“discipline … produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”
(Heb 12:11, NIT)
In the previous teaching we quoted William James who defines the sacred mindset as a believer “(who) attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things”! This “order of things” is in actual fact the image of God (Gen 1:27) that we lost with the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).
An integral part of our walk with Christ is the putting on “of the new man”, obliterating our previous life in the kingdom of darkness, and thus we are renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created us (Col 3:10). This process of renewal is called discipling. In his Call to the nation Donald Coggan aptly describes it – “I go through life as a transient on his way to eternity, made in the image of God but with that image debased, needing to be taught how to meditate, to worship, to think.”
It is very important that we are taught how to live in the kingdom of God, a process we call discipling. By becoming a disciple of Christ we are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18). If this process does not take place, we are like those “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Cor 4:4). The close followers of Jesus were named disciples because Christ spent three years teaching them about the kingdom (Matt 4:23). “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” – Matt 16:24). We cannot slip past this dictum – “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me.” (John 12:26).
Christians were named Christians (followers of Christ) because, according to Acts 11:26, they were taught by the disciples for an entire year. This seems to be the pattern – “And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” (John 10:4). You are made a disciple for the purpose of “acquiring a disciplined and prudent life” (Prov 1:3). By nature we are like “an untrained ass, used to the waste land, breathing up the wind in her desire” (Jer 2:24, BBE). This natural man “does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14). Note that we are described as “foolish”, people who operate through natural instincts and secular understanding, which is why we need to be transformed so that we may be partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). In this way we reclaim the Image of God.
- Sela: Have you been discipled, and do you have a “sacred mindset”?
- Read: 1 Kings 15; Ecc 11; Tit 2
- Memorise: Tit 2:11
- For a deeper understanding: Read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life together. He truly understands discipleship.
