Saturday, January 28, 2006

This is what I'm talking about

As I've been spending time figuring out what discipleship looks like in today's culture, one common theme that I've kept coming across is the fact that discipleship is not an external list of behaviors and intellectual assent to a set of beliefs. To see the natural outcome of discipleship that focuses on these things, check out the website for one of our local churches. This is a great example of focusing on the wrong things.

So I'm starting to get a pretty good feel for what discipleship isn't. But I'm still sorting out how to be a follower of Jesus without accidentally slipping into some kind of legalism, anti-nomianism, or hypocrisy. It's so much easier just to make a list of rules to follow or to just throw out rules all together because Jesus loves me so much that he can't wait to forgive me again and again. Allowing Jesus to actually transform my heart and my character takes a lot more work, but I think that the end result will be far more rewarding.

2 Comments:

At 10:56 PM, Blogger Jeff said...

Oh man, that's a great link...I guess they don't serve donuts after the morning service :0

I think you're asking some very key questions. Most of our orientation around discipleship has at its root "salvation by faith" but "sanctification by works." That is, if I do enough of the correct behaviors, I must be a discipled person. The Jesus way is far, far messier than that, seems to me.

We get to live by faith, both for our salvation and our sanctification...this basic Alliance theology. Simpson and Broadman both talk about this at length. And yet how do I do it? How do I allow "Jesus to actually transform my heart"?

 
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