Spotlight Interview with Rick Lawrence on true discipleship: Following Jesus, not principles

When I say the word discipleship, what do you think of? Jesus tells us to go and make disciples. Well, what does that look like? I mean, did he pass out a curriculum? He was the pattern that, by living and walking alongside him and listening to him, they learned the character and the nature of Jesus. Then, after Jesus ascends to heaven, he sends the Holy Spirit and discipleship becomes this transforming process by one degree of glory to another in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. 

Is that the discipleship model you talk about at your church— or do you talk more often about people coming to an intellectual understanding and then applying it to their life? That puts all the pressure, all the responsibility, and then all the glory on the person on the disciple.

I spoke with Rick Lawrence, author of Editing Jesus, about discipleship— and whether or not it’s something that’s happening to us by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit or something that we think we do by our own human effort as we seek to understand and apply God’s word and God’s will.

This is an edited transcript of Carmen’s interview with Rick Lawrence. Listen to the entire interview on MyFaithRadio.com or wherever you get podcasts. Interview begins at 27:00 mark.

Carmen: Talk about the strategies that we have for discipleship, all the models of discipleship and methodologies that focus on understanding a biblical principle and then applying that to my life versus just the way of Jesus.

Rick: So that “understand and apply” phrase that you just used is something that I have been using now for 20 years as a shorthand to try to describe what this thing is. I was just talking with Paul, the producer, and I said, this is the lie that’s in plain sight throughout the church. And the central lie is that we can find our way to goodness like the t-shirts that say be a good person. That actually is our religion in America, both across every denominational line and Christian and non-Christian. It’s our universal religion, which is— try harder to be better, be a good person. And the lie in that is that that is attainable for us. So Jesus went to great lengths and Paul wrote whole books on Romans is one on how that is impossible. We can’t be a good person apart from our branch in the vine attachment to Jesus.

And so what Jesus has laid out for us and that we have so much struggled, not just his early disciples but us today, we’ve so much struggled with what he’s laid out for us, which is he wants an intimate relationship. And when we follow principles which are biblical in their rootedness, it seems like we are doing what a disciple does, but just look at the language. We’re following principles instead of following Jesus. And so where this gets hot, where people respond to this in a hot way is, “well, those principles are from the Bible, so why shouldn’t we follow them?” And I’m saying, well, they’re true. But what Jesus came to do is reestablish an intimate dependent relationship, something that looks like a marriage– the bride and the bridegroom. And when we follow principles instead of following him relationally, it subtly takes us away from our dependent bride and bride groom relationship with him.

Carmen: So I have a suggestion and recommendation. I like to play with words and everybody listening knows that. And so for me, principle is one of those words that over time I had to learn to spell the right way.

So the principal, the principal, PAL, is a person. And so what you are trying to get us to do is to follow the principal as opposed to the principles. The principals are not a person.

Rick: Carmen, you have said so many things in our conversations that I’ve said later, oh, I wish I could have put that in my book. There’s another one!

Carmen: I love that I’m just here to edit. I’m not editing Jesus. I’m just editing Rick.

Rick:  I love that so much. That is a great shorthand way to follow the person, not the thing. And I love this story that we don’t really talk that much about, just before the cross when Jesus is talking to his disciples and he’s telling them that he wants them to follow where he’s going. And Thomas who’s just, he’s not doubting Thomas, he’s super honest Thomas. That’s a better nickname for him. Thomas is always the most honest person in the room. And Thomas goes, he says, what we would’ve said, he’s exasperated. He was like, well, Jesus, we don’t know where you’re going, so how are we supposed to follow you if we don’t know where you’re going? And Jesus’ response is very Jesus-y. He says, well, Thomas, I am the way, the truth and the life. 

So think about this. Thomas is saying what we would say, which is, “Hey, you’re going to go somewhere, Jesus. What are the steps, the paths, the maps, the way. Show us what the way is.” Jesus says, I think with probably a grin on his face, says, “Thomas, I am the way.” What he’s saying is, Thomas, if you are attached to me, in me, dependent on me, in a relationally-deepening way attached to me, then you’ll be on the way because I am the way. So this is really hard for us to think this way that we could go through our lives guided and directed doing and not doing out of a relational intimacy of being in Jesus rather than following external guidelines for our behavior that are wholly dependent on the strength of our will and people that fully invest in the strength of their will in their discipleship were Pharisees. No one in the time of Jesus, no one took his ire more than Pharisees and it was because they had determined that through their strength of will, they could be a good person.

And he accused them of tying heavy burdens onto people’s backs that the Pharisees themselves couldn’t carry and yet they were putting them on the backs of people. What he was referencing is all of the rules and regulations and principles that you were supposed to follow, that the Pharisees themselves, even though they said they could, they really couldn’t follow. That’s why they were hypocritical and they were putting those huge burdens on the backs of people. Jesus was infuriated by that. He said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, and he wasn’t kidding. To be attached to him and in independent intimate relationship with him is easy and light. That’s the truth. He’s just telling us the truth. He doesn’t want a heavy, burdensome life for us.

Carmen: I think that you are giving such encouragement to us right now. It’s not rules and regs, it’s not a list of principles, it’s not a checkoff list. It’s not something I can do to make myself better. The life of a Christian is not like a self-improvement project. Discipleship is about becoming by one degree of glory to another, more and more like Jesus. But that happens by my actively submitting to the Holy Spirit that’s at work within me, right? He’s doing the work.

Rick: You might say another way to think about it is where will I invest my agency, my participation in all of this? Where will I invest that? What I’m saying is to invest that in coming to know and behold and abide in Jesus. And the way we do that is we pay ridiculous attention to him. We slow down, pay attention, and out of that we develop a habit of relying on him obviously through prayer, but prayer becomes something like breathing. The longer you sink into this, you just turn yourself to Jesus all the time, kind of reflexively. That’s just what happens when you become more and more impressed by him spending time with him in awe of what he says and does. That’s what happens. You become more dependent on him. So that way of living is freeing because you’re not all the time remembering the three things you were supposed to be doing today that the pastor said on Sunday you should be doing or the many, many biblical principles that are throughout the Scripture.

The difference is that those things that we call biblical principles right now are actually the fruit of an intimate relationship with Jesus. They grow on the ends of our branches when we are intimately connected to him, that fruit just grows. Instead, what we have done is because we’re human beings, we’re sheep. Jesus said, because we’re human beings. What we’ve done is said, I’m going to tape that fruit onto the end of those branches. I’m going to create that fruit and that fruit will then prove to me that I am a disciple after I’ve created it. The truth is when the fruit appears because of our intimate relationship with Jesus, that proves the relationship that says I’m attached, that says, I am abiding in Jesus when I see fruit on my branches

Carmen: Because the fruit just grows. Right? Yeah. That’s so good. So many passages of Scripture come to mind as you say that. And then also the image of a person with fake fruit taped on them or fruit that they’ve gone and gotten from somebody else’s tree or tried to claim as their own. All of that sounds so ridiculous when you say it that way. 

Let’s take a very brief break and then let’s continue our conversation here with Rick Lawrence, thank you for the affirmation coming in on the text line right now. Mary Rose is saying, “I just felt the Holy Spirit jump on me since I’ve been looking for this conversation. This is the best stuff I’ve heard in a long time from anything from the church or a Christian conversation.” Well, Mary Rose, we’re so glad this is affirming to you today, building you up as a member of the body. 

Let me just go ahead and let you know you cannot improve on Jesus. You just can’t. You cannot improve on Jesus. And so in any way that we have edited Jesus is a way that we have made discipleship more difficult and complicated and ineffective versus better. There is no better discipleship process than the one Jesus invites us into, come to him to abide in him, and then by the power of the Holy Spirit to allow our lives to be transformed by him from the inside out. 

Rick, talk with us a little bit more about, because we’re doers. I mean, I realize we’re called human beings, but we’re doers. We like a list. We want to know what to do. And so if trying harder is not what I’m supposed to be doing, what am I supposed to be doing to become more and more a disciple of Jesus?

Rick: Yeah, that is a great question, Carmen, and it makes me think of the person who posted that note on your text line. I was just delighted and she said, this is the best thing I’ve heard in the church. Well, all we are doing right now is sort of capsulizing what Jesus came to teach and model and transform us into. It’s just him. What she’s reacting to is his countercultural way of bringing transformation into our lives, and it’s very freeing. That’s why the gospel is good news. But a lot of us who’ve grown up in the church, we called it good news, but actually underneath everything, we kind of thought of it as bad news because every week we got a new set of things we were supposed to be trying harder to get better at, and it felt like bad news. The good news came in the cracks and the fissures of all that where we got little glimpses of who Jesus is and what he said and how extraordinary he is.

So the good news is that he did come to invite us to take his yoke on us, which means the yoke is something that was put on a team of oxen to pull a cart. So Jesus is saying, in life, we are not just not doing things. We’re going to pull a cart, but take my yoke upon you to pull the cart and the yoke we’re taking, think about this for a second. It’s two oxen in the yoke. Let just imagine that in that yoke, one side is a mouse and the other side is an elephant, and now you’re going to pull the cart. Well, Jesus is saying, I want you to pull the cart with me, but I’m going to pull most of the weight of the cart, but attach yourself to me and I will help pull the cart instead of the way we typically think about this is, man, don’t put anything more in my cart.I’ve got too much to pull. 

So what do we do? Well, we invest ourselves, our own agency in pulling the cart. One way to think about that is the widow who put her two pennies in the temple offering and no one was watching her except for Jesus, and he loved what she did, but no one cared what she was doing because it was too small. It was insignificant. Jesus thought it was incredibly significant what she did because even though what she had was small, she gave it all. And that’s the thing that he’s inviting us into whatever we have to give, give it, no matter how small in our relationship with him and he maximizes that. He’s the elephant across on the other side of the yoke pulling on our cart. So what we do is we slow down and pay better attention to Jesus at the start.

I recommend people who are just kind of starting out with this. Tell yourself, if you regularly read Scripture, tell yourself, I’m just going to read the gospel of John and I’m going to slow way down, and when I finish the gospel of John, I’m going to go back and start it again. I’m going to give myself three months and I’m not going to personally read anything in Scripture outside of one of the gospels, just as an experiment, an adventure. And when I finish it, I’ll go back and reread it again until the three months is up. However little snippets that I read it in, the coverage is not the issue. Slowing down to pay better attention to how wondrous amazing Jesus is. The goal, and the way I recommend people do that is they stop jumping over mud puddles when they read, when they come out to something that they don’t understand fully or couldn’t explain to someone else what they just read or have always assumed it’s one way, but if you slow down, you think, oh, that’s different than I thought it was.

You slow down and you wallow in those things and ask the Spirit to help you understand. He’s the rabbi inside of us. So ask the Holy Spirit to teach us as we’re slowing down and he will reveal Jesus to us. That’s what Jesus said the Spirit was coming to do. He told his disciples over and over again when the Spirit comes, he’ll teach you everything about me. That is his job description. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job description. So ask the Spirit, show me everything about Jesus as I’m slowing down, and then out of that, begin to depend more on him. Stop. When you recognize that you’re depending on yourself for something and you’re stressing about it, stop. Offer it to him and invite him in just as simple as that and keep doing that until it becomes a pattern in your life.

Carmen: I’m so grateful for the conversation today and the ongoing conversation that we’re having with you. I am looking forward to the next conversation, but I want to stop and immerse myself in this one. It occurs to me that I’ve got folks in my life that I want to share this specific conversation with them because they have been trying so hard to be a disciple, and really they need to stop trying and they just need to return to Jesus and walk with him, get under the yoke of his teaching as a rabbi, snuggle up next to him, pay attention to every step that he’s taking and walk with him. That’s what we need to do. And so the invitation is for you today as well. Rick, as always, brother, thank you so much for blessing us today.