Spirituality or Discipleship?⤒🔗

One of the great buzz-words in today’s churches (and even beyond the churches) is “spirituality.” It offers an exciting alternative to dry theology, suggests the possibility of thrilling mystical experiences, cuts across denominational divisions and even leaps the barriers between the great world faiths. Celtic spirituality, Catholic spirituality, Charismatic spirituality and Protestant spirituality must all, surely, be united in some common concern; and Christian spirituality, Eastern spirituality and New Age spirituality are but branches of the same tree. No wonder prominent public figures find the concept so attractive. The Prince of Wales hesitates to put himself forward as defender of the faith, but he would gladly propose himself as defender of spirituality.

But the word “spirituality” never occurs in the Bible. Nor does scripture show any sympathy with the idea that there is a common core of “spirituality” at the heart of all religions or even, for that matter, at the heart of all varieties of Christianity. These considerations are enough to warn us to treat “spirituality” with caution. When the New Testament uses the word “spiritual” it is not speaking of something we share with Buddhism and the New Age. It is speaking specifically of a life controlled by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

Fortunately there is a clear biblical alternative to “spirituality”: discipleship. This word immediately throws into sharp relief the fact that to be a Christian is not simply to share in some universal human experience called “spirituality.” Instead, it is utterly specific and exclusive. We are disciples of Christ; and of no one else.

Following←⤒🔗

It’s become common to speak of this as “having a personal relationship with Jesus.” But what kind of relationship? If, yet again, we take our cue from the Bible, the best word to describe it is “following.” We take up our cross and we “follow” Jesus (Mark 8:34).This was reflected in the old Gaelic usage, which described a new convert as someone who had “started following”, but even here it’s important to be clear what exactly we’re supposed to be following. We are not (to use another Gaelic idiom) merely “following the means of grace.” That is laudable enough, but it is also too liable to make church services an end in themselves and to reduce disciples to meetings-junkies, rushing from service to service for spiritual fixes. In the New Testament, by contrast, the “following” is specifically focused on Christ: “Follow me.”

This involves, first of all, following the teaching of Christ. At the most obvious level, the relationship between the original disciples and Jesus was that between students and their Rabbi. This is why the picture of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus is so suggestive. Even though a woman, she was enrolling in a rabbinical school. Our English word, “disciple”, comes, of course, from the Latin word for a pupil: a reminder that whatever else Christians are, they are pupils, desperate to learn and hanging on to their Master’s every word. The passage of time has not altered that. We can still hear Jesus teach, drinking in the great words of the Sermon on the Mount and listening enthralled to His inexhaustible parables. But the voice of Rabbi Jesus is not confined to the gospels. We hear it, too, in the Old Testament and in the Epistles. The entire scriptures give us the mind of Christ.

The Example of Christ←⤒🔗

Discipleship involves, secondly, following the example of Christ. This is highlighted at key-points in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 8:9, for instance, Paul reinforces his appeal for liberality by invoking the example of Christ: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” Our generosity is a response to the self-sacrifice of Jesus.

There is a similar appeal in 1 Peter 2:23 in connection with the way we should respond to suffering and persecution. Christ left us an example. He neither returned the insults nor issued threats. He simply committed His cause to God.

But the most memorable appeal to Christ’s example is in Philippians 2:5-11. The call here is not merely to imitate Christ in externals, but to follow Him in the shape of our innermost thinking. This means that we never stand on our dignity, we never put our own interests first and we never insist on our rights. Christ was willing to be nothing: content not to be recognised for who He was, prepared to identify with those who were infinitely beneath Him, willing to appear a total failure and an utter reject and deliberately choosing obscurity, misunderstanding, humiliation and death. That damns every pretended disciple who wants to be Somebody.

Thirdly, discipleship involves loyalty: we follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Sometimes it’s easy. Christ is acclaimed, Christianity is in the driving-seat, church-membership is a social asset and we enjoy the support of our peers and the protection of great Christian leaders. But sometimes it’s grim. Christ is ridiculed and His church derided. We’re on our own, God’s attitude seems ambivalent (“He loves me, he loves me not”) and Christ Himself seems so helpless that little girls can mock Him with impunity. Far from giving us status, following Christ can then cost us everything. Shall we deny Him till the return of better days?

The Cost of Discipleship←⤒🔗

Here we are to face to face with the sharpest truth of all: what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “The Cost of Discipleship.” Today we choose churches and even gods for what we get out of them and abandon them when they do nothing of us. By such criteria the cause of Christianity is hopeless. It doesn’t offer instant personal fulfilment or immediate answers to all our problems or even a life cocooned in warm protective friendship. Jesus was devastatingly blunt about it. He didn’t merely say, “Follow me!” He said, “Deny yourself and follow me!” There could hardly be a more uncompromising form of Gospel Call. Yet that’s exactly how he put it.

Can We Be More Specific? What is the Cost of Discipleship?←⤒🔗

• First, facing the truth about ourselves. There can be no discipleship without repentance. Nicodemus had to face it when Jesus told him that, member of the Sanhedrin or not, he was totally unfitted for the Kingdom of God and would have to be born again. Saul of Tarsus had to face it on the Damascus Road: he was the chief of sinners, the arch-persecutor of the Messiah. We all have to face it. Everyone who comes to the Physician has to accept that he is sick and everyone who comes to the Saviour has to face up to her own unrighteousness. The truth about ourselves is the most awful discovery we can make: too awful, in fact, to take it all in at once. Mercifully, God shows it to us only little by little.
   
• Secondly, discipleship involves being accountable to other believers. This sits ill with our modern individualism and it is particularly hard if we’ve already had bad experiences of the church and of other Christians. Self-imposed isolation is a natural reaction if you find it hard to trust the Lord’s people. But there are fundamental truths at stake here. One is that we can’t be united to Christ without being united to His church. Another is that we know Christ only through each other. Yet another is that there can be no baptism or church membership without church discipline. It is relatively easy to be our brother’s keeper. It titillates our ego. It is much more unpalatable to let brothers be our keepers. This is probably the main reason why so many people today want to say, “Yes, I’m a Christian, but I never go to church!” The thing is a contradiction in terms.
   
• Thirdly, following Christ involves self-denial. Here again, Jesus is astonishingly blunt. If, He says, it’s self-fulfilment and self-expression and self-satisfaction you want, don’t follow me. Yet these are exactly the things we do want. Like a parent spoiling her child, we want our Self to have everything: the whole world if possible. We want it to be all it can be. We want to protect it from every risk and every peril, even at the cost of denying, if need be, Christ Himself.

How shudderingly uncompromising, then, is Christ’s demand: “Deny yourself!” He is not merely saying that we must deny ourselves “things”: chocolate at Lent, or a Bob Dylan concert if it’s going to upset the old folk. It is the Self itself we are to deny. We have to say, No! to it. Standing at the Strait Gate, the only way into the Kingdom, we have to address it resolutely: “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to leave you here. I can’t take you through.” And from that point onwards, we have to keep saying, “You’re not the one who matters. You’re not Number One. You’re not my Lord, you’re not my God and you’re no longer my priority!”

Taking Up the Cross←⤒🔗

Then there is that dreadful, haunting reference that Christ makes to the cross: “Take up your cross and follow me.” We’re very good at emasculating it. We all have our little crosses, we say: arthritis or a handicapped child or a stammer or asthma. Far be it from me to play down any of these. But is that what Christ really meant? Not for a moment! He was saying that to follow Him was to sign your own death-warrant, step on to the gallows and put the noose round your neck.

There is nothing figurative about this. It is hard, factual truth. There is only one proviso. What Christ said of His own cross is equally true of ours: men have no power over us but what is given to them from above (John 19:11). That can vary from age to age and from place to place, but the fundamental truth remains: Christians get crucified. The scheming malevolences of Pandemonium, the priests of the world’s great faiths, the doyens of its academies, the moguls of its media corps and the millions of its common people will treat Christians exactly as they treated Christ. They will unite in a cacophony of derision. They will bay for blood. They will work tirelessly until the day the last Christian is strangled with the last copy of the New Testament.

There is nothing accidental or incidental about this. The cross is the mark of the Christian.