The word Christian is used only three times in the New Testament.
To put that in perspective, the word disciple (or apprentice) is used 269 times, which comes as no surprise since the New Testament was written by apprentices of Jesus, for apprentices of Jesus.¹
Just to make it crystal clear…
Christian: 3x
Apprentice: 269x
The word Christian literally means “little Christ” (or “mini Messiah”), which is beautiful. It was originally used as a religious epithet to mock followers of the Way. But over time, our spiritual ancestors embraced the slur and used it to self-identify as those devoted to the imitation of Christ.
Here’s the problem: That is no longer what the word conveys to many people today. To many in the West, a Christian is just someone who mentally ascribes to the bare bones of Christianity (a word never used in Scripture) and may or may not occasionally attend church.
In Michael Burkhimer’s book Lincoln’s Christianity, he wrote about the long-running debate over whether President Lincoln was a Christian. (The spiritual writer John Ortberg referenced this and noted how Lincoln has become a kind of Rorschach test that says more about what we believe than what he believed.² Touché.) Burkhimer said that before you can decide about Lincoln’s Christianity, you must first confront “the essential question of what it means to be a Christian.” He went on to define a Christian as one who believes that “Jesus Christ was divine and part of a Trinity, that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that faith in this doctrine is necessary for one to gain salvation”; and then said, this “is a foundation almost all are familiar with.”³
Now, I believe all of the above, as do pretty much all followers of Jesus everywhere. But what’s striking about this “foundation” that “almost all are familiar with” is that it includes absolutely nothing about following Jesus and intending to obey him.
Hence the rub.
The thing is, the label Christian is one Jesus never used. He said, “Whoever wants to be my apprentice…” not “Whoever wants to put your hand up to become a Christian…”
Now, stay with me; happy thoughts are coming soon. Let’s frame this problem as it pertains to my country, the United States of America. Around 63 percent of Americans self-identify as Christians, though this number continues to decline.⁴ Trying to measure a person’s level of spirituality is tricky, but quite a few surveys put the number of Americans who are following Jesus at around 4 percent.⁵” So…
Christians: 63 percent
Apprentices: 4 percent
My Catholic friends distinguish between Catholics and “practicing Catholics.” The former is more of a cultural or ethnic category, akin to being from Italy or Boston, and the latter is a measure of spiritual devotion.
Could it be time for Protestants to lovingly delineate between Christians and “practicing Christians”? As Saint Maximus said in the seventh century, a time not all that different from our own,
“A person who is simply a man of faith is [not] a disciple.”?⁶
If an apprentice is simply anyone whose ultimate aim is to be with Jesus in order to become like him and live the way Jesus would live if he were in their shoes, then a non-apprentice (whether they identify as an atheist, a devotee of another religion, or even as a Christian) is simply anyone whose ultimate aim in life is anything else.
The problem is, in the West, we have created a cultural milieu where you can be a Christian but not an apprentice of Jesus.
Much preaching of the gospel today does not call people to a life of discipleship. Following Jesus is seen as optional—a post-conversion “second track” for those who want to go further. Tragically, this has created a two-tier church, where a large swath of people who believe in God and even regularly attend church have not re-architected their daily lives on the foundation of apprenticeship to Jesus.
This is an alien idea in the writings of the New Testament. For example, in the literary design of the Gospels, you have two recurring groups: the apprentices and the crowds. The apprentices included all Jesus’ followers the twelve apostles, but also many others, including women. The crowds were simply everyone else. There is no third category of “Christians” who generally agree with most of what Jesus was saying but don’t follow him or make a serious attempt to obey his teachings (but it’s all good ’cause they will “go to heaven when they die”).
This sharp divide between the apprentices and the crowds is a rhetorical device used by all four of Jesus’ biographers. The ambiguity of the term crowds is intentional. It’s a way of saying to the reader, “Which group are you in?”
Are you a face in the crowd?
Or an apprentice of Jesus?
Two millennia later, especially in the West, this question is more important than ever. As Dallas Willard said,
“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who … are identified as “Christians” will become disciples-students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.”⁷
I could not agree more: The greatest issue facing the world today is not climate change, surveillance capitalism, human rights, or the specter of nuclear war, as utterly crucial as all these are. But can you imagine how many of those problems would effectively be solved overnight if the billions of living humans who identify as Christians all became apprentices of Jesus? If their driving aim was to approach every challenge as Jesus would?
You see, Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity; he’s looking for apprentices in the kingdom of God.
Adapted from Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become Like Him. Do as He Did. Copyright © 2024 by John Mark Comer. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.
To keep reading, click here to grab a copy of John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.
¹Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 3.
²John Ortberg, Eternity is Now in Session: A Radical Rediscovery of What Jesus Really Taught About Salvation, Eternity, and Getting to the Good Place (Carol Stream, I11.: Tyndale, 2018), 49.
³Michael Burkhimer, Lincoln’s Christianity (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme, 2007) xi.
⁴Gregory A. Smith, “About Three in Ten US Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated,” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated.
⁵“American Worldview Inventory 2023,” Barna, February 28, 2023, www.arizonachristian.edu.wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CRC_AWVI2023_Release1.pdf.
⁶“Maximus the Confessor: Two Hundred Texts on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation of the Son of God,” Orthodox Church Fathers, https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/philokalia/maximus-the-confessor-two-hudred-texts-on-theology-and-the-incarnate-dispensati.html.
⁷Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006).
