![[assets/covers/discipleship.jpg]] Discipleship is active apprenticeship to Jesus as a teacher of life: learning to live as he lived, in the kingdom of God, under his ongoing instruction. In [[Dallas Willard]]’s framing, this is not a demanding spiritual extra for advanced Christians but the ordinary content of the Christian life: the thing that institutional Christianity has almost entirely abandoned. ## The master class of life Jesus is ‘now taking students in the master class of life.’ The present tense matters. Willard’s claim is not that discipleship was once possible and is now unavailable, or that it belongs to a spiritual elite. The invitation is current and open. The student comes not to admire Jesus or to receive his benefits at a distance but to learn, specifically to learn how to live in the [[Kingdom of God]] as Jesus lived in it.[^dc-pxvii] The eternal life that begins with confidence in Jesus is a life in his present kingdom, on earth and available to all. It is a gospel for life now. Crucially, the kingdom is not something to be accepted now and enjoyed later; it is something to be entered now. The New Testament passages on this point (Matthew 5:20, 18:3; John 3:3, 5) all use entry language. Discipleship is the mode of that entry. The contrast Willard draws is between the apprentice and the consumer of his merits: both have some relationship with Jesus, but only one is being formed by that relationship. [[Grace]] is the opening; discipleship is what comes through it.[^dc-p28] ## What has displaced it Willard identifies several mechanisms by which discipleship gets replaced without anyone noticing. [[Legalism]] substitutes compliance with the right beliefs and behaviours for actual formation. Political and social activism (the tendency to emphasise political and social action as the primary way to serve God) substitutes external change for internal transformation. And passive consumption of [[Grace]] leaves people professing allegiance to Jesus without anyone teaching them how to do what he said was best.[^dc-pxv] All three retain a nominal connection to Jesus while disconnecting from the content of his teaching. The cumulative result is the ‘practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ’: a Christianity that has made following Jesus optional to the point of invisibility.[^dc-pxv] ## The expected result ==The logic of the [[Gospel of Sin Management]] makes the absence of discipleship entirely predictable.== ==If being a Christian is essentially about having one’s sins forgiven (and nothing more is required) then no one will be taught to do what Jesus taught.== ==The statistics Willard cites (94 percent believing in God, rates of moral disorder comparable to non-believers) are not an anomaly to be explained; they are the natural consequence of the message as preached.== ==’The condition so eloquently deplored by numerous leaders already quoted in this chapter is nothing but the natural consequence of the basic message of the church as it is heard today.’==[^dc-p58] ==The absence is institutionalised.== ==’Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a “Christian Education Programme” on how to “love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who spit on you and make your life miserable”?’ (Matt. 5:44).== ==It is not only that individuals are not doing this; there is no programme, no curriculum, no institutional setting in which it is taught as a normal part of Christian life.== ==The formation Jesus described in the [[Sermon on the Mount]] has been systematically removed from the category of what churches attempt.==[^dc-p57] ==Jesus has been displaced specifically as teacher.== ==’We settle back into de facto alienation of our religion from Jesus as a friend and teacher, and from our moment-to-moment existence as a holy calling or appointment with God.’== ==Pop psychologists, financial advisors, political commentators (‘whoever happens to be writing books and running talk shows and seminars on matters that concern us’) fill the space where Jesus’s teaching used to be.== ==His irrelevance as teacher is not an accusation levelled from outside; it is the working assumption of Christians themselves.==[^dc-p55] ## Discipleship as incarnational presence ==The content of discipleship shapes its form: a student of Jesus who has understood the incarnation will live incarnationally.== ==Jabbour's account of Samuel, an Egyptian engineer fasting alongside Muslim colleagues during Ramadan, makes this concrete.== ==When they ask why he is fasting, Samuel explains that God does not throw his message from heaven 'like a basketball' hoping we catch it; God comes to us in Christ, entering the world he loves.== ==Days later Samuel nearly faints from the midday heat; two Muslim engineers carry him into shade, pour water on his face, then press a glass on him: 'We know that you love us. We want you to drink right now, fast or no fast.'==[^jabbour-crescent-p150] ==The vulnerability was not incidental; it was the witness.== ==Shared embodied experience created conditions in which abstract theology became legible.== ==Jabbour calls Samuel a 'picture 2 Christian': in the world, not of the world; present to others' lives rather than insulated from them.== ==The model disciplines one toward participation rather than distance, love made visible through shared risk rather than announced from safety.==[^jabbour-crescent-p150] ## Selected passages > ‘Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life.’ > > *The Divine Conspiracy*, p. xvii > ‘living now as his apprentice in kingdom living, not just as a consumer of his merits.’ > > *The Divine Conspiracy*, p. xvii ## Appearances - [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)|*The Divine Conspiracy*]], Dallas Willard (1997) - Introduction, pp. xv–xvii - Ch. 1 ‘Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now’, p. 28 - Ch. 2 ‘Gospels of Sin Management’, pp. 55–58 - [[The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross (2012)|*The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross*]], Nabeel T. Jabbour (2012) - Ch. 10 ‘Isolated and Watered Down’, p. 150 ## Related [[Gospel of Sin Management]] · [[Kingdom of God]] · [[Legalism]] · [[Grace]] · [[Sermon on the Mount]] · [[Jesus]] · [[Dallas Willard]] [^dc-pxv]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. xv · *’the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ accounts for the weakened effect of Christianity in the world today, with its increasing tendency to emphasize political and social action as the primary way to serve God.’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 14.jpg|↗]] [^dc-pxvii]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. xvii · *’Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life.’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 16.jpg|↗]] [^dc-p28]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. 28 · *’New Testament passages make plain that this kingdom is not something to be “accepted” now and enjoyed later, but something to be entered now (Matt. 5:20; 18:3; John 3:3, 5).’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 47.jpg|↗]] [^dc-p55]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. 55 · *’nothing more forcibly demonstrates the extent to which we automatically assume the irrelevance of Jesus as teacher for our “real” lives.’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 74.jpg|↗]] [^dc-p57]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. 57 · *’Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a “Christian Education Program” on how to “love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who spit on you and make your life miserable”?’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 76.jpg|↗]] [^dc-p58]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. 58 · *’The condition so eloquently deplored by numerous leaders already quoted in this chapter is nothing but the natural consequence of the basic message of the church as it is heard today.’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 77.jpg|↗]]