by Jacob Ninan
When we hear the word 'disciples' we think immediately of the twelve disciples of Jesus who were called to be apostles. They had to first learn and then go out into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel. But these twelve were selected from all the other disciples who were following Jesus and listening to His teachings. All of us are expected to become disciples (learners), learn from Jesus, with the hope of becoming more and more like Him in His character (Lk.6:40). It was disciples who became known as Christians (Ac.11:26).
One thing fascinating about these twelve disciples was that when Jesus called them to follow Him, they were willing to leave everything and follow Him! Andrew who was with John the baptiser heard John say that Jesus was the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world, he immediately went and informed Simon (Peter) his brother and they both left their fishing work and started following Jesus. James and John were two other brothers who left their fishing business and followed Jesus. Matthew was a tax collector who left his work and followed Jesus immediately when Jesus called him. Philip found the Messiah and immediately went and told his friend Nathaniel who also started following Jesus.
What made these men give up everything else and choose to follow Jesus? All they knew at this time was that Jesus was the Messiah they had been expecting. They had also heard from John the baptiser that He was going to take away the sin of the world, but it is unlikely that they understood what that meant, at that time. But they were able to understand something of the value of Jesus and recognise that other things in life were not as valuable as being with Jesus.
The reason someone follows a master as a disciple is to learn from the master whatever skill the master was known for and ultimately to become as skilled as the master. The master will impart to his disciples his special knowledge in the hope that they will be able to carry on after him. What we see is that Jesus took these twelve disciples, spent much time with them, taught them through His example and teachings, and taking special time to explain to things to them that other people could not understand (Mk.4:34). The disciples themselves have to face certain rigours in their training if they are serious about learning from the master. We too have to follow certain discipline in our lives if we are to learn from Jesus.
When we follow Jesus as His disciples, that is the way we can experience His transformation of our personal lives. He trains us to become forgiving towards the others, faithful in handling money, dealing rightly with our sexuality, overcoming unbelief, anxiety and worry, giving up our complaining and fault finding ways, etc. Jesus will also set us free from habits that may have kept us in bondage, such as smoking, drinking, pornography, eating disorders, going out of control with gaming or social media, etc. These deliverances do not happen automatically when we come to Jesus, but only as we follow Him as disciples, learning from Him and doing what He tells us.
If we want to be true disciples of Jesus, we must be willing to give up our own desires, ambitions, dreams and plans and obey Him in everything (Lk.9:23,24). If we want to hold on to our plans we will not be able to receive the life Jesus is offering us. We will be able to make this choice only when are able to see that Jesus is more valuable than everything else and everyone else.
We are dealing here not only with someone who is the Messiah, but who is also the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, our Saviour who gave His life to redeem us from sin, and the Judge who is going to judge the whole world in the time to come. As the Creator we see that He is the One who designed the whole universe, including us and who sustains everything. At the macro level He is the One who takes care of the galaxies, the stars, the planets and all such bodies. At the micro level He takes care of the electrons swirling around the nucleus of the atoms. But more than all this, He cares for us for whom He gave His life. He knows our thoughts and feelings and is aware of even the hair that falls from our head. It is when we see Him in all His magnificence, power and spendour that we can understand how great and valuable He is in comparison to all that we were aiming for earlier.
There were many people who were following Jesus around because they had seen His miracles and wanted such blessings and experiences. But Jesus was not impressed by them and told them not to live for earthly things but for eternity (Jn.6:26,27). Even though they had seen and experienced His miracles, they had not seen who He really was and what He had come to do for them. Now also, many have come to Jesus for such reasons. But now that they have begun to see Jesus for who He really is, they need to make a conscious decision to become His disciples and follow Him faithfully. The deciding factor is what value they give Him compared to other things.
One of the conditions for becoming a disciple, which Jesus explained, is that we should value Him above even our close relatives and also ourselves (Lk.14:26). The word Jesus used here is to 'hate' father, mother, etc. Of course, Jesus had come here to teach us to love others including our enemies, and 'hate' was used here only to show the relative value we give to Him in comparison to our love for others (Matt.10:37). One important thing for a disciple of Jesus to learn is that it is going to be a life of obedience to Him, whatever He asks us. In order to do this, we have to lay our will on the cross, deny ourselves when we are drawn to our desires and follow Jesus (Lk.14:27). This self-denial is not to be an all-encompassing rule for our lives where some people choose to live as monks in monasteries or to live alone in a forest. What it means is that whenever our will crosses with the will of God, we deny our will in order to do His will. Another condition Jesus points out that nothing of this world must hold our heart in such a way that that becomes more important to us than Jesus (v.33). Jesus asked one rich, young ruler to sell off all that he had and then follow Him. This was because he valued his possessions to be too much to give up for Jesus' sake. Jesus does not ask everyone to sell off all that we have (and then become dependent on others), but to be detached enough from them so that we can follow Him without hindrance.
When we become true disciples of Jesus, others will be able to notice our increasing love for other disciples (Jn.13:35). We will also show much fruit in our lives, in terms of the fruit of the Spirit as well as in serving God in the different functions He allots to us (Jn.15:8).
We can all be disciples of Jesus. The most profitable decision we can make in our life is to become His disciple. If we look at Him and see His value, we can count everyone and everything else as less important, and recognise that He is worth following.