If you’ve been in the church for any length of time, you will have heard or read these verses:
Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18–20
The word “disciple” comes from the Greek word mathetes, which means “to learn.” In Hebrew, the word is talmidim. The word appears over two hundred times in the Gospels and the book of Acts. As we get into the letters to the churches, other words such as “saint,” “believer,” “brother/sister,” and “Christian” are used to refer to those who are known as disciples of Jesus.
What Does It Mean?
These famous last words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel are essential to consider. In the past two thousand years of church history, they’ve come to mean different things at different times to different groups of people.
In some circles, these verses refer to the need to go overseas and be involved in missions or church planting. For others, they express why a church should be involved in community outreach or personal evangelism. The emphasis on telling non-Christians about Jesus, with the hope they will begin to follow Him, is sometimes referred to as “the Great Commission”—a phrase coined in the early nineteenth century.
In other circles, the verses appear in a vision/mission statement as a catch-all phrase to refer to local church activities: services, Bible classes, and programs for kids and adults. This has been a tradition since the dawn of the Reformation.
Jesus’s Disciples
Each of these meanings has its place. Yet have you ever stopped to ask: What would Jesus’s first disciples have heard? What would they have understood when He first spoke the words recorded in Matthew 28:18–20?
In Jewish culture, fathers are ultimately given the responsibility of ensuring that their children know and obey the Jewish law (Deuteronomy 6). Despite the injunction, we see cycles where ignorance of and disobedience to the law (Judges 2:10–11) lead to destructive behavior that opens the nation to foreign occupation.
Only after being occupied by the Babylonian and Persian empires did leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah place a renewed emphasis on Torah knowledge. They didn’t want to repeat history’s errors, so they established a rigorous religious education system that some experts believe was fully functioning by the end of the first century AD. This education system had a few different stages:
Stage One—Bet Sefer:
Hebrew children ages six to twelve could attend a local synagogue, where they learned to memorize the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and implement it in their daily lives. They would graduate around age twelve.
Stage Two—Bet Midrash:
Once a child turned twelve, they were seen as an adult. Certain boys could take special classes in the synagogue, while learning a family trade, to better learn the Tanach (the rest of the Hebrew Bible).
Stage Three—Bet Talmud:
This was referred to as a period of discipleship. Rabbis would set up learning schools, and young men would apply or be invited to have unique access to a Rabbi. These insiders were known as disciples (talmidim in Hebrew or mathetes in Greek). Disciples served him and, in turn, were taken care of by the Rabbi. During this time, they followed “in the dust of their Rabbi,” eating the same food, sleeping in the same place, learning the Rabbi’s ways, emulating mannerisms, seeing God, and applying it to their life as their Rabbi did.
When the Rabbi felt that disciples were sufficiently trained, were at least thirty years old, and had passed the given tests, they would formally ordain certain disciples to become Rabbis themselves. These Rabbis were commissioned to go out, start their schools, find their own talmidim, and repeat the process. In addition, some Rabbis were invited into religious and political leadership and served as teachers, lawyers, scribes, or synagogue leaders. This discipleship practice wasn’t new to Jesus’s day but had a long-standing tradition going back to Moses and Joshua, Eli and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, Ezra, Isaiah, and others who had disciples.
When Jesus appeared traveling with an entourage and speaking to crowds, twelve disciples followed Him as a Rabbi (Matthew 4:18–22; Mark 1:16–20; Luke 5:1–11; John 1:35–51). He took care of them and asked them to be wholly devoted to Him (Matthew 8:18–22), to adhere to His way of living and teaching (Matthew 7:21–28), to be active in the same ministries He was involved in (Matthew 10:5–13), and to value what He valued (Matthew 18:2–13). He promised they would do what He was doing (John 14:12) and be treated the way He was treated (Matthew 16:24–27).
Jesus modeled traditional rabbinical discipleship in several ways. First, He taught them and gave His disciples practical hands-on experience to involve them in what He was doing. He had them baptize people. He sent them to pray for the sick, cast out demons, and preach the gospel. He had them manage the crowds and answer questions. He had them managing the finances and preparing meals. Finally, He allowed them to practice what they were learning.
Yet Jesus modeled a pattern of discipleship that differed in several ways from the traditional pattern. First, we see that He invited women, the uneducated, the sick, those living in sin, and the extremely poor to be part of the larger group that followed Him. He ate meals with those who would have been considered outcasts by the teachers of the day (Matthew 9:9–13). While traditionally, it was the disciple who served the Rabbi, Jesus served His disciples.
But Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:25–28
He also asks them to be devoted to His teaching over the religious leaders’ teaching of the Mishnah (Jewish tradition). He models a particular ethic: a way to pray, a way to worship, a way to live, a way to eat, a way to see money, a way to treat your enemies, your family, and your friends, and a way to see the natural and the spiritual world.
Jesus claims to be the focus of the Torah as a fulfillment of it (Matthew 24:4). He’s not advocating a co-existence with Jewish religious leaders as another sect of Judaism. We have entire chapters criticizing the behavior and teaching of the leaders who have forgotten the Torah (Matthew 23). He contrasts the teachings of the Torah with the behavior of these Rabbis when He uses “you have heard” repeatedly throughout the Gospels.
We see the culmination of these three short years of discipleship in Matthew 28:18–20. In this chapter, Jesus gives His disciples a graduation speech. He’s not ordaining them as rabbis in the traditional sense, but He is ordaining them in the spirit of the rabbinical tradition. He is saying to them, “What you saw Me do with you—do with others, who will do that with others.”
This model then became the core mission of the early church. In the next section, we’ll discuss what Jesus-style discipleship looked like throughout history and what it can look like for us today.
Discussion
- How does your idea of discipleship compare to the ideas presented above?
- How active are you in discipleship compared to other activities in your church?
- Describe Jesus-style discipleship in your own words.