The Cost of Discipleship

The life of discipleship is not the hero-worship we would pay to a good master, but obedience to the Son of God.

The answer to the young man’s problem is—Jesus Christ. He had hoped to hear the word of the good master, but he now perceives that this word is the Man to whom he had addressed his question.

You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.

The actual call of Jesus and the response of single-minded obedience have an irrevocable significance. By means of them Jesus calls people into an actual situation where faith is possible.

The disciples are called blessed because they have obeyed the call of Jesus, and the people as a whole because they are heirs of the promise.

The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus.

The life of discipleship can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves—neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world.

The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated.

The justification of the sinner therefore consists in the sole righteousness of God, wherein the sinner is utterly and completely unrighteous, and has no righteousness whatever of his own, side by side with the righteousness of God.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience.

Discipleship means joy. In the modern world it seems so difficult to walk with absolute certainty in the narrow way of ecclesiastical decision and yet remain in the broad open spaces of the universal love of Christ.

To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Having laid hold on cheap grace, they were barred for ever from the knowledge of costly grace.

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe. Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? No one should be surprised at the dif ficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus.

If you dismiss the word of God’ s command, you will not receive his word of grace. How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?

The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.

Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer.

Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.

The followers of Jesus have been called to peace. When he called them they found their peace, for he is their peace. But now they are told that they must not only have peace but make it.

The fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the Crucified. With him it has lost all, and with him it has found all.

Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed in the Old Testament law and prophets. He has in fact nothing to add to the commandments of God, except this, that he keeps them.

The righteousness it demands is already there, the righteousness of Jesus which submits to the cross because that is what the law demands.

Their righteousness is righteousness indeed, for from henceforth they do the will of God and fulfill the law themselves.

Only by knowing Christ as the Giver and Fulfiller of the law can we attain to a true knowledge of the law.

Christ has laid his hand on the law, and by claiming it for his own, he brings it to fruition.

For the follower of Jesus there can be no limit as to who is his neighbour , except as his Lord decides. He is forbidden to commit murder under pain of divine judgement.

Anger is always an attack on the brother ’s life, for it refuses to let him live and aims at his destruction.

Every idle word which we think so little of betrays our lack of respect for our neighbour , and shows that we place ourselves on a pinnacle above him and value our own lives higher than his.

There is therefore only one way of following Jesus and of worshipping God, and that is to be reconciled with our brethren.

The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love.

The love for our enemies takes us along the way of the cross and into fellowship with the Crucified.

The Christian cannot live at the world’s level, because he must always remember the περισσóv. What is the precise nature of the περισσóv? It is the life described in the beatitudes, the life of the followers of Jesus, the light which lights the world, the city set on the hill, the way of self-renunciation, of utter love, of absolute purity, truthfulness and meekness.

It is unreserved love for our enemies, for those who curse and hate us, that alone enables us to become sons of our heavenly Father.

The cross is the differential of the Christian religion, the power which enables the Christian to transcend the world and to win the victory.

The community of the followers of Jesus, the community of the better righteousness, is the visible community: it has left the world and society, and counted everything but loss for the cross of Christ.

The Christian is a light unto the world, not because of any quality of his own, but only because he follows Christ and looks solely to him.

True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers.

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. In the wilderness God gave Israel the manna every day, and they had no need to worry about food and drink.

The only way to win assurance is by leaving to-morrow entirely in the hands of God and by receiving from him all we need for to-day.

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.

Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing.

Anxiety is characteristic of the Gentiles, for they rely on their own strength and work instead of relying on God. They do not know that the Father knows that we have need of all these things, and so they try to do for themselves what they do not expect from God.

Jesus does not tell us what we ought to do but cannot; he tells us what God has given us and promises still to give. If Christ has been given us, if we are called to his discipleship we are given all things, literally all things.

The grace of Jesus is a demand upon the doer, and so his doing becomes the true humility, the right faith, and the right confession of the grace of the God who calls.

At this point Jesus reveals to his disciples the possibility of a demonic faith which produces wonderful works quite indistinguishable from the works of the true disciples, works of charity, miracles, perhaps even of personal sanctification, but which is nevertheless a denial of Jesus and of the life of discipleship.

The only proper response to this word which Jesus brings with him from eternity is simply to do it.

The work of God cannot be done without due authorization, otherwise it is devoid of promise.

Their proclamation is clear and concise. They simply announce that the kingdom of God has drawn nigh, and summon men to repentance and faith.

Christ speaks to us exactly as he spoke to them. It was not as though they first recognized him as the Christ and then received his command. They believed his word and command and recognized him as the Christ—in that order.

To know Christ means to know him by his word as the Lord and Saviour of my life. But that knowledge includes a recognition of his plain word directed to me.

The object of Jesus’ command is always the same—to evoke wholehearted faith, to make us love God and our neighbour with all our heart and soul.

The baptized Christian has ceased to belong to the world and is no longer its slave. He belongs to Christ alone, and his relationship with the world is mediated through him.

Christ is the Second Man (I Cor. 15.47) in whom the new humanity is created. He is the “New Man.

The disciples have communion and fellowship in the Body of Christ. They live and suffer in bodily communion with him.

Baptism incorporates us into the unity of the Body of Christ, and the Lord’s Supper fosters and sustains our fellowship and communion in that Body.

The Church is One Man. All who are baptized are “one in Christ” (Gal. 3.28; Rom. 12.5; I Cor. 10.17). The Church is “Man,” the “New Man”.

The Church of Christ is the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit. In this way the life of the Body of Christ becomes our own life.

The word of the apostles’ preaching is the same Word which bore the sins of the whole world in his Body.

The Church needs space not only for her liturgy and order, but also for the daily life of her members in the world.

For verily the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister , and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10.42–45).

God makes a covenant with his people and separates them from the world as his own possession, and vouches himself for this covenant.

The ultimate purpose of God, which is to establish a holy community, is at last fulfilled in the Body of Christ.

How can the sinner become righteous without impairing the righteousness of God? The answer is that God justifies himself by appearing as his own advocate in defense of his own righteousness.

The saints are only conscious of the strife and distress, the weakness and sin in their lives; and the further they advance in holiness, the more they feel they are fighting a losing battle and dying in the flesh.

Sanctification means driving out the world from the Church as well as separating the Church from the world. But the purpose of such discipline is not to establish a community of the perfect, but a community consisting of men who really live under the forgiving mercy of God.

All we can do is to believe in God’s Word, rely on his promise, and walk in the good works which he has prepared for us.

The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

God alone knows our good works, all we know is his good work.

The believer will be justified, the justified will be sanctified and the sanctified will be saved in the day of judgement.

The image of God has entered our midst, in the form of our fallen life, in the likeness of sinful flesh.

The only way we can be righteous in the sight of God is by recognizing that he only is righteous, and we ourselves sinners in the totality of our being.

The church must hold the state accountable and oppose evil.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession.

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

What makes the Christian different from other men is the 'peculiar,' the περισσóv, the 'extraordinary,' the 'unusual,' that which is not 'a matter of course.

Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life. It is the antithesis of self-display.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

Faith without action is meaningless.

True discipleship involves significant personal sacrifice.

Faith must be demonstrated through tangible efforts to help the oppressed.

I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

The call of Jesus Christ means either that we are the salt of the earth, or else we are annihilated; either we follow the call or we are crushed beneath it.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

The Body of Christ can only be a visible Body, or else it is not a Body at all.

The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a man as Jesus (in distinction from John the Baptist) was a man.

You have not got faith so long as and because you will not take the first step but become hardened in your unbelief under the guise of humble faith.

Unbelief thrives on cheap grace, for it is determined to persist in disobedience.

Only one thing was required in each case—to rely on Christ’s word, and cling to it as offering greater security than all the securities in the world.

The elimination of single-minded obedience on principle is but another instance of the perversion of the costly grace of the call of Jesus into the cheap grace of self-justification.

The one thing that matters is practical obedience. That will solve his difficulties and make him (and all of us) free to become the child of God.

God will not be separated from our brother: he wants no honour for himself so long as our brother is dishonoured.

No sacrifice is too great if it enables us to conquer a lust which cuts us off from Jesus.

The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.

The hall-mark of the Christian is the 'extraordinary.

The genuine work of love is always a hidden work.

Only through Jesus Christ can we find the Father in prayer.

Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian’s life.

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion.

Justification is the means whereby we appropriate the saving act of God in the past, and sanctification the promise of God’s activity in the present and future.

The church must not simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, it must drive a spoke into the wheel itself.