Why didn’t Jesus ask his disciples to make converts?
In some ways, it’s a hard question for us to consider, two millennia removed from Jesus’ social and religious context. The question struck me several months ago when I came across this passage in Matthew’s Gospel as part of my normal, daily reading: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” (Matthew 23:15, NIV, emphasis added)
I’ve read this stinging rebuke plenty of times but it was that single word, convert, that got me. Being a Seminary graduate, I know barely enough of the Biblical languages to make me dangerous (though not always helpful). The word translated “convert” here is variously translated in English as proselyte. While that word carries a variety of connotations today, it meant something very specific in Jesus’ context.
In the First Century world, a proselyte was a Gentile who went through the ritual process of actually becoming a Jew and thus a full member of the Jewish community. While most scholars would agree that the exact nature of the process was not standardized, there would generally have been at least three important elements: a commitment to keep Torah, a ritual washing, and circumcision.
There are two important observations to make about what Jesus evidently knew in order to say what he said in the aforementioned verse. First, he seemingly had a context for a missionary Jewish faith in which committed Jews would go to Gentiles (at great peril sometimes) and teach them about the Kingdom of God. Second, he was also seemingly aware that the accepted practice was to make Jewish proselytes, or converts, of said Gentiles.
Given those observations, note Jesus’ opening words in what we call the Great Commission, a mere five chapters later in Matthew’s text: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19, NIV) To reframe his words in light of our discussion, Jesus was telling his Jewish disciples to make disciples of him out of the Gentiles, not proselytes.
There is a certain kind of ambivalence that settles in when we’ve heard words used so often in familiar contexts. I think “disciple” is one of those words. From our mission statements to worship services, we repeat the term so often that it’s meaning is often lost. So, what was (and is) a disciple? Simply put, a disciple is a student or an apprentice. In the First Century Jewish World, it was quite common for Rabbis to have a handful of disciples who would learn their interpretation of Torah and overall way of life.
I think it’s worth reinforcing this very important distinction that has ramifications in both the ancient and contemporary context. Jesus could have commissioned his disciples to make Jewish proselytes. He knew the words. Except, he didn’t do that. He asked his disciples to make other disciples. As a matter of fact, this distinction was the fault line that we read about in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s Epistles. The Jews who demanded that Gentile converts be circumcised were simply following their best-known practices. The logic follows – the Gentile converts weren’t actually converts unless they’d gone through the appropriate rituals for conversion (i.e. circumcision). The logic follows, that is, unless Jesus is launching a New Creation through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The invitation for all the Nations was not to become Jewish converts, but students of Jesus and his way of living in the Kingdom of God.
Far from semantics, this difference in verbiage has ramifications for how the church understands mission and evangelism today. The task of the church is not to produce good Methodists or Wesleyans or Presbyterians or Baptists or even, good Christians. The mission is to make students of Jesus, not converts to a religious system. To paraphrase Dallas Willard, the New Testament knows no category of Christian who is not a disciple. We’re either disciples or we’re nothing.
Our particular theological distinctives do matter and they’re not unimportant. But I hope I never forget what Dr. Bob Tuttle said in my Wesleyan Theology class in Seminary: “Follow John Wesley, but only as far as he followed Jesus and no farther.” The point is not to impugn Wesley’s discipleship but to remind us that we are foremost followers of Jesus, not another person or religious system. The early church’s task was to make disciples of Jesus, not of themselves.
This task is always easier said than done though. As teachers, it’s natural to take pride in “our” students. As students, we revel in the wisdom and successes of “our” teachers. Not surprisingly, we see this challenge at play in the Corinthian church. “For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.” (1 Corinthians 3:4–5, NIV)
The problem that Paul (and Dr. Tuttle) recognized was one of identity. Disciples draw their primary identity from their teacher. By necessity, the student is defined by the teacher. If we live as students of Jesus, our identity is causally linked to his being.[2] Frankly, this reality works nicely because Jesus is the Risen Lord and reigns eternally at the right hand of the Father. He can sustain such a relationship. If we understand ourselves primarily as disciples of another person or as converts to a system, we are defining ourselves in terms of that person or system. Such people and systems are, by the very nature of things, not eternal. They will pass away. Thus our identities themselves will be rather frail.
If the juxtaposition between disciples and converts is still murky, I hope a few more contrasts will provide clarity. Disciples are students (again, by definition). They are to learn from their teacher. Disciples ask questions and must be curious. Converts are, by definition, graduates. They have crossed the line to get into the system. They must provide answers and need to be correct. Their standing within the system all but demands it.
Disciples follow the teacher. They take their cues from Jesus. This dynamic is at work when Jesus calls the disciples and “appointed twelve that they might be with him.” (Mark 3:14, NIV) Consequently, the community that forms as a result should be one of equals insomuch as all are under the authority of the Master. Because converts are primarily defined by the system, they follow the rules. The community of the converted easily tends toward a climate of competition.
Disciples are in training. These trainees haven’t arrived even as they are increasingly becoming like the Master (Luke 6:40). Because they are training, grace is preeminent. We give grace to student-drivers and student-teachers, don’t we? Disciples are learning to obey what Jesus commanded and expecting to become love in the world. Converts are burdened by trying to measure up. This was evidently one of the fruits of living under the Pharisees’ teaching: “They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4, NIV) Personally, this was a challenge for me for years – carrying the load of moral obligation. I would profess that I was saved by grace, yet realistically lived with the unbearable burden of trying to be good enough. Jesus, on the other hand, offers to pull the load with us. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. (Matthew 11:30)
The more I thought about the relationship between disciples and converts, the more missionary work of the early church made sense to me. At the same time, I grew more unsettled. I had a very hard time writing this essay for a number of reasons – both personal and professional. From an institutional perspective, it’s hard for me to reconcile mission statements focused on “making disciples” when our actions suggest it’s a subsidiary function of the church. When I was first appointed to the church I currently serve, we read the mission statement of the UMC from bi-fold cards before every meeting. We’d then proceed to talk about our building and worship and parking lots and community stuff – seemingly everything except actually and seriously making disciples of Jesus Christ. If disciple making is the focus of our mission, how can we relegate it to a committee or staff function alongside “worship” and “missions”?
Discipleship is messy because no single curriculum or program gets the job done – the curriculum is the life of the disciple in interactive relationship with Jesus. What’s more, genuine growth “in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ” is hard to measure. We can easily track attendance and giving but how do we measure increased patience and kindness and humility? From my own experience, it seems stories capture transformation far better than spreadsheets. But therein lies our problem because stories seem (and probably are) far too subjective for systemic analysis.
That problem leads to my own personal struggle in writing this essay. This idea has been simmering in me for nearly two decades. I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church in East Tennessee. Needless to say, I was squarely in the evangelical crosshairs of every Baptist in my school growing up. But I was committed to being a good Catholic and not breaking too many rules and living a life of duty and obligation. I went to college and was Confirmed in the Catholic Church at 19. A year later, I met a man named Jeff who took the burden of mentoring and discipling three college kids (myself and two friends) whose verbal professions of faith did not match the content of our lives. Looking back, I realize the incongruence in my life was not a lack of education or religious instruction, but simply discipleship to Jesus. I was a passable Catholic, but not a disciple. And for most of my life, I didn’t know there was a difference.
Now, as I serve a local church in my hometown in East Tennessee, I see the same problems on a larger scale. Our region is wracked by drug and alcohol addictions, rural poverty, healthcare crises, and broken families. But within a 15-minute drive of my house, there are easily more than a hundred churches of every flavor and tradition imaginable. How can we possibly make sense of that? I wonder if it’s not that for all of our churches, there is little of Jesus; for all the Christian Converts, there are too few Disciples of Christ.
While I hesitate to oversimplify things, it would do no harm and much good if we simply reoriented ourselves as Pastors and Leaders within our various churches to the disciple-making mission of the church. Programs and planning and efforts to make converts to bolster our numbers have not and will not bring the transformation in individual lives and communities that so many of us long to see. But I believe, and our wonderful tradition reinforces, that making disciples of Jesus can and does.
So, I hope I never make another convert again.
Comments