Discipleship: The Mark of True Believers

Is every Christian a disciple? This one question perhaps more than any other gets right to the heart of the debate between Lordship salvation and free grace theology. While Lordship salvation holds that the life of discipleship is the inevitable result of placing one’s faith in Jesus (thus maintaining that all Christians are disciples), free grace theology insists that discipleship is not the inevitable consequence of belief (thus implying that it is possible to be a genuine Christian and not a follower of Jesus). Representing the FG perspective, Zane Hodges says, “It is an interpretive mistake of the first magnitude to confuse the terms of discipleship with the offer of eternal life…” (The Gospel Under Siege, 41). At first glance, Hodges’s statement may seem to have some merit. After all, according to FG theology, does not the Bible indicate that the call to faith is free of any obligations or demands and the call to discipleship is of the essence of commitment? A careful study of the New Testament, however, yields precisely the opposite conclusion.

As we have seen, true biblical faith is not simply a mental exercise, but is at its core a firm reliance upon and commitment to Jesus Christ as the Lord (read: Master) and Savior. As such, faith is more akin to discipleship than free grace teachers admit. Furthermore, since repentance is a requirement of being saved (and because it consists of a radical forsaking of sin) then the life of a Christian is very much the life of a disciple. Discipleship actually turns out to be the perfect metaphor of faith, as Dr. Thomas Schreiner and Ardel Caneday point out in their book The Race Set Before Us. Four lines of evidence confirm that discipleship defines what it means to believe: first, in the Gospels Jesus’s call to discipleship is a call to trust in Him for salvation. Secondly, the terms “believers” and “disciples” are used interchangeably in the book of Acts. Thirdly, the descriptions of a disciple in the Gospels are similar to the descriptions of a believer in the Epistles. Lastly, Jesus clearly teaches that discipleship is the evidence of a believer’s faith. Each one of these points will be expanded upon in the following paragraphs.

The Call to Follow Jesus: An Invitation to Believe in Him

In the Gospels Christ’s call to discipleship is also an invitation to salvation. Put another way, when Christ called people to follow Him in discipleship, He was inviting them to be saved. This becomes most apparent when it is considered that often times Jesus taught about discipleship when unbelievers were present. Luke 14:25 for instance says, “Now large crowds were going along with him; and he turned and said to them…” What follows is His detailing the requirements of discipleship. What stands out from this is twofold: first, it would be unthinkable to suppose that people could genuinely follow Jesus without also believing in Him. It makes more sense to see discipleship entailing belief. Secondly, since Jesus delivers such a message to a crowd where unbelievers were present, it is only logical to assume that He was calling such unbelievers to follow Him and thus also inviting them to believe in Him.

In the discipleship passages, Jesus also uses terms that elsewhere in Scripture are associated with salvation. For instance, in Luke 14:26 Jesus begins His teaching on discipleship by using the common words, “If anyone comes to Me….” (emphasis added). These same words are used in the Gospel of John to describe the act of believing. In John 6:35 Jesus says, “He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” Clearly in this verse to “come to Jesus” is to “believe” in Him. Thus when Jesus uses this same phrase at the outset of His teaching on discipleship, He intends for the two concepts to be associated: to come to Jesus in discipleship is also to come to Him in faith.

Furthermore, the results of discipleship are also the results of salvation: eternal life. In Matthew 16:25 Jesus said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” In case there is any confusion about what is meant by Jesus’s use of the term “life,” a parallel account in John says, “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (12:25; emphasis added).

“Disciples” and “Believers”: Synonymous Terms

Since the call to discipleship is simultaneously a call to trust Christ for salvation, it is no surprise that the terms “Christians,” and “disciples” are used interchangeably in the book of Acts. John MacArthur, in his classic book The Gospel According to Jesus, explains, “The word disciple is used consistently as a synonym for believer throughout the book of Acts (6:1, 2, 7; 11:26; 14:20, 22; 15:10). Any distinction between the words is purely artificial…” (221). Indeed, Luke records that “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). Apparently there was no distinction between a Christian and a disciple in the early church—every Christian was a disciple. On top of this, Millard J. Erickson, in his Christian Theology, says that the “...distinction between salvation and discipleship…is difficult to sustain, as for instance, in the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus commands his disciples to ‘go and make disciples’” (950). Since the Bible does not make any distinction between the terms “believer” and “disciple,” we should not either.

The descriptions of disciples in the Gospels are similar to the descriptions of believers in the rest of the New Testament

What does a believer in Jesus Christ look like? The New Testament answers this question in various ways. In previous studies we have seen that the Bible speaks of believers as those who trust Christ (John 1:12-13), those who love Jesus (John 14:23), those who obey the Lord (John 3:36; Heb. 5:9), and those who repent of their sin (Rom. 2:4; 1 Thess. 1:9-10).

We get more insight into what a true believer looks like when we turn to the Gospel writer’s portrayals of disciples. Interestingly, the descriptions of disciples in the Gospels are similar to the descriptions of believers in the Epistles. For instance, Jesus says that disciples are those who “…deny themselves and take up their cross…” (Matt. 16:24; Lk. 9:23). These words sound remarkably similar to the Apostle Paul’s description of believers as those who “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). What is true of disciples in this case is true of Christians: both are characterized by self-denial. Dr. Darrell Bock, New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, agrees:

“The essence of saving trust in God is self-denial, a recognition that he must save because disciples cannot save themselves, that life must be given over into God’s care and protection. Disciples do not respond to their own personal wills, but to God’s…For Paul, when a person in faith asks God to save through Jesus, the petitioner recognizes that Jesus must save from sin and that he imparts life, because the petitioner’s life needs redeeming on God’s terms. Salvation does not come on one’s terms or on one’s own merits (Rom. 3-5). Jesus calls this self-denial. Paul’s words are no different than Jesus’, just less pictorial. Salvation is a gift that God bestows to the one who knows the need for it, who knows one cannot provide it for oneself” (Luke 1:1-9:50, 852).

In other words, the believer-disciple says along with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The reason why disciples and believers are described in similar terms is because in reality they are one and the same.

Discipleship: The Mark of a True Believer

Perhaps the clearest indication that every believer is a disciple of Christ comes from Jesus’s own words in John 10:26-27: “You do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” There are a couple of things to notice about this text. First, notice that Jesus clearly indicates that His “sheep” are those who “believe.” So there is no question here who He is talking about. Jesus is talking about believers. Secondly, Jesus tells us three characteristics of true believers: they “hear” Him, they are known by Jesus, and they follow Christ. The last of these characteristics—the fact that Christ’s sheep “follow” Him—is most pertinent to our discussion. Nathan Busentiz comments,

“The word used here for ‘follow’ is akoloutheo. Whenever it is used in a religious context in the New Testament, it refers to discipleship. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says this about the term:

The distinctive statistical evidence shows that the special [meaning religious] use of akolouthein is strictly limited to discipleship of Christ; apart from a single reference in Revelation it is found exclusively in the four Gospels. … The disciple leaves everything to go after Jesus (Mk. 10:28; cf. 1:18; Lk. 5:11). This implies, however, that akolouthein signifies self-commitment in a sense which breaks all other ties (Mt. 8:22; Lk. 9:61 f.). … The exclusiveness of the NT use arises from the fact that for primitive Christianity there is only one discipleship and therefore only one following, namely, the relationship to Jesus. The demand akolouthei moi in Mk. 2:14 and par. is a Messianic demand (–> sunakoloutheo). Because it signifies following the Messiah, this discipleship is essentially a religious gift. Akoulouthein means participation in the salvation offered in Jesus. (Gerhard Kittel, TDNT, vol. 1, pp. 213–14; Greek terms transliterated).

So Jesus’ Himself uses a term for discipleship to refer to the characteristics of His sheep (true believers).

Those who have true faith (and thus are part of His flock) will follow their shepherd in obedience (See the rest of his thoughts here).

In light of this, one wonders how free grace teachers can honestly conclude that it is possible for someone to be a believer in Jesus and yet not follow Him in discipleship. Jesus, in John 10:26-27, could not have made Himself any clearer: a true believer will always “follow” Him.

Conclusion

We have seen in this brief study that there are at least four reasons to maintain that every believer is a disciple: one, because Jesus’s call to follow Him was a call to believe in Him; two, because the terms “disciple” and “believer” are synonymous; thirdly, because the Bible describes believers and disciples in the same terms; and, lastly, because discipleship is the mark of true believers. For all of these reasons (plus the reasons given in previous posts) it seems best to reject both the free grace concept of discipleship and salvation.