Jim Hardie was a very good friend of mine. He discipled several of my brothers while I was away in the Navy.
by Jim Hardie
Our Lord Jesus gave those of us who make up His church the most challenging responsibility and greatest adventure we humans can imagine he stated this responsibility to eleven men He had chosen to be His disciples and later appointed them to be Apostles. The charge He gave them was what we usually refer to as The Great Commission. These men were to be the instruments through whom His church would be established.
This Great Commission to these eleven men must have caused complete bewilderment at first. Here were men with little financial resources, no transportation, no printing presses, no radio, television, telephones, cell phones or anything we feel today are a must-have to carry out this task. What the Lord Jesus was asking, how could it possibly be accomplished? This charge to these men is recorded in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 28:18-20: “All authority in heaven and earth has been give to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Go and make disciples of all nations? How is this possible? Has this ever been done in any single generation since that time? What did Jesus mean by the word disciple? When a person believes in Jesus as their savior, are they automatically then His disciple? How do we go about making disciples of Jesus? Who is to be involved in carrying out this responsibility in our generation? Many questions come to mind as we think about the implications of this seemingly impossible task the Lord has given His church.
In this article, we can only explore some beginning thoughts about this amazing assignment, but perhaps opening up this subject will help stir up some thinking about this command the Lord has given His church.
Surely the Lord didn’t expect this assignment to be carried out completely by these eleven men in the first century. They were chosen to become disciples so they could help others become disciples who would in turn reach and train others in a multiplying process. It is only by multiplication that such a task could ever be accomplished. The world population grows on the basis of a multiplying process.
Perhaps because this assignment has never yet been accomplished, we have assumed the whole idea is impossible. Then why did Jesus begin His statement, “All authority and power has been given to Me”? We who make up the church today are to make disciples of people around the world and in every nation or people group.
What is a disciple? Our Lord gave us His definition of disciple. In fact, He gave at least four and perhaps five statements that describe a person who is a disciple. Can you think of any of those statements?
Jesus’ first qualification for being a disciple is recorded in John 8:31-32: “To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’” (NIV). The New King James Version says it this way: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are My disciple indeed.’”
Believing in Jesus is the first step. When the new birth occurs, a person is beginning a new life with Christ. He is a baby believer. For this baby to grow into a disciple of Jesus, he must feed on and digest God’s Word. It is learning to take His Word very seriously and apply it in our everyday life circumstances.
If a person experiences a healthy new birth, the baby believer will hunger for God’s Word (1 Peter 2:2-3). It is through God’s Word that we grow in our relationship with God and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. A growing believer will experience a developing faith knowledge, and understanding of their new life. Becoming a disciple of Jesus is to grow into spiritual maturity indeed.
Our Lord gave us a second definition of what it means to be His disciple. It is found in John 13:34-35: “A new command I give 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.” A command is not an option. If you are a disciple, this will be seen in your life.
Babies are known to be very self-centered creatures, and the responsibility of parents is to help them grow and develop into mature people who are responsible and have the capacity to love and care for others. The normal expectation is that our children will develop into adulthood, able to earn a living, get married, have children, and the multiplying process will continue.
If we qualify to be a disciple of Jesus, then we can be a model for the new baby Christians, and we can help them to grow and mature to also become disciples. The reproducing and the multiplying will continue. To be able to “make” disciples, a person must be one. We reproduce after our kind. Disciples are to become models, examples, for young growing believers. Does Christ want every believer to grow up spiritually and become a mature disciple? The strong evidence in the New Testament is clear that the answer is Yes.
Let’s continue to look at the Lord’s definitions for being His disciple, but, first, who has the responsibility of making disciples?
It started with Jesus giving the responsibility to ordinary fellows He had trained to be His disciples. Making disciples, however, is not something we can do in our own limited human capabilities. This is why Christ gives us God’s Holy Spirit to indwell us when we put our faith in Him and we are born again. We are dependent upon the power and working of God’s Holy Spirit in us, to help us become disciples, and then He helps us to help others to become His disciples.
The love Christ says we must have for each other (including our enemies) is a supernatural love. It is above and beyond our human capacity. This love is a fruit, something produced in us by God’s Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). We must learn to walk in a right relationship with Christ and yield to the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance if we are going to experience this kind of love.
Jesus gives a third definition for being His disciple in John 15:8. Jesus says, “This is to My Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples” (NIV). The New King James version puts it this way: “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.”
There may be differences of opinion as to what our Lord meant by bearing fruit. Some may say this must refer to the fruit of the Spirit being evident in the life of a believer. There is no doubt—the Holy Spirit must be involved in any fruit-bearing. However, my own view is that in this statement the Lord is speaking of reproduction. In the Old Testament, the term being fruitful always referred to reproduction or multiplication.
God told Adam and Eve, “Multiply and be fruitful and subdue the earth.” God told Noah and his sons after the flood to “multiply and be fruitful and replenish the earth, and scatter abroad over the face of the earth.” This sounds a bit like the Great Commission, doesn’t it?
Abraham was given the promise that his seed would multiply to be as numerous as the sands on the seashore and as the stars in the sky. Surely, when our Lord gave His Great Commission charge, He had in mind this same concept of multiplication taking place. There is no other way in which the job can be done, if we humans as Christian believers are to be involved in making disciples of the nations. Could it be that the reason we are far from accomplishing this command of our Lord, is that we are not multiplying disciples. In fact, we are not even expecting, in most cases, for believer to ever become disciples, at least not according to our Lord’s definitions.
If every believer born into God’s family is expected to grow up in their new life in Christ and is expected to be able to reproduce by making more disciples, why is it that so many believers are not able to do this? Is it because they are still so immature, so ignorant of God’s Word, that such a thing is not possible for them? Is the expectation only to be good church members, attending church and helping to pay the professional Christians to do the work of the ministry? See what Ephesians 4:11-16 says about this.
What is Jesus saying? To follow Him and to be His disciple, we must stop wanting to run our own lives and stop doing only what we want to do. Instead, we must seek and desire what God has planned for us to be and to do; that is, we must do God’s will, not our will. It is dying to our self-will and desires in order to do His will. Being a disciple means placing ourselves, so to speak, on the cross with Christ who came to do, not His will, but the will of His Father.
Often we think we know what is best for us better than God does. We assume we don’t need God to interfere (unless He is willing to go along with what we want and will give us what we are asking of Him). It means we must come to the place where we believer Jesus has far better plans and purposes for our lives than we do, and we want to follow what He has for us, that abundant life He has promised.
Too often, we Christians think being in the will of God is something of an option. We think that we can go our own way and run our own lives with little consequence if we choose not to do God’s will for us. Yet Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father” (Matt. 7:21). Now that is a sobering thought. Right?
Not wanting to do God’s will, not being interested in carrying out what He has for us to do and be, is unbelief. You are choosing to disobey God. You are choosing not to believe Him. All disobedience is the result of failing to believe God. When we truly believe God, it always leads to obedience. Think about this statement. Is it true or not? Do we really believe what Jesus said as recorded in John 10:10? “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.” Do we really believe this?
Christians today often concentrate mostly on wanting to help people accept Christ and be saved, as if that were the end goal. This is a lie of Satan. We are not supposed to stop there! The goal is to see believers become disciples who are able to reproduce and multiply, making more disciples.
The Apostle Paul said something very startling to the Galatian Christians. “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (Gal. 4:11). Why would Paul say such a thing? He started his letter saying that he was writing to the Christians in Galatia. They had come to know the Lord, hadn’t they? Yes, but they were getting all messed up. They were becoming legalistic. False teachers had come in and confused them because they were baby Christians and didn’t know any better. Paul’s goal was not to see people become baby believers. He says a few sentences further on, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). What does he mean by this?
Paul is saying that they are such baby Christians that it is like they are barely out of the womb, and he is having to start all over again with them until, by the power and working of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they are becoming more and more like Christ as He is changing them, transforming their lives, as they mature and become disciples.
Paul’s goal was to see people come to know Christ and grow into maturity as disciples, being in God’s will and bringing glory to God the Father and joy to the heart of Christ. If this was not happening, Paul considered his efforts to be a failure. Is this our goal as people who have come to know Christ?
One time I was working with a group of eager believers who showed great enthusiasm towards wanting to serve the Lord. I suggested at one of our meetings that during the coming week they ask the Lord to help them make one new friend, a non-Christian and that in that time there would be an opportunity, in a normal and natural way, to share with their friend how they came to know Christ and explain the gospel to them.
I could tell by the looks on their faces that this suggestion was not going over well. I was surprised by this, and it bothered me all week. At our meeting the following week, I passed out small slips of paper. I told the group I was going to ask them a question, and I wanted them to wrote only one word on the piece of paper: Yes or No.
I reminded them of the suggestion I had made the week before about making a new friend. “Let’s assume that you acted on my suggestion and made such a friend, and as your friendship develops, one day this friend says to you, ‘I know that you are a Christian. I think I would like to become a Christian, too. How do I become one?’
“If that happened to you, would you be able to explain to your friend how you became a Christian and, by using Scripture, explain clearly to him how he, too, could become one?”
They passed up the slips of paper with their answers. Out of the 48 Christians present, only 2 indicated that they could do this.
If the people at your church were asked this question, what answers do you think they would give? This isn’t asking whether they could help another person become a mature disciple of our Lord. It is simply about whether they can help a person understand how to take that first step of faith of believing in Christ. All disciples of Christ should be able to do this.
I hope that this article will stimulate discussion and critical thinking about whether or not we are really making disciples of our Lord Jesus in our churches, as He has commanded us to do, according to His definitions. If not, what are we going to do about it?
by Jim Hardie
Our Lord Jesus gave those of us who make up His church the most challenging responsibility and greatest adventure we humans can imagine he stated this responsibility to eleven men He had chosen to be His disciples and later appointed them to be Apostles. The charge He gave them was what we usually refer to as The Great Commission. These men were to be the instruments through whom His church would be established.
This Great Commission to these eleven men must have caused complete bewilderment at first. Here were men with little financial resources, no transportation, no printing presses, no radio, television, telephones, cell phones or anything we feel today are a must-have to carry out this task. What the Lord Jesus was asking, how could it possibly be accomplished? This charge to these men is recorded in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 28:18-20: “All authority in heaven and earth has been give to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Go and make disciples of all nations? How is this possible? Has this ever been done in any single generation since that time? What did Jesus mean by the word disciple? When a person believes in Jesus as their savior, are they automatically then His disciple? How do we go about making disciples of Jesus? Who is to be involved in carrying out this responsibility in our generation? Many questions come to mind as we think about the implications of this seemingly impossible task the Lord has given His church.
In this article, we can only explore some beginning thoughts about this amazing assignment, but perhaps opening up this subject will help stir up some thinking about this command the Lord has given His church.
Surely the Lord didn’t expect this assignment to be carried out completely by these eleven men in the first century. They were chosen to become disciples so they could help others become disciples who would in turn reach and train others in a multiplying process. It is only by multiplication that such a task could ever be accomplished. The world population grows on the basis of a multiplying process.
Perhaps because this assignment has never yet been accomplished, we have assumed the whole idea is impossible. Then why did Jesus begin His statement, “All authority and power has been given to Me”? We who make up the church today are to make disciples of people around the world and in every nation or people group.
What is a disciple? Our Lord gave us His definition of disciple. In fact, He gave at least four and perhaps five statements that describe a person who is a disciple. Can you think of any of those statements?
Jesus’ first qualification for being a disciple is recorded in John 8:31-32: “To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’” (NIV). The New King James Version says it this way: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are My disciple indeed.’”
Believing in Jesus is the first step. When the new birth occurs, a person is beginning a new life with Christ. He is a baby believer. For this baby to grow into a disciple of Jesus, he must feed on and digest God’s Word. It is learning to take His Word very seriously and apply it in our everyday life circumstances.
If a person experiences a healthy new birth, the baby believer will hunger for God’s Word (1 Peter 2:2-3). It is through God’s Word that we grow in our relationship with God and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. A growing believer will experience a developing faith knowledge, and understanding of their new life. Becoming a disciple of Jesus is to grow into spiritual maturity indeed.
Our Lord gave us a second definition of what it means to be His disciple. It is found in John 13:34-35: “A new command I give 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.” A command is not an option. If you are a disciple, this will be seen in your life.
Babies are known to be very self-centered creatures, and the responsibility of parents is to help them grow and develop into mature people who are responsible and have the capacity to love and care for others. The normal expectation is that our children will develop into adulthood, able to earn a living, get married, have children, and the multiplying process will continue.
If we qualify to be a disciple of Jesus, then we can be a model for the new baby Christians, and we can help them to grow and mature to also become disciples. The reproducing and the multiplying will continue. To be able to “make” disciples, a person must be one. We reproduce after our kind. Disciples are to become models, examples, for young growing believers. Does Christ want every believer to grow up spiritually and become a mature disciple? The strong evidence in the New Testament is clear that the answer is Yes.
Let’s continue to look at the Lord’s definitions for being His disciple, but, first, who has the responsibility of making disciples?
It started with Jesus giving the responsibility to ordinary fellows He had trained to be His disciples. Making disciples, however, is not something we can do in our own limited human capabilities. This is why Christ gives us God’s Holy Spirit to indwell us when we put our faith in Him and we are born again. We are dependent upon the power and working of God’s Holy Spirit in us, to help us become disciples, and then He helps us to help others to become His disciples.
The love Christ says we must have for each other (including our enemies) is a supernatural love. It is above and beyond our human capacity. This love is a fruit, something produced in us by God’s Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). We must learn to walk in a right relationship with Christ and yield to the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance if we are going to experience this kind of love.
Jesus gives a third definition for being His disciple in John 15:8. Jesus says, “This is to My Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples” (NIV). The New King James version puts it this way: “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.”
There may be differences of opinion as to what our Lord meant by bearing fruit. Some may say this must refer to the fruit of the Spirit being evident in the life of a believer. There is no doubt—the Holy Spirit must be involved in any fruit-bearing. However, my own view is that in this statement the Lord is speaking of reproduction. In the Old Testament, the term being fruitful always referred to reproduction or multiplication.
God told Adam and Eve, “Multiply and be fruitful and subdue the earth.” God told Noah and his sons after the flood to “multiply and be fruitful and replenish the earth, and scatter abroad over the face of the earth.” This sounds a bit like the Great Commission, doesn’t it?
Abraham was given the promise that his seed would multiply to be as numerous as the sands on the seashore and as the stars in the sky. Surely, when our Lord gave His Great Commission charge, He had in mind this same concept of multiplication taking place. There is no other way in which the job can be done, if we humans as Christian believers are to be involved in making disciples of the nations. Could it be that the reason we are far from accomplishing this command of our Lord, is that we are not multiplying disciples. In fact, we are not even expecting, in most cases, for believer to ever become disciples, at least not according to our Lord’s definitions.
If every believer born into God’s family is expected to grow up in their new life in Christ and is expected to be able to reproduce by making more disciples, why is it that so many believers are not able to do this? Is it because they are still so immature, so ignorant of God’s Word, that such a thing is not possible for them? Is the expectation only to be good church members, attending church and helping to pay the professional Christians to do the work of the ministry? See what Ephesians 4:11-16 says about this.
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.In Matthew’s account, as well as in Mark and Luke, Jesus makes a further definition for being His disciple. Consider Matthew 16:24-25: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”
What is Jesus saying? To follow Him and to be His disciple, we must stop wanting to run our own lives and stop doing only what we want to do. Instead, we must seek and desire what God has planned for us to be and to do; that is, we must do God’s will, not our will. It is dying to our self-will and desires in order to do His will. Being a disciple means placing ourselves, so to speak, on the cross with Christ who came to do, not His will, but the will of His Father.
Often we think we know what is best for us better than God does. We assume we don’t need God to interfere (unless He is willing to go along with what we want and will give us what we are asking of Him). It means we must come to the place where we believer Jesus has far better plans and purposes for our lives than we do, and we want to follow what He has for us, that abundant life He has promised.
Too often, we Christians think being in the will of God is something of an option. We think that we can go our own way and run our own lives with little consequence if we choose not to do God’s will for us. Yet Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father” (Matt. 7:21). Now that is a sobering thought. Right?
Not wanting to do God’s will, not being interested in carrying out what He has for us to do and be, is unbelief. You are choosing to disobey God. You are choosing not to believe Him. All disobedience is the result of failing to believe God. When we truly believe God, it always leads to obedience. Think about this statement. Is it true or not? Do we really believe what Jesus said as recorded in John 10:10? “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.” Do we really believe this?
Christians today often concentrate mostly on wanting to help people accept Christ and be saved, as if that were the end goal. This is a lie of Satan. We are not supposed to stop there! The goal is to see believers become disciples who are able to reproduce and multiply, making more disciples.
The Apostle Paul said something very startling to the Galatian Christians. “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (Gal. 4:11). Why would Paul say such a thing? He started his letter saying that he was writing to the Christians in Galatia. They had come to know the Lord, hadn’t they? Yes, but they were getting all messed up. They were becoming legalistic. False teachers had come in and confused them because they were baby Christians and didn’t know any better. Paul’s goal was not to see people become baby believers. He says a few sentences further on, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). What does he mean by this?
Paul is saying that they are such baby Christians that it is like they are barely out of the womb, and he is having to start all over again with them until, by the power and working of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they are becoming more and more like Christ as He is changing them, transforming their lives, as they mature and become disciples.
Paul’s goal was to see people come to know Christ and grow into maturity as disciples, being in God’s will and bringing glory to God the Father and joy to the heart of Christ. If this was not happening, Paul considered his efforts to be a failure. Is this our goal as people who have come to know Christ?
One time I was working with a group of eager believers who showed great enthusiasm towards wanting to serve the Lord. I suggested at one of our meetings that during the coming week they ask the Lord to help them make one new friend, a non-Christian and that in that time there would be an opportunity, in a normal and natural way, to share with their friend how they came to know Christ and explain the gospel to them.
I could tell by the looks on their faces that this suggestion was not going over well. I was surprised by this, and it bothered me all week. At our meeting the following week, I passed out small slips of paper. I told the group I was going to ask them a question, and I wanted them to wrote only one word on the piece of paper: Yes or No.
I reminded them of the suggestion I had made the week before about making a new friend. “Let’s assume that you acted on my suggestion and made such a friend, and as your friendship develops, one day this friend says to you, ‘I know that you are a Christian. I think I would like to become a Christian, too. How do I become one?’
“If that happened to you, would you be able to explain to your friend how you became a Christian and, by using Scripture, explain clearly to him how he, too, could become one?”
They passed up the slips of paper with their answers. Out of the 48 Christians present, only 2 indicated that they could do this.
If the people at your church were asked this question, what answers do you think they would give? This isn’t asking whether they could help another person become a mature disciple of our Lord. It is simply about whether they can help a person understand how to take that first step of faith of believing in Christ. All disciples of Christ should be able to do this.
I hope that this article will stimulate discussion and critical thinking about whether or not we are really making disciples of our Lord Jesus in our churches, as He has commanded us to do, according to His definitions. If not, what are we going to do about it?
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