Feb 22, 2018
Rev. Carl Greene
Hebron SDB Church, PA
I love Easy Cheese — cheesy goodness that comes out of a room-temperature can. I can squirt a little bit of this yellow gold onto a cracker, on a sardine, or simply directly into my mouth. Yumminess results no matter the vehicle used to deliver this excellent source of calcium. My trusty can of Easy Cheese is also proudly labeled as a “Pasteurized Cheese Snack.” Just what does that mean? Since the can also advertises that Easy Cheese is “Made with Real Cheese” — it makes me wonder what else it is made with.
I am not out to detract from the deliciousness of this fine snack food. But, it is certainly not cheese. It might have a little bit of cheese in it, but it is far from truly cheese. There is a connection with discipleship here. As a church, we will label all sorts of things as discipleship building — but quite often this is more akin to calling Easy Cheese true cheese.
Let’s unpack this some more. If we consider discipleship to be knowledge transfer — that there are a certain number of classes and books to be read to attain disciple status, we are missing significant pieces. Knowledge is certainly an ingredient in discipleship, but not the only one.
In the last article, we considered Ephesians 3 to see Paul’s prayer for discipleship — which started with praying for power. To realize discipleship, we must encounter the power of God working within us. From this point, let’s look at two more pieces of Paul’s prayer for discipleship: indwelling and knowledge.
INDWELLING
In Ephesians 3:17, Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith… .” The Greek word behind dwell is katoikesai — it is a permanent habitation, not a mere stop-off point. That means that part of Paul’s prayer is for an ongoing, sustaining faith. This faith has two links: grounded and rooted.
Paul prays that Christ living in the disciple will provide a sense of being grounded. Grounded is a construction term — not a flashback to what happened when I misbehaved as a youth. This grounding of Ephesians 3:17 points back to Jesus as the cornerstone of our lives — something that Paul had talked about earlier: “…Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” (Eph. 2:20-21) Christ being in our lives means that we are built upon Him. This is the foundation we work from, not the accolades that others give us nor the achievements we are able to accomplish personally. Who we are flows from Christ as our foundation — in whom we are rooted.
Paul also prays that disciples will be rooted. Through the indwelling of Christ in our lives, there is a sense that we know our true identity because we are rooted in the truth. This is incredibly important to us. When we ask Jesus to forgive us our sins and lead us as Lord, we are also uncovering our true identity as His child. This is very important in a world in which we are measured according to achievement and accolades. We are human beings not human
doings — our true identity is through Who we “be” with, not what we do. Who we are grounded upon and rooted in establishes our identity — not how successful my previous day happened to feel.
How many times do we try to go to sleep at night and start replaying disappointments and failures? In many ways, we get the replay of the last few days of events and what went right or wrong. We are trying to go to sleep, and rather than knowing the blessing of being grounded and rooted in Christ, we realize all of our shortcomings and ways that we have missed someone else’s expectations. Paul’s prayer for indwelling calls us to yearn to know Christ’s presence more in our lives. This flows through what we are rooted and grounded in: in love.
When we plant a garden, we need to carefully choose the best location for plants to thrive. Although everyone’s favorite garden vegetable, glorious zucchini, is resilient and grows like a weed, it will grow much better in tilled soil than in asphalt. The same is true for us as disciples.
We will grow and thrive when we are rooted and grounded in Christ’s love. When this is what defines us, we live with the freedom of knowing that we are His disciples, rather than knowledge accumulators who need to pass a test of merit or ability to be a true disciple.
Paul’s prayer for indwelling calls us to cast off the lies that we tend to believe. Often times, lies have a way of developing a wedge between who God has called us to be as His disciples and what we are willing to function as. If I believe a lie about my identity as something other than rooted and grounded in Christ, I will always be striving to prove myself rather than joyfully serving my Savior. Discipleship is not a terrible burden, but an opportunity to truly live the life God has called us to. This is all the more reason for us to pray that we will know and experience the indwelling of Christ as disciples.
KNOWLEDGE
While Paul prays for power and indwelling in this discipleship prayer, he also prays for knowledge. In Ephesians 3:18-19, he prays that we “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
First, there is a clear knowledge target — facts and truths that point in a certain direction. The target is to know the dimensions (breadth, length, height, depth) of Jesus’ love (18). Second, this knowledge target actually surpasses knowledge (19). That is an intriguing piece to think about.
Apple pie helps explain knowledge that surpasses knowledge. If I see a picture of an apple pie and read a description about it, I can have knowledge of how good it is. Yet, when I smell a pie fresh out of the oven, when I taste it warm out of the pan — that is when my experience moves me beyond baseline knowledge. When I live the apple pie experience, my knowledge surpasses knowledge.
Paul is not just praying for a subjective apple pie experience here though — his prayer seeks that the disciple will know objective truth. The prayer is to be filled with the “fullness
of God.” This is experiential — of knowing God in and with me. Yet, it is also objective: I will increasingly know Who God is. There is objective truth to be known about God, about Who Jesus Christ is — and the wonderful source for that is the unchanging Word of God found in Scripture. When disciples increasingly know Who God is through knowledge, there should once again be the result of experience — the experience of looking more and more like the One that I am learning about.
POWER, INDWELLING, KNOWLEDGE
The end of praying for disciples to grow through power, indwelling, and knowledge is not a church growth recipe. It certainly can help in yielding growth — but that is a byproduct, not the goal. Paul presents the goal in Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” We pray for and seek growth through discipleship to glorify God, to honor Him. If our church discipleship effort is designed with the primary goal of increasing numbers or to pass along knowledge only, we are sadly missing out on the call Paul’s prayer offers here.
When it comes to discipleship, we often decide what class and curriculum should be offered. That is incredibly important — but only one ingredient of discipleship. If we truly believe that discipleship is a work of God, then prayer should be our first stop in the process. How does your church pray for new believers? How does your church sustain a prayer effort for leaders of the church? How do you pray for your friends to experience Christ’s power at work in their lives? Do you pray for your children or nieces and nephews to know the indwelling of Jesus Christ? Do you yearn for future generations to not only embrace Biblical literacy, but to also know the living Savior?
Paul’s prayer sets a high bar to think about as churches. We can call all sorts of things discipleship just like we can call a “Pasteurized Cheese Snack” cheese. Things that are good are not necessarily the best. We may have lots of good things that should continue going on within our churches — but perhaps there is a discipleship piece that is missing. Perhaps we should not be satisfied with discipleship that does not match up with Paul’s prayer of discipleship. What if there is more to discipleship than we currently engage in as a church? That is an exciting future to consider.
