The doctrine of discipleship is putting into words the reality of what Jesus taught and imparted in word and action to men and women while on earth, and now, as in heaven. But the doctrine must be more than a propositional statement and set of beliefs clearly understood and repeated. It must be fleshed out in life. What we say is one thing, what we do is another. It is the fruit of our behavior, the incarnation of our true beliefs, that matters.

A disciple of Jesus is not a walking doctrine or propositional statement, but a walking, speaking, living, breathing example of Jesus. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

At its simplest, a disciple is someone who follows Jesus, not only to learn from Him, but more accurately to learn Him (Ephesians 4:20). In other words, as disciples of Jesus, we are encountering and learning a living person.

Jesus Christ is the Word of God, “the tradition of God” handed down, come down, to us. He is the only begotten Son of God, the very movement, speech, power, breath of God. There is not something plus Jesus or minus Jesus. There is Jesus. He is the fulness and overflow of God. In Him all things are created and sustained. In Him is contained everything you need to know and understand about God, His kingdom, the world, your life, and your salvation.

For the early disciples, to follow someone as your teacher was not simply to learn from the right distance, getting close enough. It was to welcome Him into your very life, to be shaped by Him from the outside in and inside out. You were not welcoming your teacher as a lesson to be learned from, but as an example to be made into. The best teachers were the living representation or embodiment of all they taught and all you learned. This is what it means for us to be disciples of Jesus. We are in “the school of Jesus” (F.F. Bruce).

A disciple of Jesus is a Christian, and a Christian is someone who lives “in Christ” and in whom Christ lives. What, then, should a disciple be like? Like Jesus! But even this answer can be (mis)understood in two ways.

One way is in the form of “destination”: a disciple is someone who has passed through and arrived at a new level of maturity. For some they might understand this as reading the Bible 30 minutes a day and/or praying each morning for 30 minutes. Others may understand it as someone who has arrived at sharing their faith everyday with a different person. None of these nor many other “destinations” or “arrivals” are necessarily wrong. But there is a danger in thinking of discipleship as a series of steps you need to take, or tests you need to pass, or benchmarks you need to reach, or classes you need to finish.

Discipleship is more than a destination. It is a direction: the direction of Jesus. Disciples walk “a long obedience in the same direction,” to quote Eugene Peterson. Their hearts and feet are towards Christ, their eyes are fixed on Him, and if they keep following, staying in pursuit of Him, they will surely come to know Him and to be made like Him more and more, little by little. Along the way they will arrive at different places of maturity, but those places are not their ultimate destination.

Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” We might say this, “Every disciple is a follower. The problem is how to remain a follower once we grow up.” As disciples of Jesus, we never grow up, we never mature beyond following, we never travel beyond learning Jesus.