Chapter 8: What Does God Want?

What's Discipleship? | Meditation on a Book | What Does God Want? Series | Jesus Christ | Christianity

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Summary and Preview | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

What’s Discipleship?

Chapter 8 in “What Does God Want?” by Dr. Michael S. Heiser [not an affiliate link] is six pages and the three sections are:

• What’s Discipleship?

• Thinking Clearly about Discipleship

• Why Live Like Jesus?

We’re at the second-to-last chapter in the book. And I’ll be honest with you. I still struggle with discipleship, with walking the Jesus walk every day. I fail often, so please keep this in mind while you read this post. If you struggle, too, you’re not alone and we can walk the discipleship journey together, encouraging each other along the way.

Meditations on Chapter 8

What’s Discipleship?

Discipleship is the life journey of a disciple. A disciple is a follower of someone, usually a respected teacher or religious leader. The greater community recognizes disciples because their lives conform to the teacher’s teachings or the religious leader’s messages.

When I lived in a coastal community, my friends and I quickly recognized the Hare Krishnas who chanted while they walked along the boardwalk. They wore light-saffron robes, had very short hair, and they played finger cymbals and drums. The Hare Krishna disciples held to a specific image and conformed to specific teachings.

As God’s beloved, rescued, and redeemed ones we now live our lives imaging, or imitating Jesus Christ as we follow Him and His teachings daily.

Thinking Clearly about Discipleship

Discipleship means we imitate, we image, Jesus Christ by walking in our believing loyalty to Him.

With the Holy Spirit’s help, we walk as Jesus’ disciples because He has saved us. Discipleship and salvation are not the same. I’m repeating this concept because it’s crucial to get this ingrained in our minds if we want to live daily as Jesus’ disciples.

Salvation is a gift given to us by God when we believe the gospel. It is undeserved. Nevertheless, God offers it to us despite our sin and our hostility toward him. Discipleship is something we do as a result of believing the gospel. We imitate Jesus to show our love for him and for God. Jesus was the ultimate imager of God, so we want to live the same way.

Page 68, “What Does God Want?”, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

We walk as followers of Jesus as a result of believing His good news, His gospel. We believe and are saved, by God’s free gift of grace.

Our salvation didn’t cost us anything but it cost the Son of God everything.

Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV)
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

God’s word is clear that we can’t earn our salvation, ever. Jesus took care of that forever. As a result, we walk daily as Jesus’ disciples to demonstrate to both the seen and the unseen realms our believing loyalty as His beloved and redeemed disciples. Everything we say and do is a firm statement that we belong to Almighty God and His beloved family, and we love Him and only Him.

As Jesus’ disciples (followers), we imitate Him. We show Father God that we love Him, and are grateful for His salvation, by walking in loyalty only to Him just as Jesus did. That’s the definition of “discipleship”—our loyalty.

We can’t do anything to earn God’s love and be saved. We can’t do anything to add to Jesus’ salvation. In our believing we walk in loyalty, for even demons believe in Jesus (they’ve seen Him!) and they certainly do not do good deeds. Obviously, their belief has not saved them. They are not loyal to Him at all [read James 2:14-26 (NLT)].

When we as God’s redeemed children do good deeds, we show the world both our believing in and our loyalty to Jesus Christ alone.

~Night Owl Christian | Summary and Preview: What Does God Want?

Here’s the hard part, and what I struggle with every day. 

Discipleship costs us everything.

Matthew 16:24 (ESV)
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Jesus denied Himself His amazing life in the heavenly realms where He lived with His Father who adored Him. He left all of that glory to walk on this planet among imperfect, rebellious, sinful humanity. And then, He took up His cross for us.

For me.

How can I do any less if I say I follow Him?

My believing loyalty means I make certain choices in life that goes contrary to the world’s choices. I choose to love the God who first loved me, and to live a life that honors Him. He calls me to love His image bearers, to share His good news with them so they may come back to Him, to join the family He’s always wanted. 

That’s the purpose of our discipleship journey.

We must have the same eternal perspective. This world isn’t our real home. It’s temporary. The next one is permanent. Because of what Jesus did we will inherit everlasting life in that world, leaving this one behind. The goal of our lives should be to show our loyalty and gratitude to the one who saved us, and help others enter God’s family.

Page 69, “What Does God Want?”, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to love those God also loves when their hostility toward Him, their sinful disobedience, seems too much for me to bear. Love our enemies?

Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV)
⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

I’m still working on this, and I’m grateful that the Lord’s Holy Spirit lives in me to help me imitate Jesus. When I stumble and fail, I confess and repent, knowing my Father God loves me. My discipleship walk for Jesus is my life-long process of learning, stumbling, growing, and getting back up. God perfects me during this journey to become more and more like His Son over time.

What if we fail? What if we sin? We will do both. God knows that. He knows humanity pretty well! He knows who we are. But He already loved us before we had the slightest interest in doing anything to love him back. He loved us when we were his enemies—“while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8). God loved us before we were in his family. Why would he love us less, or stop loving us, now that we’re in his family? When we sin and fail, he forgives us. He wants us to believe that and get back to imitating Jesus.

Page 69, “What Does God Want?”, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

Why Live Like Jesus?

We don’t live like Him to earn God’s favor, to earn His love. Father God’s redeemed ones already have His favor, His love, through our believing loyalty to Jesus. But, what happens if we don’t live like Jesus? Here are some results:

• Living in sinful behavior is destructive to others and is self destructive to us

• Living how the current culture tells us to live has no eternal perspective; it’s temporary, self centered, and will one day completely vanish

1 John 2:15-17 (ESV)
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.

The good news is that when we live like Jesus, living a godly life, we become a blessing to others. Jesus certainly blessed others when He served people during His earthly ministry. When we live our lives in service to others, we often receive God’s blessings. Our life matters to Him and He loves to bless us when we serve others.

We also affirm the truth of Jesus’ good news when we live like Him. Let’s face it, the not-yet-believing world looks at us closely. They scrutinize if we’re imaging Jesus or not. Even in their unbelief, they know how those who confess believing loyalty to Jesus ought to live. The world may hate us (Jesus said they would) but the world wants to see Jesus’ disciples living out our discipleship. And, through our discipleship, they may take their own steps toward Jesus one day.

But, what does a disciple of Jesus do, specifically?

Come back next week and find out in my post on Chapter 9, the final chapter in “What Does God Want?”.

Your Turn

When you think of discipleship, do you see it as different from your salvation? Do you think you still need to earn something from Father God?

When you fail in your discipleship journey, do you forgive yourself? Why or why not?

Soli Deo Gloria!

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