The disarming simplicity of the call of Jesus to the fishermen, Simon and Andrew,

"Follow me," (Mark 1:7) is a great joy. But it can create a problem for the would-be disciple of

Jesus. I was nineteen when I became a Christian. I recall vividly my early attempts to follow Jesus-stumbling after Jesus would be more accurate. On the one hand I was full of enthusiasm and overwhelm by the utter wonder and newness of it all. Recently I have reflected with gratitude on the naivete and simplicity of these early days of my Christian groping and found them commendable. On the other hand, I felt a terrible sense of burden, the weightiness of all the ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ that seemed to my primitive Christian consciousness to be what being a Christian involved.

Young in the faith, I appeared to be trapped between the full flush of the freedom of faith and the despair of failing to meet God’s impossible expectations. While I knew that God loved me, I had as yet no sense of the Gospel at the point of my responsibilities. At the point of practical discipleship, everything was law. How were the ‘oughts,’ ‘shoulds,’ and ‘have tos’ of discipleship Good News. I could not figure it out. I may be justified by grace through faith, but to follow Jesus meant that now everything appeared to be cast back upon myself to perform. I had to do the following and obeying, and periodic appeals to the Holy Spirit somehow helping me along just struck me as empty talk that did not seem to lighten my load. The burden of discipleship was a heavy load indeed. The weakness was that I thought that the response to God was entirely my responsibility. At the end of the day discipleship was up to me to get it done. It’s hard to keep on being joyful when ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ and ‘have tos’ guiltily intrude, and when faithfulness means drawing on my own devices, more often than not leading to failure, exhaustion and frustration. I wonder how many people new in the faith have become chronically disabled in their discipleship because they never found a way around the overwhelming sense of obligation and guilt at the practical end of Christian living?

What does it mean to understand Christianity as Gospel and as grace, not only at the points of salvation and faith, but also at the point of discipleship? Or to put it differently, what is the Good News and how does it work at just those places where it would appear that now the ball is in my court? If discipleship is up to me, even with a little help from the Holy Spirit, is this not a recipe for failure?

I want this morning to map out the contours of a theology of discipleship precisely as Gospel. I will do so by way of reflecting on the great dynamic movement of all Christian action by which discipleship is Good News rather than wearying obligation. Let me introduce what I intend in this way. At the end of the prayer of the Great Thanksgiving in the liturgy of the Lord'’ Supper we pray these words:

Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ,

In the unity of the Holy Spirit,

All glory and honor are yours, Almighty Father,

Now and forever.

Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ are the sum and the limit of all Christian possibility. This is no less so in Christian discipleship than in the prayer at the center of Christian worship. Through Christ, in Christ, in Christ express the most basic truth of all Christian faith and action. These are not just liturgical flourishes, but the expression of the threefold nature of the mediatorial ministry of Jesus Christ into which we by grace and through the Holy Spirit are incorporated, and on which the whole of the Christian faith and life depend. It is on this basis- through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ- that we understand discipleship as inherently Good News. Today I only have time to reflect with you on discipleship through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let me begin with an observation. In my view, one of the most serious mistakes in English-speaking twentieth century Christianity is the notion that the world sets the church’s agenda. Whether, with the liberal church, it is the world’s questions that are supposed to call forth our theological answers or whether, with the renewalist church, the world’s own sense of its needs that direct our mission, the whole thing is upside down. In either case we are en route to an accommodation to the culture, to the diluting down of Christianity to make it acceptable to non-Christian opinion, and to a fundamental error regarding the nature and goal of discipleship. Christian discipleship is not a pragmatic response to situational demands. Rather, it is a faithful through, in and with Christ, to the glory of God the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and as such, is truly for the sake of the world, and not otherwise. It is Jesus Christ who sets the church’s agenda, not the world.

In a summary fashion, let me state the whole argument I want to make. Our capacity to be disciples is directly related to our union with Christ, who has already offered the life of obedience and faithfulness to the Father on our behalf. Summoned to union with Christ, we share in his obedience to become ever more fully in ourselves what we are already in Jesus Christ.

In order to secure discipleship to the rock of Jesus Christ, I insist that Christian discipleship is through Jesus Christ. We must ask what it means that discipleship is via Christ, or by way of Christ. This will take us into the heart of a theology of discipleship that is a theology of grace of the Gospel.

Recently I read John 14-17 in one sitting, and underlined every instance of reference to the relationship of Jesus and the Father. It would take too long to reada every reference, but let me give you the flavor. "No one comes to the Father except through me." (14.6) "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (14.9) "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." (14.11) "All that the Father has is mine." (16.15) "Holy Father…I have given them your word. As you have sent them into the world, so I have sent them into the world." (17.14, 18) "Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I have made your name known to them." (17.25-26)

One point surely is clear: when we deal wit hJesus Christ we have to deal with the relationship between the Father and the Son. This point has been beautifully developed in a lovely little book by Tom Smail called The Forgotten Father. Already in the Preface he writes of his conviction that the relationship between the divine Father and the equally divine Son is at the very heart of the Gospel. Indeed! Let me put it this way: in the Gospel through our union with Christ we have to do directly with the Holy Spirit joining us to the intimate relationship between the Father and the Son. It is in the Spirit and through the Son that we have fellowship with the Father. Fellowship with the Father- this is the sum and goal of Christian faith because that is the secret of inner life of Jesus Christ. What is Christ’s by nature as Son of the Father is in the Holy Spirit ours by adoption through our sharing in Christ’s life. The whole of Christian faith and life is to be understood, then, as from the Father and to the Father. This is the meaning of our union with Christ. So when we turn to reflect on discipleship through Christ we find we are facing in an irreducibly Trinitarian direction. Everything has to do with God as our Father and his will for us in Jesus Christ, that we should know him and love him and serve him and give him all glory.

In order to develop this and explain it I have found now increasingly in all my teaching that I must speak of the singularity of Christ’s saving Lordship in terms that include the utter theological necessity of the priesthood of Christ. Now this is not an obvious point for most people. This latter point, the priesthood of Christ, is quite unfamiliar in our modern Presbyterianism, yet it is fundamental to a proper understanding and living of the gospel. Look at it this way. Jesus Christ is savingly our Lord in his descent, in his atoning presence in incarnation and atonement as the Word of God to us and for us. But he is precisely Lord also in his ascent, in that he stands in for us at the very points where we fail in faith and discipleship, offering in our place his own life of adoration, prayer, love and service before God. The loss of the doctrine of the Ascension means the loss of any viable basis for a theologically coherent practical theology.

To grasp the full doctrine of Jesus Christ we need to understand that Jesus Christ is both word and act of God to us and word and act of humankind in response to God. He both addresses us as God on God’s behalf, as the new Moses, and addresses God as our brother on our behalf, as the new Aaron. He brings God to us and us to God. Not it is the second half of this equation that is often left out – his priestly ministry before the Father for us. He offers to God in our place what we, because of our sin, cannot and do not offer to God. He stands in for us, praying for us, offering in our place the worship that gladdens the Father’s heart, and obediently loving and serving the will of the Father as only a dearly beloved Son can do.

Now a serious problem arises if we keep omitting the second part, the work of Christ toward the Father as the response of filial love and obedience that God requires. At the last moment it casts everything back upon us, completely undercutting the fact that the Gospel is Good News at just the point where we most need the Gospel to be Gospel, namely, at the point of our response. The most serious impediment to prayer, to proper Christian worship, to the Christian life, and the work of ministry-that is, to Christian discipleship- is the failure to develop a complete and faithful doctrine of Jesus Christ particularly at the point where Christ offers to the Father the true worship and prayer and love and life of ministry as our brother on our behalf. A defective Christology at precisely this point will inevitably lead to a reductionist Christian practice and a weakened self-centered church because everything is then cast back upon us to do what we are not able to do.

This was a wonderful part of the teaching of both John Calvin and John Knox that has such powerful pastoral implications. They understood that as a result of our union with Christ he takes what is ours and makes it his own, and he gives us what is his, that it might be ours by grace. He takes what is ours- our faltering discipleship, our mumbled prayers, our confusing worship, our struggling faith, and so forth- and makes them holy in himself, and in the strength of his own life with the Father offers them to God. Thus we pray ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ knowing as we do that the Holy Spirit joins us to the continuing intercession and adoration of Christ to and before the Father. Our prayers are heard ‘for Christ’s sake.’ In fact, we do everything in this sense ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’ and ‘for Christ’s sake.’ And he takes his own faith, his love for the Father, his own intimate life in God, his own life of obedient service, and he gives them to us, that we might feed upon them in our hearts. He takes what is ours and heals it, making it perfect in himself, presenting it as his own life in God to the Father, and he gives us what is his, the gift of his Sonship, that we might rejoice in his fellowship with the Father and serve the Father aright. Calvin called this the ‘wonderful exchange,’ and it is the center of his theology of the Lord’s Supper. (Institutes, IV, 17, 2) The loss of this great evangelical doctrine of the wonderful exchange, this doctrine that is the fruit of the priesthood of Christ, and of union with Christ, is so tragic because it casts people at the last moment back upon themselves rather upon Christ, that they might share in his life before the Father.

Last Spring I taught a class at Pittsburgh Seminary in which I was trying to stress this to the students by insisting how important it was to understand the full doctrine of jesus Christ, and especially his priesthood. It is one of those basic ideas that is at the same time utterly revolutionary and quite simple, yet the implications of which are seemingly very difficult to grasp in their fullness. I am not sure that many students in the class really got it in spite of my hammering away for ten weeks. In fact, I felt some significant resistance on the part of studetns because it means the replacement of their own piety and good works with the response of christ on their behalf. There is something deeply embedded within our modernist selves that resists our own efforts being replaced by the work of Christ. Perversely, we cling to this deep spiritual failure as if it were better to deny God than to accept the free gift not only of salvation but of Christ’s faith, prayer, worship and ministry on our behalf. Even in our Christian faith, perhaps especially in our Christian faith, we want to be in control. Yet it is precisely our attempts at religion and piety and good works that need to be put aside as we share by the Holy Spirit in union with Christ in our Lord’s own life of faithfulness before the Father. This is the proper framework, by the way, for developing a theology of the sin of pride.

The recovery of the dynamic inner impulse of a fully formed Christology is the true source of renewal in the church. I take seriously indeed the statement given at John 15.5, where our Lord states unambiguously, "Apart from me you can do nothing." If Christ does not lead our worship, and our praying, and our Christian life, as the true priest, offering himself on our behalf, we are cast adrift from his benefits at the point where we most greatly need them. In other words, the whole of Christian faith and life is possible only a sharing in Christ’s own life before the Father through our union with Christ. That is why I have insisted that discipleship must be understood through Jesus Christ. Engrafted into Jesus Christ, in union with him, we participate in his relationship with the Father. This, I think, is the central nature of the dynamic of the Gospel of our sanctification and the heart of discipleship.

All of this is exactly what we find at Hebrews 3.1, where we read that Jesus Christ is the apostle and high priest of our confession. He is the true and sole mediator between God and creation. To repeat what I said above, as the Son of the Father, bearing always the flesh of our humanity, he bring God to us and us to God. Bringing God to us he is the true apostle, the true Word of God. He comes not just revealing something about God, but is God Himself in saving atonement in the humanity of his priesthood as the bearer of our sin. Bringing us to God, he is our high priest, leading us to share both in his own relationship with the Father and in his mission from the Father, for the sake of the world.
There is an ancient theological axiom that goes back to St. Athanasius in the fourth century: Christ became human that we might be made divine (See On the Incarnation, 54) By this, the great Egyptian church father intended that by virtue of the incarnation and the atonement, God in Christ has acted upon us in such a way that united with Christ, partaking of him, we share thereby in his own intimacy with the Father. This does not mean that we become gods; it does mean that united with Christ we share in his own life in God, his righteousness before the Father, his knowledge of the Father, and his love of the Father. By this sharing, that which is his becomes ours by grace. This is the heart of the evangelical theology of the ancient church that was so basic to Calvin’s own theology at this point.

Through Christ, we have access to the inner dynamic reality of the Holy Trinity, sharing in Jesus’ love for and obedience to the Father, in the unity of the Holy spirit. Through Christ, we are as it were folded into the inner life of the Trinity. Put in this way we see that discipleship is first of all and always a work of God’s grace. Discipleship is gospel.

Summed up in this way, let me draw some brief conclusion. 1. We notice the inherent Trinitarian shape of Christian discipleship- it is through Christ to the glory of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. The loss of the doctrine of the trinity always destroys the theological basis for discipleship. 2. We see that discipleship is not something in the first instance that we do, but that Jesus Christ does for us. Jesus is in this sense then the disciple into whose discipleship we are incorporated by grace. 3. Our discipleship is the gift of the Holy Spirit by whom we are joined to or share in Christ’s own discipleship before and to the Father. Our discipleship is constrained at all points by Jesus Christ through our union with him. Our words and acts are not the first words and acts, but are the result of our being joined to the life of Christ before the Father. 4. This means that all discipleship is inherently from the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and to the glory of the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. In sum, then, there is nothing in Christian faith and life that does not mean a sharing in the Trinitarian life of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the basis for all Christian practice. It is the grammar of discipleship.

What does all of this mean? Let me give you some examples. To help my teaching on this I have been using s wonderful little book by James Torrance called Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. Generally speaking, seminary students get very jaded wit hall they have to read. But one student this year, a final year student, from a vigorous evangelical tradition, took a class with me in which I had assigned the Torrance book. He read it, and low and behold, a couple of weeks later he asked for an appointment to tell me that the boo khad changed his life. Understanding the priesthood of Christ, and its meaning for his own ministry, he had undergone such a transformation in his thinking that he called it a conversion experience. He was so excited by the release of energy and his new-found sense of freedom in ministry that he followed me around for a couple weeks like a puppy dog wagging his tail at every opportunity. The significance of this he told me is that he now saw how his ministry was gospel, not obligation, good news not duty, grace not law. No wonder, then, that my student had a profound joy that he needed to share.

While I was writing my book The Search for Compassion I had a remarkable conversation with Henri Nouwen. This wonderful Roman Catholic priest and spiritual writer was visiting Pittsburgh theological Seminary, and I was able to spend some time with him. I was stuck in my writing at a crucial point. I was trying to work out how it was possible for us to be compassionate, when there is only so much of another’s pain that we can share before we too are destroyed by the very acts of our love for others. How can we continue to be compassionate without eventually becoming so battered by the suffering of others that we can be compassionate no more? I put my question to Father Nouwen, and his response was immediate. In effect he said, you are not required to carry the world’s pain upon your shoulders. Christ’s alone bears the pain of the world. Your job, he said to me, is to share in Christ’s pain-bearing ministry. Go and work out your pastoral problem on that basis, through your sharing in Christ’s ministry, he said.

Christ, you see, not only bears upon himself the sins and failures of the world; he also offers that healing and saving ministry to the Father. He stands in for us, not just in an atonement for sin, but also as the Lord who serves the Father in our place. By our union with Christ we are joined to his life and ministry before the Father. It is in this way, through Jesus Christ, that discipleship is a ministry of grace and a work of joy.