David Lowes Watson
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp in the Christian life is the discipline of discipleship, and for three very good reasons.
First, the word has a negative connotation in many parts of our contemporary culture. It is associated with the sort of upbringing which few parents would wish to impose today on their children; or with the rigid mindset of a dated militarism which most military personnel today would likewise wish to disown.
Second, the word has a negative connotation in the church. It has frequently been identified in Christian tradition with rules and regulations which, for no lasting reason, have denied church members the simple pleasures of life. And perhaps those of the Methodist tradition have felt more deprived than most in this regard.
The third, and more significant reason, is that the word troubles many deeply committed Christians, who feel that an undue emphasis on the works of the Christian life tends to denigrate the grace of God, which is properly the form and the dynamic of Christian discipleship.
It is this last objection which merits our attention in discerning the true purpose of Covenant Discipleship Groups.
We must begin with the very nature of Christian discipleship. The word disciple comes from a Latin word meaning one who learns. This was the nature and purpose of Christ's relationship with his first disciples -- to teach them about his work and his mission. This required commitment and obedience, for which Christ himself was the perfect role model. Throughout his ministry, he was committed and obedient to the God whom he called Abba, Father; not a blind obedience, but a faithful obedience, a trusting obedience, a consistent openness to the will of the One whose purposes alone could be affirmed as right and good.
It was this same obedience which Jesus taught his disciples (Jn.13:1 - 17:26). It was not restrictive, since it was grounded in a relationship of love. Yet because it would be tested (Jn. 16:16ff.), it required discipline in order to withstand the testing. True discipleship could not be the effortless elation of self-indulgent emotion; nor yet could it be the mindless obedience of self-alienating legalism. The realities of human sin and a fallen world required an obedience that is at once more gracious and demanding.
It is at this point that Wesley's understanding of grace provides us with remarkable insight.¹ He identifies the dynamics of grace as a constant tension in the Christian life. God makes endless, limitless initiatives towards us, inviting us, drawing us to be reconciled, so that we might enjoy the freedom which Christ so clearly described as the relationship of a large family.² Yet God's grace is so gracious that we are always given the choice of accepting or rejecting these initiatives; and our sinful habits are such that our first instinct is to reject them.
This is why so many of the hymns of early Methodism are couched in the language of resistance and surrender. For the critical moment in Christian discipleship is the decision to quit resisting, to accept God's gracious initiatives, and to return to the family which is incomplete without us (Luke 15:4-7):
His love is mighty to compel,
His conqu'ring love consent to feel;
Yield to his love's resistless power,
And fight against your God no more.³
Once we have made this critical surrender, the path of discipleship is the refining of our new relationship with God as we learn to be open to the gracious initiatives of the Holy Spirit. We have two major handicaps in this learning, of course: Our own residual resistance which, in spite of the indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit, subjects us to countless temptations and struggles; and the continued resistance of the world to God's grace, with its misplaced wisdom, its entrenched injustice, and its chronic neglect of the poor and the powerless.
The challenge of Christian discipleship, therefore, is to learn to be open to grace, so that the freedom of our obedience to God can supplant the captivity of our self-centeredness, and thereby equip us to withstand the pressures of a sinful world. We learn this by trial and error -- by discovering each day how to let grace come into our lives with more power, so that we can avoid the pitfalls of resistance in ourselves and in the world.
Here we have the purpose of Covenant Discipleship Groups. By asking ourselves each week what has happened in our lives, and shaping the questions around the time-honored disciplines of the Christian life, we learn from each other how not to say no to God, how not to resist grace.
This is not an exercise in rules and regulations, nor yet a pursuit of heightened well-being. It is a confident trust in the One whose business it is to save the world, and a deep devotion to the unfinished task.
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¹ Early Methodist Class Meeting, pp.52‑65.
² See, for example, his sermon, "The Scripture Way of Salvation," in The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley: Volume 2: Sermons II: 34‑70, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), pp.153‑69.
³ The Oxford Edition of the Works of John Wesley: Volume 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, ed. Franz Hildebrandt & Oliver A. Beckerlegge, asst. James Dale (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) p.82.
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