Disciple Is a Noun Before It Is a Verb
“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.”
Luke 6:40 · ESV
Somewhere along the way “disciple” turned into something you do to other people. We disciple men. We disciple our kids. It sounds active and useful, and it is not wrong. But in the New Testament the word lands on you before it points at anyone else. A disciple is a learner. An apprentice. Someone still being made.
And Jesus says the apprentice ends up like his master. Notice what he does not say. He does not say the disciple will know what his teacher knows. He says he will be like him. The transfer is not mainly information. It is resemblance.
That should worry us a little. It should also relieve us.
The worry first. Whatever you actually are is what will reproduce. If you carry a quiet contempt for people who disagree with you, the man across the table will pick that up long before he picks up your outline on justification. If you pray only in emergencies, he will learn that prayer is for emergencies. He is watching your marriage, your temper, your phone, the way you talk about your boss when he is not in the room. None of that is on the curriculum. All of it is being taught.
Now the relief. Luke 6:40 does not make you the teacher. Christ is the teacher. You are a disciple who happens to be a few steps down the road, walking with someone a few steps behind you, and both of you are being trained toward the same Master. You do not need to have arrived. You need to be honestly on the way.
Which means the test before you take anyone on is not whether you know enough. Men who wait until they know enough wait forever. The test is whether you are still being made — still in the Word this month and not only teaching from it, still under someone’s correction, still confessing sin rather than managing it.
You cannot hand off what you have not received. But you do not have to finish receiving before you start handing off. Paul told the Philippians to imitate him in the same chapter where he wrote, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect.” A disciplemaker is simply a disciple who has stopped keeping it to himself.
From the Field
The DMM model does not start in a classroom. A man is walked through Operation Timothy by someone else before he ever walks anyone else through it, and the order is not accidental. Roughly ninety Paul teams have been commissioned at Walker State Prison across more than a decade. Every man on every one of them was somebody’s Timothy first.
This Week
What are you already reproducing in the people closest to you without meaning to?
Go Deeper
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
Donald S. Whitney (NavPress). The standard work on the ordinary habits that shape a believer over years. Read it as maintenance on yourself, not as material for someone else.
Habits of Grace
David Mathis (Crossway). Frames the disciplines as means of grace rather than performance, which keeps this whole subject out of the ditch of self-improvement.
Fruit That Won’t Spoil
Roger Erickson, DMM’s founder. More than seventy “intangibles” of one-on-one disciplemaking — precisely the things that transfer by resemblance and never fit on a lesson plan.
Next week: the Great Commission has one imperative — and “go,” “baptize,” and “teach” all serve it.
Lee Truax
President, DiscipleMaking Mission
