and self-centered living, and we turn toward God and place our faith in Jesus to save our souls and help us make sense of our lives and the world, we are at that moment “converted” to a new way of living according to God’s Spirit and purposes.

For most Christians, this moment of conversion was a specific time in their lives when they truly believed that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son and is the Savior/Redeemer of all creation (themselves included, of course!), and they responded to that belief with a dedication of their lives to live and love like Jesus.

Now, for some Christians, this conversion experience does not happen in a single “moment”, but over the course of a season of life where they grow – over time – into a place of faith in Christ from a place of unbelief (I’ll share more about this in a future episode).

In either case, thought, conversion is temporary: it is either an moment or a season where a nonbeliever becomes a believer & follower of Jesus.

The process of discipleship begins at this moment (or season) of conversion – and it does not end there.  It continues on for the rest of your earthly life.  My conversion to belief in Jesus occurred at age 9.  But at age 89, I will still be learning and practicing how to live, speak, act, think, believe, and love like Jesus.  I’ll never reach a point in my life as a Christian where I can stop seeing the world, interpreting my circumstances, interacting with others, and anticipating eternity like Jesus.

Christian author Richard Foster wrote, “perhaps the greatest malady in the Church today is converts to Christ who are not disciples of Christ – which is a clear contradiction in terms.”  To convert to Christianity is to willfully decide to dedicate the balance of your life to living and loving like Jesus.  True conversion results in a life of dedicated discipleship.

How would you evaluate yourself along these lines?  Would you consider yourself to be a nonbeliever, a convert, a disciple, or somewhere in between?