Teachings and Life of Jesus in Disciple Making
- The teachings and life of Jesus anchor the Great Commission, where making disciples means teaching people to obey everything he commanded, not just giving information.
- Rooted in passages like Matthew 7 and John 13, obedience-based discipleship shows that real love calls people to follow God’s will and find true joy in him.
- This conversation urges disciple makers to let Jesus be the hero of their story, shaping both their message and lifestyle as they model his way of life for others.
Why are the teachings and life of Jesus important for disciple making? It’s because Jesus shows us by his life and teachings how we should live as disciples.
Matthew 28:19–20 (NIV) says:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.”
A lot of people think the Great Commission is just about making disciples by teaching. But it actually says, “Teach them to obey everything I’ve commanded you.”
Jesus taught his disciples to really follow him. In Matthew 7:21 (NIV), he said:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
He goes on to say:
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24, NIV)
So in disciple making, the teachings and life of Jesus are really important. This is what we sometimes call “obedience-based discipleship.” That’s really what Jesus teaches.
Jesus’ life is also super important. It’s not just that he gave us these teachings. When God appeared in the person of Jesus and called us to be disciples of Jesus, he also gave us a life. The heartbeat of that life is the way Jesus loved.
One of the things that has really convicted us is that we want to be people who, when people look at us, they see that love is what drives us, because that’s the way Jesus was. But his love also drove him to call people to obedience. It wasn’t a fuzzy love that was just, “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” It was a love that said, “I love you so much, I want you to be a God-follower. I want you to find your true joy.”
Jesus described it for us when he said, “A new command I have for you: Love one another.” Then he said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35, NIV).
“The heartbeat of that life is the way Jesus loved.”
So the ultimate sign of true disciples is the way they love—and that they love like Jesus.
Put both of these together, and you’ve got the teachings of Jesus and the model of Jesus. As disciples, that’s what we focus on: his teachings and his model.
The thing we’re most convinced about today is that if we want to be disciple makers, and if we really just want to live with joy, Jesus needs to be the hero of our story.
In the world we live in right now, marketing and advertising want to tell you that you are the hero of your story. But what we’ve discovered is that we make lousy heroes. In the New Testament, Jesus is the hero of everybody’s story.
Even the word “Christian” is only used a couple of times in the New Testament, while “disciple” is used hundreds of times. Disciples were called Christians because they were so crazy about Jesus. That’s who they talked about all the time.
If we’re going to be what we’re talking about here, we have to say that Jesus is the hero of our story and live like that.
So we follow Jesus’ teachings and model our lives after Jesus’ life.
This is Question #1 discussed in Disciple Making: The Core Mission of the Church, by Bobby Harrington & Scott Sager.
Start with the whole picture: what disciple making is and how to do it.
