The Cost of Discipleship

John MacArthur 90-23

Some teachers say that there is no cost to discipleship

— As the teaching goes, you can be a Christian and not a disciple.

— They say that is “second level Christianity”

— First level Christianity doesn’t have any cost whatsoever

— Just to demonstrate how pervasive this a popular Christian paper commented on Luke 9:57–62

“As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.””

The writer said about this passage:

“This passage has nothing to do with salvation.  These calls are not calls to salvation, they are calls to discipleship.  MacArthur, like many others, confuses discipleship with salvation, and uses passages dealing with discipleship to try to prove that the sinner must give up all that he has and all that he is to receive Christ.  This is simply not true.  Nowhere in the Bible is the sinner told to forsake all that he has to be saved.”

— Is being a disciple something different than being a Christian?

— The word disciple means to be a learner but it means more than that

— The lexicons tell us that it means: “one who shares a close and intimate relationship with a person.” 

Quote: “The disciple is one who at Jesus’ call follows after Him.  He must observe the will of God, and even binding upon himself unreservedly to the person of Jesus, go as far as death and the gift of his life out of love” (Leon Dufour study of the New Testament language)

— The invitations of Jesus to the lost were always direct calls to a costly commitment.

— A man found a treasure he sold all he had an bought it

— A man found a pearl sold all he had and bought it (Matt 13:44-45)

But what do people who want to espouse that this is not a call to salvation do with that passage?  This is what they do.  They say what the parable is teaching has nothing to do with salvation.  The man who found the treasure and the man who sought the pearl is Christ.  The treasure is the church.  The pearl is the church.  This is a parable about Christ buying the church, giving up all that He had to purchase the church

— Christ did not come stumbling across the church

— Neither did He go on a life long journey to try to find the church

— Furthermore, Christ told these parables as a way to unveil the mysteries of the kingdom, not to explain the atonement from God’s viewpoint

— But this is the extent that to which interpreter will go to eliminate a gospel that demands that a person give up everything to receive Christ.

— There’s a striking parallel in Mark 10:21 This is what that says.  “Jesus looked at the rich young ruler and said, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven.’”  Same message; you want eternal life?  Give up all you have and take the treasure. (cf. Matt 10:32; Luke 14:25)

— And every one of those contexts – Matthew 13, Matthew 10, Luke 14, John 8, John 15 – are all contexts in which Jesus is calling men to salvation, and still there are many who deny that there is any such call involved in salvation.  They say, “Just believe and take the gift – just believe and take the gift.”

— Wanting to assume that more than just a few are saved, these people say that there are two levels of Christians

— Level one is an uncommitted disobedient, even unbelieving believer, who made a momentary decision to receive salvation, but has no desire to follow Christ, and they often call him “the carnal Christian.”

— Level two is disciple, and there you have the obedient, committed people who love and serve the Lord, who turned their back on their former life and long to live the new life.  They’re not perfect, but the desire of their heart and the fruit of their life shows the work of God.

— The only way that level one people can know that they are saved is by remembering a decision that they made in the past

— That is all the assurance you need, these teachers say

— But we are told it is enough for someone to simply believe, receive the gift, without repenting, without confessing Christ as Lord, without surrendering their life to Him.

— The term disciple, never in the Scripture is it applied to second-level believers

— The truth is that evangelism itself is to make disciples

Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,”

— We are called to make disciples

Mark 16:15 “And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”

Luke 24:46 “and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,”

— Matthew says make disciples.  Mark says preach the gospel.  Luke says proclaim repentance for forgiveness, and speak of the death and resurrection of Christ. 

— It’s all one and the same

— The great commission, then, is to preach the death and resurrection of Christ, preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, call for faith to make disciples; that sums it all up

Christians are called disciples

— Disciples and Christian are the same thing

— Acts 6:1 “Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.”

— The disciples, believers were increasing in number

— The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch ( Acts 11:26 )

Why do people hold on to this easy-believism?

—1) They want salvation to be all grace, only believe

—2) They want a salvation that makes no demands; they want to make it easy to believe

—3) They want to save some that are lost but who once made a profession of faith in Christ but never demonstrated a changed life

The Christian isn’t somebody who buys fire insurance, who signs up for an escape clause to keep him out of hell.  Puritan William Perkins wrote these words, “The true Christian is of this disposition of mind that if there were no conscience to accuse, no devil to terrify, no judge to arraign or condemn, no hell to torment, yet he would be humbled and brought to his knees for his sins, because he has offended a loving, merciful, and long-suffering God,” end quote.  That’s the difference.  The truly repentant sinner is devastated by the way he has offended God with his sin.  He’s not whimsically looking for some fire insurance.  A true disciple loves, a true disciple obeys.  We don’t love perfectly, we don’t obey perfectly.  Sometimes we love very imperfectly and disobey, but the pattern of life is obedience and love for the Lord.  And even when we fail to love Him, we feel the guilt, and we fail to obey Him, we feel the guilt, because we do belong to Him.  We have that intimate relationship which God has in His grace given to us.

Jesus calls for total commitment. What does it mean?

Confessing Christ before men (Matt 10:32)

Public confession is not enough because in Matthew 7 some will say “Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name, did wonderful works...”

You are willing be to publically identified with Him no matter what it costs

Christians not only confess Christ before men but prefer Christ over all others

Matthew 10:34 talks about how the sword divides the family

Luke’s language is even stronger (Lk 14:26)

You have to deny your natural human relationships that would constrain you and hold you back from Christ, just like you have to deny yourself; just as you have to consider yourself dead, Romans 6

The Lord must not only be the one we prefer above all else, but the one for whom we would willingly give our lives (Matt 10:38)