Discipleship, Bible, Christian, Studies – C.S. Lewis Institute

Concluding Thoughts

In the end, the answers to our three discipleship questions have obliterated the graceless and costless nature of so many contemporary depictions of Christian discipleship. On both sides of the covenantal framework, these modern mutations of Christianity dramatically fail to capture and preserve what Jesus has in mind when he calls people to follow him.

What does this suggest to us?

Among the many things that could be said, it certainly should imply to us the necessity of rethinking our evangelistic methods. Could it be that we have so overemphasized salvation by grace alone through faith that we have failed to communicate the demand side of the covenant? Jesus is not only the Servant, who lavishes his grace on us—he is also the reigning King, who demands wholehearted loyalty and devotion. If we continue in failing to communicate what it means to enter into covenant with God at the front end of people’s Christian experience, they likely will adopt a faulty expression of discipleship that may be worse than having no Christian commitment at all. Along with helping people to fall in love with their Savior, we must teach them to fall at the feet of their King. This must also be true of us who seek to lead others into this understanding of discipleship.

Second, our discussion should reveal to us the need for moving people into a deeper understanding of discipleship that includes a fuller grasp of the broader biblical narrative. Until the youth and adults in our churches are able to articulate their faith, rooting it in what God has been doing throughout history, we are in danger of leaving them to define their discipleship on their own terms, for their own purposes. We must, therefore, recover what it means not only to be a “Christian,” but also what it means to be a new-covenant follower of Jesus. What does it mean that Christians are those in whose hearts and minds the law has been internalized? What are the implications of Jesus’ reign over them as the righteous Davidic King? How is life to be lived so as to participate in the mediation of the Abrahamic blessings to the nations? In other words, modern-day Christians need to learn to live their lives within the ongoing narrative of God’s covenantal purposes. Otherwise we will almost certainly define our discipleship in ways that fall woefully short of the biblical vision.

Finally, we must come to grips with the inaugurated nature of the kingdom in the present era, inferring from this our recurring need for God’s vivifying and renewing grace. Learning to live life within the covenantal dynamic of grace and demand is the key to enduring faithfulness to Jesus. That is to say, we must learn not only to be saved by grace, but also how to live in grace. In so doing, we will discover the enablement that grace offers us, inclining our hearts and galvanizing our wills to respond to Jesus’ call on our lives. And the result of this will be increasingly consistent lives of discipleship, through which God will mediate his great covenantal blessings to others, compelling them also to follow Jesus, the Servant King.

May God grant us grace to this covenantal end.  

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