Just down the highway from where I work is located one of the largest car
manufacturing plants in the world. Toyota operates a factory here in Georgetown,
Kentucky that is truly a modern wonder. This factory annually produces over half a
million vehicles. It’s truly mind-boggling just how efficiently the factory runs, but it’s not
by mistake that this happens. Toyota has spent a large amount of time, effort, and
money to make sure all the factory machines and processes run together in perfect
unity. It doesn’t just take machines to create cars, though. Toyota employs over 9,000
full-time workers who also must cooperate in perfect unison to safely create those
500,000 cars a year. In my time working here in Georgetown, I have had the pleasure of
meeting people from all up and down the corporate ladder at Toyota, and one thing
always surprises me. They all seem to be speaking the same language. If you are able
to listen to a group of employees talk, you’ll notice that they say many words that you
won’t understand. It’s as if they have a language all of their own, and yet they all
understand each other perfectly.
This shared terminology is what helps breed unity at Toyota and assists their
workforce in all staying on mission together. The same can be true about all Christians,
too. Church clergy and even laity are all guilty of using the same words and simply
assuming that every other believer just knows exactly what they mean. The issue is that
the church can be more diverse than we realize and this assumption that our
terminology is universally adopted by others can lead to misunderstanding and
frustration in the church. This means we cannot take for granted that what I understand
to be a disciple is the same as what you understand a disciple is. It’s necessary that we
actually take some time to define what a disciple is so you can better understand what I
mean when I use the word.
In its simplest form, a disciple is any believer who is a Christian. “It’s someone who
converts from his or her previous manner of living—the repentance of sin and faith in
Christ—and that person then begins a lifelong, loving relationship with the living Christ,
evidenced by a pursuit of becoming like Christ through obedience to His teachings.”
(Cardoza 2016) It’s difficult to argue with this definition, but it’s not as simple as it first
appears. Many churches and church leaders would argue that there is a difference
between simply being a convert, that is someone who has placed their faith in Jesus
and has been “saved,” and someone who is a disciple. The difference is also presented
by Cardoza later in his lecture. This difference is that the disciple is in an active
relationship with Jesus and they are actively pursuing Him. The disciple stands out from
the convert in their actual effort and results in becoming more like Christ. (Cardoza
2016)
In the New Testament, the Greek word used for disciple would be understood as a
learner or student. (Kvalbein 1988) When the people of the New Testament time heard
about Jesus’ disciples, this is the impression they would immediately have. The twelve
would have been seen and seen themselves as Jesus’ students. This relationship was a
normalized social relationship in the time of the New Testament. Many teachers and
masters had disciples who followed them. We shouldn’t confuse this teacher-pupil
relationship for the sort of modern relationships that we see between, for example, a
high school teacher and their pupil. While it’s not unheard of for a student to be friendly
with their biology teacher, it would be fairly inappropriate for that same biology teacher
to invite that student to their home for dinner. This is not necessarily the case for
disciples and their teachers in the New Testament. In fact, the relationship between the
disciple and their teacher would be one of the main driving forces for the development
of the disciple. (Byrley 2014)
A disciple is defined only by their relationship to Jesus. More specifically, a disciple is
not simply someone who has a relationship with Jesus or just knows who He is. You
wouldn’t consider someone who just knows who Taylor Swift is to be her student, right?
In the same way, the bar for someone to be considered a student of Jesus is also much
higher than simply knowledge. A disciple is better understood as someone who has an
active relationship with Jesus where they are involved in growing their relationship with
Him on a regular basis. This is what is meant when the term “disciple” is used, and it is
what those who lived during the time of Jesus would have understood a disciple to be.
There is one important difference that must be addressed between the New
Testament understanding of a disciple and Jesus’ understanding of the term. In the time
of the New Testament, a disciple eventually finished their instruction and became a
teacher themselves. (Byrley 2014) This is not so with Jesus and His disciples. While
there are certainly disciples in our churches who teach, preach, and lead others to a
deeper relationship with Jesus, they never attain a level of discipleship where they are
ready to retire the “disciple” label for the label of “teacher.” This is made clear in Mt
23:8-10 when Jesus instructs that His followers should never be called teacher or
master because they only have one teacher and master, Jesus. (Kvalbein 1988) This
provides the final piece to the image of what a disciple looks like.
Let’s put it all together into one holistic definition. Scripture uses the term disciple to
include everyone who has placed their faith in Christ, so being a disciple requires you to
actually be a believer. Jesus and those who lived with Him would have understood that
a disciple is someone who is learning from and in a growing relationship with a teacher,
so it also requires the believer to not just simply know Jesus but to be in a growing
relationship with Him. Finally, it is a term that has no clear ending. A person is a disciple
for their entire life, and even perhaps into eternity. Therefore, when we use the term
disciple we mean a person who is a believer in Jesus Christ as He is presented in the
gospels. They not only know who He is but are in an active and growing relationship
with Him in order to emulate Him in their own lives and are pursuing to deepen this
relationship. They also are a lifelong disciple, never believing they have attained enough
knowledge, wisdom, or familiarity with Jesus that their pursuit has come to a close. With
that said, the only question now is are you a disciple?