How Jesus Made DisciplesSample

Day 2: Jesus ensured growth was connected to being gospel centered.

A healthy approach to discipleship is gospel centered. A gospel-centered approach is one that anchors any plan or motivation for spiritual growth to the joy people find in their identity in Christ. We must be careful not to unintentionally root discipleship in guilt or obligation, or to imply that we are saved by grace but grow as disciples by a lot of hard work and discipline.

Certainly, discipleship takes discipline. In 1 Corinthians 9:27, Paul says, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” But while it does take work to grow, we must not imply that this effort comes purely through our own power.

The truth is that we are not only saved by grace but we continue to grow as disciples through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit working within us. Galatians 5:22-23 does not list love, joy, peace, and so forth as the fruit of very hard work. These are instead the fruit of the Spirit, the characteristics that are produced in us as we let the Spirit of God work in our lives. The fantastic news is that not only is our salvation due to God’s grace, our growth as believers is also a result of God’s grace.

There are two approaches to motivating people to grow that are not gospel centered. The first is to motivate people to grow out of guilt or shame. We don’t see Jesus motivating out of guilt, but rather out of love. The perfect example is Jesus’ interaction with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). The first thing that Jesus does for her is to extend His forgiveness and grace. It is only after Jesus gives her His love and mercy that she is called to “go, and . . . sin no more” (verse 11). This is not a way to prove that she is worthy of God’s love; rather, it is to be a transformational response to God’s love for her. Having a gospel-centered approach to discipleship means that we seek to help people desire to grow as disciples of Jesus because of His love for us.

The motivation and power to grow as disciples are rooted in God’s love and grace toward us. In John 15, when Jesus talks about abiding in Him and the pruning that must take place to bear fruit, He prefaces these words by reminding the disciples that they are already made clean in Him (verse 3). Paul tells us that the good works that we are to do in the name of Jesus (Ephesians 2:10) come after we understand that it is by grace that we are saved by faith, and salvation is not based on works (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Another false motivation to grow as disciples is thinking we are somehow earning extra credit. It used to be more widely said that we do good works to earn more “jewels on our crowns in heaven.” It is as if salvation is based on grace but heaven involves competing for the best status.

In our practice of discipleship, it is tempting to feel either like we are earning greater favor with God when we succeed or like we lose some of God’s love when we fail. If we can understand that our position in Christ never changes despite our perceived success or failure, we will approach our discipleship from a much healthier perspective.