Discipleship and the Miracle of a New Family

Discipleship and Simple Obedience

　　At Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, “discipleship” 「作主門徒」 is a popular mantra that is often repeated in our hallways, classrooms, and daily conversations. It is a topic of research interest to many of our faculty, and it has become an integral part of our ethos and identity as a seminary. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that discipleship is a call to avoid “cheap grace” and embrace instead a “costly grace.” ¹ Costly grace, Bonhoeffer contends, involves a commitment to Jesus that demands our “simple obedience”—a faithful surrender of one’s will to his in any given situation. ² Bonhoeffer compares simple obedience to choosing death in a famous quotation from his famous work, The Cost of Discipleship: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world.” ³ Regardless of the circumstance, it is a person’s obedience to God that counts.

　　When a person decides to follow Jesus, there are certain realities that must be acknowledged. First, the act of following assumes that one does not know which way to go. The decision to follow Jesus is also a confession that the truth lies beyond ourselves. Following denotes motion, and Jesus’ original disciples followed him on a physical journey. ⁴ In fact, in Acts, the early Christians are described as people of “The Way.” ⁵ Second, the choice to follow Jesus is based on the conviction that he knows the way. And so, following Jesus requires faith—we have to believe that he is trustworthy. Third, following entails surrendering one’s own way. We cannot simultaneously be following Jesus and be going our own way. One of the greatest challenges in following Jesus is the command to relinquish control over one’s life and one’s own choices. And finally, when we follow Jesus, we have no control over which other people Jesus calls to follow him.

Calls Us into a New Community, a New Family

　　In the gospel accounts, whenever someone chooses to follow Jesus, they also become members of a new family. This is a family not defined by kinship, but by one’s response to Jesus’ message. David Watson says that the glory of the Christian gospel is that Jesus did not call individuals to stay in isolation, but to join the new community of God’s people. ⁶ No one who follows Jesus will ever be alone again. This is one of the reasons the gospel is good news. Jesus says to his disciples in Mark 3:34-35: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He is redefining the boundaries of what constitutes a family to include those who are not related by physical kinship, but by their allegiance to God. ⁷ Similarly, in Luke 11:27, a woman who hears Jesus’ teaching blesses his mother Mary, but Jesus responds by saying: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” While it may appear that Jesus is being dismissive of his own mother, he is actually expressing the notion that there is something greater than family ties: an appropriate response to God’s message. Those who share this response become members of a new community. ⁸ The intimate association with Jesus, the profound sense of belonging and support, the feeling of being fully accepted – these are all wonderful benefits of what it means to become a follower of Jesus. ⁹

　　This is also an important theme in the rest of the New Testament. Regardless of someone’s heritage or circumstance, they are now given the privilege of becoming children of God. The prologue of John’s Gospel says: “…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn 1:12-13) The writer of 1 Peter is even able to say to Gentile believers: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Pet 2:10) Believers enter into a new social reality along with new relationships and responsibilities. The renewal of the image of God in human beings is a recognition that, in Christ, the things that used to divide people do so no longer; the family of God transcends ethnicity, gender, and kinship. ¹⁰ The formation of a new community is a tremendous miracle and blessing, because it reverses the alienation caused by human sin by uniting all people into one family in and through Christ. ¹¹

The New Family That Transcends All Boundaries

　　However, it is not until we take a closer look at Jesus’ first disciples that we can see just how miraculous this is, and that the vision of a new family in Christ was already being realized during his earthly ministry. Apart from their decision to follow him, Jesus’ followers were a diverse group people that had very little else in common.

　　As was expected in the 1st century Jewish milieu, many of Jesus’ disciples were men. However, it was highly unusual for a Jewish teacher to have a group of women followers. ¹² It is remarkable that women disciples played such an important role in Jesus’ ministry. Luke 8:1-3 says that in addition to the Twelve, Jesus’ followers also included women whom Jesus had healed. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome were present at his crucifixion, ¹³ and the testimonies of women are crucial to the resurrection narratives. ¹⁴ In John 4, Jesus is engaged in a dialogue with a Samaritan woman about the Temple. These details point to the fact that Jesus accepted women into his company of followers, and those who wanted to be his disciples had to accept this fact, regardless of their previously held notions about the role and status of women.

　　Similarly, while many of Jesus’ disciples were Jews, he also attracted people who were not Jews. Jesus’ ministry extended to the people from the Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon; ¹⁵ later on Jesus himself would make the journey to Tyre and Sidon, where he heals a Canaanite woman’s daughter and feeds 4000 people. ¹⁶ Jesus heals a Samaritan man with leprosy in Luke 17:11-19, and stays in a Samaritan village in John 4:40-42. Regardless of any misgivings Jesus’ followers might have had about Gentiles, they were required to set their differences aside as they followed him into Gentile regions and stayed in their cities, as he ministered to them and welcomed their people to be his followers. They had to set their nationalistic pride aside in order to follow Jesus. Being a disciple of Jesus meant that they had to modify their attitudes towards outsiders.

　　Jesus’s followers also included both the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the ritually “clean” and the “unclean,” and people with different ideologies. While some of Jesus’ disciples were wealthy—people like Levi or Zacchaeus are able to host banquets in their homes—others were beggars like the blind beggar Bartimaeus. ¹⁷ While some his disciples were powerful like Joseph of Arimathea, who may have been a member of the Sanhedrin, others were lowly fishermen. ¹⁸ Some were respected members of society who were ceremonially pure, like the Pharisees Nicodemus or Simon, ¹⁹ others were shunned outcasts like Simon the leper or sinful women, or people from whom Jesus cast out demons. ²⁰

　　Jesus’ disciples also included people with opposite political ideologies. In a list of Jesus’ twelve disciples in Luke 6:14-16, one of the disciples is a man called Simon the “Zealot.” Some scholars understand the “Zealot” to refer to Simon’s association with religious zeal. Richard Horsley has warned against identifying the term Zealot with the later Jewish sect of Zealots dedicated to revolution against Rome, because this group did not emerge until closer to the fall of 67 CE. It is interesting, though, that these Zealots were victims of Roman violence, who were based in Judea, and who resorted to violence themselves by targeting Herodian nobles who were unjustly wealthy and influential, and who they felt were traitors by corroborating with the Romans. ²¹ Although Simon cannot be definitively linked to the Zealots, who only emerged later, Jesus’ disciples included wealthy people who worked for the Romans to betray their own people: the tax collectors. Jesus is notorious for spending time with tax collectors, and two of them, Zacchaeus and Matthew (also called Levi), ²² even became some of his closest followers. How might Simon the “Zealot” have felt inside Zacchaeus’ home, or walking next to Matthew on the way to Jerusalem?

　　Some of Jesus’ disciples were formerly John the Baptist’s disciples (e.g. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter). From the description of John in the canonical gospels and Josephus, he was regarded as a Judean holy man who had an emphasis on purification, asceticism, and repentance. His disciples were expected to fast and pray often, and people were somewhat surprised that Jesus’ disciples did not share the same commitment to piety. ²³ How might Andrew have felt, following Jesus as he ate and drank with the tax collectors and the prostitutes, as he disregarded the ceremonial laws and touched the people suffering from leprosy, when mingled with the high and the lowly alike, when he would deign to minister to foreigners.

Jesus Calls Us to Leave Our Own Camp

　　As anyone who is a part of a family will know, there are also unique challenges when it comes to dealing with our family members. Families can be a source of love, warmth, support, acceptance, and protection. When family members disappoint us, hurt us, or disagree with us on important issues, we can become frustrated or angry. We do not get to choose our family, and they do not choose us—we are united by an inextricable and inescapable bond. This aspect of family also applies to the family of faith. Although the bond is different—the determining factor is not physical birth, but spiritual birth in Christ—the fact remains that we simply do not get to choose who our fellow disciples are. To use another analogy from a parable in Matt 20:1-16, we are merely fellow laborers in our master’s vineyard. We can only be grateful for our own employment and inclusion into the community; we do not have a say in who else is employed or how the master treats them. That part is not up to us. We can only accept this reality and learn to live together as best we can as a “community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.” ²⁴

A Total Allegiance to Jesus: Is to Die and Yet to Live

　　Perhaps the key to getting along with our fellow disciples and family members is to realize that Jesus did not call us because we are male or female, or rich or poor, or because we have certain political ideologies that distinguish us from other people. These cannot be the things that define who we are and that drive us apart, because those who profess to follow Jesus have made a conscious decision to detach from old ties and to attach to a new authority. ²⁵ In Gal 3:26-28 Paul says: “… in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In Philippians 3:7-8, Paul considers knowing Christ Jesus as the greatest worth; in comparison, he even regards his Jewish lineage, educational qualifications and experiences as worthless.

　　Stephen Barton suggests that the call of discipleship is “an invitation to a new and transcendent allegiance which, on Christological and eschatological grounds, relativizes other ties and offers the possibility of a personal identity defined no longer in terms of what is ascribed according to blood and marriage …”²⁶ being a disciple of Jesus amounts to a detachment of allegiance from all other allegiances—whether it is an allegiance to one’s gender, ethnicity, nationality, school, socio-economic status, philosophy, or political ideology—and a total allegiance to Jesus. ²⁷

　　To borrow Bonhoeffer’s expression, “simple obedience” to Jesus does not only refer to submitting to God’s will for our own lives, but also to acknowledging the fact that we are now a part of a new community, in which our previous allegiances and affiliations no longer take precedence. This includes forsaking the prejudice, bias, and self-serving attitudes that we used to have, and following the way of Jesus, who brings us into community with those we never thought possible.

　　This is something very different from tolerance, or simply accepting others “as they are”; it is something much more profound. It is accepting the fact that Jesus is now at the center of our existence, and our decision to follow him may well lead us to let go of some of the things we considered most important about ourselves—this will cause us to think differently about other people, who are different from us. But like us, they have begun a journey away from the self toward Christ at the center. Jesus’ first disciples may have found this to be challenging, but in so doing they also became the first people of a new humanity that is diverse in every way, but united mysteriously in Christ.

　　As we continue to think and talk about discipleship at HKBTS, it may be beneficial to reflect more on implications of this glorious truth on our self-understanding as Jesus’ disciples. Bonhoeffer is quite right that true discipleship is a call to choose “death” to the self, but he also understands that death is not the end. Bonhoeffer observes, “Everyone enters discipleship alone, but no one remains alone in discipleship … the promise of a new community is given to them” ²⁸ Discipleship is not only death, but also a miraculous rebirth into a wonderful family we never imagine we could have.

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¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works––Reader’s Edition, trans. Barbara Green & Reinhard Krauss (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 5.
² Bonhoeffer relates the idea of obedience to costly grace: “Wherever simple obedience is fundamentally eliminated, there again the costly grace of Jesus’ call has become the cheap grace of self-justification.” Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 45.
³ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1948/2001), 44.
⁴ Ernest Best, Disciples and Discipleship: Studies in the Gospel According to Mark (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 5.
⁵ Acts 9:2; 18:25-26; 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22.
⁶ David Watson, Discipleship (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981/1983), 37.
⁷ See also Warren Carter, “The Disciples,” in Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, ed. Chris Keith & Larry Hurtado (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 85.
⁸ Best, Disciples and Discipleship, 61-62.
⁹ Watson, Discipleship, 35-47.
¹⁰ E.g. Gal 3:28-29; Col 3:11.
¹¹ Especially Eph 1:10; 2:14-16.
¹² Although the word “disciple” is not used to describe women who follow Jesus in the NT, they played a significant role in Jesus’ activities. Carter, “The Disciples,” 85.
¹³ Mark 15:40-41; Matt 27:56; cf. John 19:25.
¹⁴ Mark 16:1-8; Matt 28:1-10; Luke 24:1-10.
¹⁵ Mk 3:8; Lk 6:17.
¹⁶ Mt 15:21-28, 32-39; Mk 7:24-31
¹⁷ C.f. Luke 5:29; 19:7; Mark 10:46.
¹⁸ John 19:38 refers to Joseph of Arimathea as a “secret” disciple of Jesus; Mark 15:43 and Luke 23:50–51 refer to him as belonging on a council that made a verdict on the case of Jesus. See David M. Allen, “Secret Disciples: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea,” in Jesus among Friends and Enemies, 162-168. On the low status of fishermen, see K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 106-110.
¹⁹ John 3:1 (Nicodemus); Luke 7:36, 40 (Simon); Luke 7:37 (an adulteress woman); Luke 8:39 (a man from whom Jesus cast out a demon). On Nicodemus, see Allen, “Secret Disciples,” 152-153.
²⁰ Matt 26:6; Mk 5:19-20, 14:3; Jn 4:1-42.
²¹ Richard A. Horsley, “The Zealots: Their Origin, Relationships, and Importance in the Jewish Revolt,” Novum Testamentum 28/2 (1986): 190-191.
²² Luke 19:1-10; Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32.
²³ Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35. See also, Michael F. Bird, “John the Baptist,” in Jesus among Friends and Enemies, 61-80.
²⁴ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works––Reader’s Edition, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 5.
²⁵ Charles H. Talbert, “Discipleship in Luke-Acts,” in Discipleship in the New Testament, ed. Fernando F. Segovia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 62.
²⁶ Stephen C. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 221.
²⁷ This is likely the meaning of Luke 14:26-27. It is not a matter of “hating one’s life” but of ultimate allegiance to Jesus, regardless of any previous attachments or affiliations.
²⁸ Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 66.