If you are not a disciple of Jesus Christ, will you go to heaven? We’ve been talking about discipleship and some of the more important points to consider about what Jesus said about discipleship.
What do disciples of Jesus do with their money? For the past few episodes, we’ve been talking about the very important subject of discipleship, what it means to be a disciple.
Hopefully, you’re in full agreement with me that there are no two categories of Christians, believers and disciples. That, in fact, all true believers in Jesus are disciples. Because if you believe in Jesus, you’re going to follow and obey Him and be willing to pay whatever price that you have to in order to successfully follow Him.
You might be wondering why I would write on the subject of polygamy. Let me assure you it is not because I’m advocating it for anyone or considering it myself. I think polygamists—whether they be ancient biblical characters or their modern counterparts—generally err on a grand scale. I also think, however, there are some good reasons to study what Scripture has to say on the subject. One is because it can teach us something about our own relationship with God. I hope to provoke your thinking, as always. But first, some trivia:
We’ve been talking on Little Lessons about a very important subject, the subject of discipleship. Because Jesus told His apostles, “Go all the world, make disciples. Teach them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you” (see Matthew 28:19-20).
That’s what Jesus wants. That should be every minister’s goal. That should be every church’s mission statement. That’s what we ought to all personally be pursuing. And we should be evaluating ourselves. Am I truly a disciple of Christ?
We’ve been talking in our last two previous Little Lessons about the subject of making disciples, and so the question that I posed at the beginning of this Little Lesson is certainly related to that.
What should be the mission statement of every church in the world?
We’re going to kind of pick up where we left off on our previous Little Lesson, as we were talking about the erroneous idea that there are two categories of Christians: those who are believers in Jesus, then the higher class of Christians, the real committed Christians, those who are disciples of Christ.
I began to expose the error in that type of thinking, because it’s just completely unbiblical. Any honest person who studies the Bible is going to come to that conclusion. This is not some difficult thing to figure out from Scripture. It’s just amazing though that more people aren’t talking about this.
We’re going to talk about the idea that there are two classes of Christians: the believers (that is, all those who believe in Jesus) and then the disciples who are often defined as the really committed believers.
I’m going to just spill the beans right off the bat here. That’s false and unbiblical teaching!
Everybody wants to have a life that’s meaningful, one that transcends just the everyday run-of-the-mill, in-the-trenches, survival existence. We want to have something that transcends that going on in our lives.
Even people who are not Christians, I think, find themselves with that same kind of desire. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
On our previous lesson we were talking about what happens when you die. And, I emphasized the fact that your spirit evacuates your body, and maybe angels transport you to the throne of God.
Sooner or later (it doesn’t really make any difference in eternity), we all have to stand before God and give an account.
What happens at the moment of death? Well, it’s important, first of all, to understand that you are more than just a physical being, more than just a body and a brain and internal organs.
Scripture says that we are spirit, soul and body. The spirit and the soul have been variously defined, but I think everybody can agree that the hidden person of the heart (Romans 7:22) as Paul refers to the spirit, is the real you. It’s the part of you that when the body is no longer functioning, no longer alive, the spirit then lives on.