13. Discipleship: From Learning the Way to Walking the Way
By this point, a pattern has begun to emerge.
The Kingdom is announced.
Repentance is a turning toward it.
The Father reveals the character of the God who reigns.
Love becomes the character of those who live under that reign.
Righteousness becomes a transformed way of being.
The neighbour becomes the person toward whom that love is directed.
The Sabbath becomes a gift rather than merely a restriction.
Forgiveness becomes the practice of those who have received mercy.
Prayer becomes a way of placing life within God's reality.
Faith becomes trust expressed in life.
But one question remains:
What does a person actually do with all this?
Jesus' answer is simple:
Follow me.
That is discipleship.
Discipleship Was Not Simply Learning Information
The word “disciple” can easily be misunderstood in modern Christian usage.
A disciple is sometimes imagined primarily as someone who learns religious information from a teacher.
But in the Jewish world of Jesus, discipleship involved much more than the transmission of information. Studies of discipleship in the Jewish context of Jesus' time emphasize the importance of following a teacher, remaining in close relationship with him, and learning through example as well as instruction.
A disciple did not simply ask:
“What does my teacher say?”
The deeper question was:
“How does my teacher live, and how should I live?”
This distinction is essential for understanding Jesus.
Jesus did not merely gather people who wanted to hear his ideas.
He called people to follow him.
“Come After Me”
The calling of the first disciples in the Gospel traditions is striking.
Jesus encounters Simon and Andrew, James and John, and calls them to follow him. In Mark's presentation, the call to discipleship is closely connected with Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom. James D. G. Dunn observes that the Kingdom was one of the most consistent features of Jesus' preaching and that the disciples' own mission was closely associated with that proclamation.
This is significant.
Jesus does not say:
“Come and listen to a lecture about the Kingdom.”
He says, in effect:
“Come with me.”
The Kingdom therefore becomes a way of life.
The disciple does not stand outside Jesus' teaching as an observer.
The disciple enters the story.
Being With Jesus
Mark's account of the calling of the Twelve gives us an especially important clue.
Jesus appoints them first:
“to be with him,”
and then:
“to be sent out.”
Scholarly discussion of Mark 3:13–15 highlights precisely this twofold pattern: presence with Jesus and participation in his mission.
That order is significant.
Be with him → be sent by him.
Before the disciples can represent Jesus' mission, they must live in relationship with Jesus.
Discipleship therefore begins with presence.
It is not simply:
Learn → teach.
It is:
Be with → learn → practise → become → serve.
The disciple learns the Way by walking alongside the one who embodies it.
Jesus Himself Becomes the Interpretation of His Teaching
This is one of the most distinctive features of Jesus' discipleship.
Jesus does not merely give his disciples principles and leave them to figure out how those principles should look in practice.
His life becomes an interpretation of his teaching.
He teaches love—and associates with people whom others reject.
He teaches mercy—and shows mercy.
He teaches forgiveness—and refuses to let rejection and hostility determine his response.
He teaches service—and serves.
He teaches concern for the vulnerable—and moves toward people whom society often overlooks.
He teaches trust in God—and lives in dependence upon God.
Thus the disciples encounter something more than words.
They encounter a life that interprets the words.
This is why discipleship is fundamentally different from classroom learning.
A student may memorize a teacher's principles.
A disciple seeks to embody them.
From Learning to Practice
Jesus' discipleship therefore involves practice.
A person can understand the principle of enemy-love intellectually without loving an enemy.
A person can understand forgiveness without forgiving.
A person can understand generosity without becoming generous.
A person can understand the Sabbath without allowing life to be ordered by its deeper purpose.
A person can pray “Your Kingdom come” without allowing God's reign to reshape daily decisions.
Knowledge is necessary.
But knowledge alone is not discipleship.
The movement is:
Hear → Understand → Practise → Become
This is why the sending of the Twelve is important. They are not merely instructed to repeat Jesus' words. They participate in his mission. Suzanne Watts Henderson's study of Mark emphasizes the close relationship between being with Jesus and being sent out as agents of God's reign.
The disciple learns by doing.
The Way Is Learned by Walking
This brings us to the meaning of the word way.
A way is not merely something one knows.
It is something one walks.
I can know the route from one place to another without ever travelling it.
I can describe a road without taking it.
I can teach someone the theory of walking without actually walking.
The Way of Jesus is different.
The goal is not simply to know what Jesus taught.
The goal is to live according to what Jesus taught.
That is why discipleship is the natural conclusion of the preceding sequence.
The Kingdom must become a lived reality.
Repentance must become a turning.
Love must become action.
Righteousness must become character.
Neighbour-love must become service.
Sabbath must become life-giving practice.
Forgiveness must become mercy.
Prayer must become orientation.
Faith must become trust.
And all of these must become a way of life.
Discipleship Is Formation
Discipleship is therefore better understood as formation than merely education.
Education asks:
“What do you know?”
Formation asks:
“What kind of person are you becoming?”
That question takes us back to the heart of Jesus' teaching on righteousness.
The Kingdom does not simply produce people who know more religious information.
It produces people whose character is gradually shaped by the character of God.
Thus:
New vision → new values → new practices → new character → new relationships → new community.
Discipleship is the process through which this transformation takes place.
Disciples Are Not Perfect People
This point is important.
The disciples in the Gospel traditions are not presented as people who immediately understand everything Jesus teaches.
They misunderstand.
They argue.
They become afraid.
They seek status.
They fail.
They sometimes see Jesus' actions without understanding their significance.
Mark's Gospel, in particular, repeatedly portrays the disciples' difficulty in understanding both Jesus' identity and the implications of his message. Scholarly treatments of Mark's discipleship theme note this tension between Jesus' mission and the disciples' incomplete understanding.
This is encouraging.
Discipleship does not mean that a person has already arrived.
It means that a person has entered the Way.
A disciple is not someone who never falls.
A disciple is someone who keeps following.
The important distinction is therefore not:
perfect people versus imperfect people.
It is:
people who are willing to follow versus people who refuse the Way.
Failure can become part of learning when the disciple returns to the Way.
Discipleship Is Communal
The Way of Jesus is also not merely an individual spiritual journey.
Jesus forms a community.
He calls individuals, but he gathers them together.
They eat together.
Travel together.
Learn together.
Serve together.
Argue together.
Fail together.
And eventually participate together in the proclamation of God's reign.
This communal dimension is important because the Kingdom itself is not merely private.
If the Kingdom creates a new way of relating to God, neighbour, stranger, enemy, and fellow disciple, then discipleship necessarily creates a new kind of community.
The question is no longer simply:
“What kind of Christian am I?”
It becomes:
“What kind of people are we becoming together?”
The Way of Jesus therefore has social consequences.
A community formed by Jesus' teaching should become a visible expression of the values it claims to believe.
From Jesus to the Disciples
There is another important distinction for historical study.
We need to ask:
What did Jesus proclaim?
And separately:
What did Jesus' followers proclaim about Jesus?
These questions are related, but they are not identical.
Jesus' proclamation is repeatedly associated in the Gospel traditions with the Kingdom of God, repentance, trust, teaching, healing, and the call to follow.
After Jesus' death, his followers increasingly proclaimed the significance of Jesus himself—his death, resurrection, Messiahship, lordship, and saving significance.
Both belong to the history of Christianity.
But they should not simply be collapsed into one category.
The distinction does not diminish the later Christian proclamation.
Rather, it helps us understand how the Christian movement developed.
Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom.
His followers proclaimed Jesus in relation to that Kingdom.
Both belong to the history of Christianity.
But they should not be confused.
For a historical study of the Way of Jesus, this distinction is essential.
We first want to recover what Jesus called people to see and to do.
Only then can we ask how his followers came to understand the significance of the person who had called them.
Discipleship as Participation in the Kingdom
The relationship between discipleship and Kingdom is therefore fundamental.
Jesus announces God's reign.
He calls people to respond.
They repent.
They trust.
They follow.
They learn.
They practise.
They become.
And then they participate in the mission.
This is visible particularly in Mark's presentation of the Twelve. Their being “with” Jesus is connected with being sent out, and their mission is presented as participation in the work associated with God's reign.
Thus discipleship is not an appendix to the Kingdom.
It is the human response to the Kingdom.
The Whole Movement
We can now see the entire movement more clearly:
Kingdom
God is King.
↓
Repentance
Turn toward God's reign.
↓
Father
Discover the character of the God who reigns.
↓
Love
Reflect that character.
↓
Righteousness
Become the kind of person whose life expresses it.
↓
Neighbor
Direct that love toward others.
↓
Sabbath
Let religious practice serve God's purposes and human life.
↓
Forgiveness
Receive mercy and become merciful.
↓
Prayer
Place your life within God's reality.
↓
Faith
Trust God enough to live accordingly.
↓
Discipleship
Walk the Way.
This is not a collection of unrelated teachings.
It is a coherent vision of life.
The Goal Is Not Merely to Know the Way
At the beginning of this study, we asked what Jesus taught and what kind of life he invited people to live.
We can now see that these two questions cannot finally be separated.
Jesus' teaching is intended to produce a way of life.
He teaches people how to see so that they can learn how to live.
He announces the Kingdom so that people can enter its reality.
He calls people to repentance so that they can turn.
He reveals the Father so that they can trust.
He teaches love so that they can embody it.
He teaches forgiveness so that they can practise mercy.
He teaches prayer so that they can orient their lives toward God.
He calls people to faith so that they can trust enough to act.
And finally:
He calls them to follow.
The disciple therefore moves:
from hearing to seeing,
from seeing to understanding,
from understanding to trusting,
from trusting to acting,
from acting to becoming.
That is discipleship.
We learn the Way by walking the Way.
And therefore:
The goal is not merely to know the Way.
The goal is to walk it.
This brings us to the larger question that lies behind the whole study:
What, then, is distinctive about the Way of Jesus?
If Jesus used many familiar words, images, practices, and stories, where exactly does his distinctiveness lie?
The next section will bring the entire argument together:
The Distinctive Vision of Jesus: Seeing God, Self, and Others Differently.
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