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M AR C H 2 00 9
V OLU M E 3 ISSU E 1
How To Develop Learners, Not Legalists By Jerry Bridges (Adapted from Discipleship Journal) When I was first introduced to the idea of discipleship, I was given a list of seven spiritual disciplines I should practice every day—things such as a daily quiet time, Scripture memorization, Bible study, and prayer. As overwhelming as that list was, I did manage to survive and am extremely grateful for the spiritual disciplines I learned in the process. But I soon came to believe that my day-to-day relationship with God depended on how faithfully I performed those disciplines. No one actually told me God's blessing on my life was based on my performance. Still, I had developed a vague but very real impression that God's smile or frown depended on what I did. The frequent challenge to "be faithful" in my quiet time, while intrinsically good, probably helped create this impression. Soon, I was passing on this legalistic attitude to those I was seeking to disciple. In recent years I've noticed an even stronger emphasis on discipleship by legalism. Not only do some people convey that God's smile or frown is dependent on a person's performance, they communicate by attitude and action that their own approval is based on a person's faithful performance of certain disciplines or attendance at certain Christian activities. The message is: People who don't do these things faithfully are not as "spiritual" or "committed" as those who do. However, it is not rules that effectively disciple a person, it is God's grace. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-
controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (Titus 2:11–12). Note that Paul says it is the grace of God— not a regimen of rules and activities— that teaches or disciples us. If we want to disciple others in a biblical manner, we must disciple by the grace of God, not by legalism. But this poses a problem. Proclaim the Good News Too many people set grace and discipline (or discipleship) in opposition to one other. Just as there is a strong element of legalistic discipleship within evangelicalism, there is an equally strong element of teaching that any emphasis on spiritual disciplines is a negation of God's grace. How then can we apply Titus 2:11–12 in our discipling ministries? How can we disciple by grace? First, we must continue to teach the gospel to the people we are discipling. Our tendency is to proclaim this "good news" to people until they trust Christ; then we begin to teach them the demands of discipleship. But the gospel is the good news that God sent His Son into the world to die for all our sins—not just the sins we committed before we trusted Christ, but all our sins past, present, and future. What do I mean when I say we must continue to preach the gospel to Christians? A believer recently said to a friend of mine, "I'm a failure." In an effort to encourage, my friend told this person, "No, you're not a failure." While I appreciate my friend's compassion, I would suggest a different response to such a statement and the attitude of despair lying behind it. I would suggest that we say something like this: "That's right. You are a failure, and so am I. But that's why Jesus came.
He came to die for people who are failures." You see, this dear person needed to hear the gospel just as much that day as she did the day she trusted Christ as her Savior. Jesus came for spiritual failures not for the spiritually successful. He said, "‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous [the spiritually successful], but sinners [the spiritual failures] to repentance'" (Lk. 5:31– 32). We don't like to admit we're failures, but we really are! Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt. 22:37–38). By that standard, all of us are failures. None of us has even come close to loving God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. Merit Is Spelled G-R-A-C-E I believe the two greatest hindrances to discipleship are self-righteousness and guilt. Some people are not interested in pursuing true biblical discipleship because they are satisfied with their own performance. They have reduced the Christian life to measurable activities. Supposedly, they are the spiritually healthy Jesus spoke of who do not need the doctor (Lk. 5:31–32). Other believers are weighed down with guilt—often about the wrong things. They worry that they haven't succeeded in the spiritual disciplines as others seem to have done, or they've truly failed in a significant area of their lives and feel guilty about it. They haven't yet learned that Jesus died for those who have failed. The gospel strips us of self-