THE MARKS OF DISCIPLESHIP

CHARACTERISTICS OF A FOLLOWER OF CHRIST

After I graduated from college, I worked a few years for one of the major automobile companies. Some of that time was spent on the loading dock in a shipping and receiving department. During the summers, the heat inside the trucks that I helped to load could be suffocating. That could make the guys' tempers a little short.

One especially hot afternoon, as I was helping one of the drivers arrange his load, he grinned at me and said, "You're a religious man, aren't you?"

I was surprised by his question. This was the first time we had met, and our conversation in the few minutes we had been together hadn't progressed beyond the usual superficial observations about the weather.

"As a matter of fact, I am," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I noticed that you don't talk like the other fellas who help me," he answered. "Most of them would be cussing by now because of the heat. You haven't said one swear word."

I was pleased that he had seen something in my behavior that seemed to him to reflect genuine Christianity. Yet I was sobered by the reminder that others I worked with on a daily basis would also be looking for proof of the reality of my commitment to Christ. How consistent was I under the close scrutiny of those who knew me best? Did I have the marks of a genuine Christian?

When sharing my faith, I had often heard people respond by saying, "I used to know someone who believed like you do ..." They would usually go on to describe some major character flaw reflected in that person's life. It was clear that my listeners felt such a shortcoming invalidated the other person's claim to the title of "Christian."

Something That Sets Us Apart

I would explain that Christians aren't sinless, only forgiven. But such reasoning hardly seemed convincing to them. If anything, my argument usually brought to mind other inconsistencies among those they knew who claimed to belong to Christ. The general assumption seemed to be that, although Christians aren't perfect, they should be different. There should be something that sets them apart as disciples. The Scriptures agree.

Horatius Bonar, the Scottish pastor and hymn writer of the nineteenth century, made this observation about the nature of the Christian life: "It is to new life that God is calling us; not to some new steps in life, some new habits or motives or prospects, but to a new life."

Discipleship is not primarily a matter of what we do. It is an outgrowth of what we are. Yet if this is true, it is reasonable for others to expect to see proof of the reality of our commitment to Christ reflected in the way that we live. Jesus' observation regarding false prophets is also true of disciples. They are recognizable by the fruit they produce: "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit" (Matthew 7:16–17).

So what are the marks of a disciple? Jesus Himself identified several important characteristics.

The Mark of Baptism

The first mark of a disciple is baptism. It is one of the first acts that identifies us as followers of Jesus Christ and initiates us into a life of obedience. When Jesus commissioned the church to go and make disciples of all nations, He identified baptism as the first of the two central tasks of disciple making (Matthew 28:19). After Christ's ascension, baptism continued to have a prominent place in apostolic preaching and practice. On the Day of Pentecost, the apostle Peter commanded those who believed to "repent and be baptized ... in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38).

Although Christians differ over how baptism should take place (it has been done by sprinkling, pouring, and immersion), all agree that baptism is the initiatory rite of the Christian faith. John Calvin called it "the sign of the initiation by which we are received into the society of the church."

It is a rite that has both individual and corporate significance. On the one hand, baptism symbolizes to observers and the individual alike the person's union with Christ in death and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4). At the same time, it signifies that the believer has also been joined to the larger fellowship of the church: "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free— and we were all given the one Spirit to drink" (1 Corinthians 12:13).

Baptism by water also symbolizes the believer's entrance into the sphere of the Holy Spirit. The metaphor of drinking in 1 Corinthians 12:13 points to the Holy Spirit's ministry at our innermost level. The Holy Spirit is said to "live" in every believer and His controlling presence is more powerful than the presence of the sinful nature (Romans 8:9). But the benefit we receive from His ministry is not merely an individual one. Those who are individually joined to Christ by their union with the Spirit are also joined to one another. Water baptism signifies my entrance into the community of the Spirit.

Similarly, the symbolism of baptism serves as a public statement of the believer's personal commitment to Christ and conveys a promise from God to the believer. Baptism, according to John Calvin, is a public confession before men. "Indeed," he explained, "it is the mark by which we publicly profess that we wish to be reckoned God's people, by which we testify that we agree in worshipping the same God, in one religion with all Christians; by which finally we openly affirm our faith." The apostle Peter used the legal language of contractual agreements to refer to baptism when he called it "the pledge of a good conscience toward God" in 1 Peter 3:21. The Greek term that is translated "pledge" literally meant "answer" and referred to a legal procedure in which questions were asked and commitments made on the part of those who entered into a contractual arrangement with one another. Baptism is a pledge of commitment made to God that springs from the cleansing that has come through faith in Christ.

On God's part, however, baptism contains an implied promise of forgiveness. New Testament preaching linked baptism to the promise of cleansing from sin (Acts 2:38; 22:16; cf. Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3). The connection between these two, however, is not an automatic one. The Bible does not teach that the rite of baptism in and of itself conveys the forgiveness of sin. Although Peter wrote that baptism "now saves you," he clarified that it is actually the resurrection of Christ that does the saving and not the water of baptism (1 Peter 3:21). When some in the Corinthian church began to boast about who had baptized them and divide into factions in the name of their favorite apostle, Paul...