Christian Discipleship Definition

Before you can understand what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, you must first understand discipleship in general.

What is a Disciple?

The word disciple literally translated from the Greek means to be "a learner."

Dictionary.com defines disciple as:

a. A person who is a pupil or adherent of the doctrines of another.
b. One who embraces and assists in spreading the teaching of another.
c. Any follower of another person.

So a disciple is a person who is a student of the teachings of someone else.

People can be disciples of all sorts of people and ideas including religious, political, scientific and economic. You could be the disciple of a particular scientist who believes that time is cyclical or the student of a politician who believes government does best when keeping out of the lives of its citizens.

What is Discipleship?

If a disciple is a student of another person's teachings, what is discipleship?

Discipleship is the process of learning about the teachings of another, internalizing them and then acting upon them.

For example if someone named Corrie wanted to become the disciple of the economist Karl Marx, he would first read the teachings of Marx and then try to understand them. Then once he has understood the theories Corrie would act upon them. Given the horrors that have resulted from trying to implement Marxism around the world and its huge failure as an economic theory let us hope Corrie fails in his Marxist quest and finds a better teacher to learn from.

I nominate Jesus Christ.

What Makes Christian Discipleship Different?

Now that we have covered the general theory behind discipleship let us see if we can construct a definition that relates specifically to you being a student of Jesus.

Since you want to be a Christian disciple you are a student of the teachings of Jesus. But in Christianity a lot of the focus is also on following Christ's teachings, not just learning them.

This is a very important distinction...

... a student is someone who just learns theories while a follower is someone who learns and then does.

To be a disciple of Jesus you have to learn what Jesus taught. But more importantly you have to do what He taught. That is how you can determine if you have really committed your life to Christ, you start taking seriously His commands and actually doing them.

And once you have learned Christ's teachings, you have to pass them on to others. You have to become a discipler.

So our first goal is to learn what Christ taught. Then I will help you to internalize those teachings so you really understand them and I hope become devoted to them. Finally we will worry about following Jesus and leading others to follow Him as well.

Now What?

So now that you know the full biblical meaning of discipleship, you should begin the lifelong process of of learning all of what Jesus taught and then following through and obeying His teachings and finally - teaching those things to others.