GOAL #3: DO AS HE DID

“Go and make apprentices of all kinds of people” (Matthew 28:19). So read Jesus’ closing words to his apprentices.

This is exactly what you would expect a rabbi to say to his stu­dents at the end of their training. After all, a rabbi’s goal wasn’t just to teach, but also to raise up disciples after himself to carry on his teaching and way of life. To this day, upon their ordination rabbis are commissioned to “raise up many disciples,” in a liturgy dating back to the time of Jesus.

Now, track with me, as this is a very simple idea that’s lost on so many Christians: If you are an apprentice of Jesus, your end goal is to grow and mature into the kind of person who can say and do all the things Jesus said and did.

Children often get this intuitively; they read the story of the good Samaritan, and their first impulse is to stop every time you drive by somebody with a flat tire. Because Jesus ended that story by saying, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Or they hear the stories of Jesus healing the sick, and the next time their friend from pre­school has a cold, they hug them and pray for them to get better. But something happens to us over time where we are socially conditioned to dampen that impulse.

What if that impulse is the Spirit?

What if that inner prompt of the heart is the Spirit working in us to go and do the kinds of things Jesus did?

As Jesus’ apprentice John put it in the New Testament, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:5-6).

All this is leading us to goal #3: Do as he did. The final goal of an apprentice is to carry on the work of the master. At the end of the day, that’s what apprenticeship is ultimately for.

When you think about doing the kinds of things Jesus did, which ones seem like the biggest stretch? Why? What’s your unique contribution from God to the wider world? Are you making it? What role do you play in the family of God, the church? Are you playing it?