Discipleship: Our Calling to Holiness and Mission

Today’s reading continues in Section V: Discipleship – Our Calling to Holiness and Mission.Read here.

Our Lord Jesus commands us to be disciples and commissions us to make disciples.

We affirm that the mission of God’s people is to fulfil the commission that the Lord Jesus gave to his disciples—to make disciples through the announcement of what God has achieved in sending his Son into a rebellious and broken world. Those charged with the task of announcing God’s good news to all peoples must themselves live as disciples and understand that the proper aim of our mission is the transformation of those who hear and believe the good news to live as disciples who obey all that the Lord taught. Through this transformation of individuals, God achieves his mission to restore humanity through the gospel into the image of Christ and, with it, to renew and restore all creation. The fulfilment of God’s purpose to renew humanity is the local church, the manifestation of the heavenly gathering of God’s people of every time and place, from every nation and people. As such, the formative power of the gospel has both individuals and the local church as its object. The formation of mature disciples is inextricably bound up with the growth and maturity of churches into the fullness of Christ’s likeness through the Spirit-empowered ministry of its individual members. (Matt 22:37-40; 28:18-20; Eph 4:11-14)

We cannot make disciples without announcing the good news and cannot be disciples without a deep engagement with a broken world.

We affirm that those formed as disciples, both individually and corporately, will invariably find themselves deeply engaged with a world broken by injustice and sin in their families, neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, and societies. Our task in mission, therefore, is not simply one of announcing a message in order to secure professions of Christian faith. Rather, our evangelistic task is to announce the message of a crucified Messiah as we live lives that accord with that message with the aim of seeing others formed in this same pattern of life. The pursuit of righteousness in our personal lives, our homes, our churches, and in the societies in which we live can no more be separated from the announcement of the gospel than being a disciple can be separated from making disciples.

As disciples, we experience transformation as both an initial and ongoing experience of the gospel grace.

We affirm that a disciple is a person whose life has been transformed by the gospel. This transformation begins when we repent of our sin and believe the good news. However, like seed planted in good soil, the good news does not bring the fullness of transformation or bear the fruit of transformation all at once. Rather, this transformation takes place gradually over the course of a lifetime in which the increase of holiness and love demonstrates the reality of the gospel’s transforming power. Both the initial experience of transformation and its ongoing realisation are the work of God’s Spirit by grace through faith to unite believers to the life of Christ and to one another within the body of Christ.