A Disciple Makes Disciples.

What if we were asked by the Lord once we get there, “Why did My gospel stop with you? Why didn’t you tell others the good news, that they too could be freed from the shackles of the world?”

I know that that question is convicting and perhaps uncomfortable for many of us, but when you consider the price that Jesus paid for us to gain our freedom, doesn’t it make sense to pass on the love? As Christians, we’re all committed to love. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1Jn 4:9-11).

If all of us really had a heart for those who don’t know Jesus, or for those who still don’t walk in the full freedom of the Spirit, can you just imagine how quickly the world around us would change for the better? If we all committed to share His love with the outside world, and to train others to do the same, we’d probably have the world reach VERY shortly.

I was reading some recent stats concerning the unreached world, and there are still 2.8 billion people who’ve never heard the Gospel. For thousands languages don’t have Bibles. And 50% to 70% of people in the world cannot read their own language. If all the money donated for the Gospel was invested in nothing but the expansion of the Word of God to the unsaved world, and if all churches had an ongoing Discipleship Course and a “Sending” program, can you imagine what difference that would make?

The apostle John said, “This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed His life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it, but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear” (1Jn3:16 MSG).

Disciple-ing is all throughout the New Testament. First, Jesus commanded us to teach and train disciples when He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mat 28:19).

Then Jesus explained the entire concept of Christianity in John 15 when He said that if we abide in Him, we will bear fruit, “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). Disciple-making is not the mere maturation of immature people; it is the creation (through fruit bearing) of a new life in Christ.

Just as Jesus came preaching the Gospel (Mt 4:17), calling men to follow Him (Mt.18–22), He tells His disciples to go and be fishers of men. And how do His disciples make disciples? With the Word!

And then when Paul was training Timothy, he said, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others also” (2Timothy 2:2).

Timothy was to teach this same message to others who were capable of passing along that same knowledge. This is not a reference to evangelism, since these were “faithful men”, or people who already believed in Christ. And these trained believers would “be able to teach others also”. This is the primary means by which the Gospel is spread: through discipleship.

In essence, Paul was teaching here to put four (4) generations of discipleship in motion: from Paul, to Timothy, to teachers, to others. Passing on the faith is a multi-generational process. Christian discipleship has the long view in mind: reaching others who will reach still others.

Will you pass it on? Will you tell someone today? It’s not that difficult. Anttracts.com has free tracts to download for you to distribute, and you can also download the Handbook For a Disciple of Jesus for FREE to start teaching others.

And there are MANY more resources for free. The materials are there. So what if we did not wait on our respective churches to initiate it, but were to start doing it on our own. That’s what commitment is, right? Let’s start with one to two, to six and to twelve people, on Zoom, just once a week, one class from the Bible, the “Handbook For a Disciple of Jesus”,  and see the results in three months.