DISCIPLESHIP IN CHRIST.
By Robert E. Speer
[Robert E. Speer, in S. S. Times.] CHRIST'S disciples in His day were the people who followed Him, and who listened to His teaching and obeyed it. Some of them left their work and homes, and went with Him wherever He went. Others went with Him long enough to know what His Spirit and message were, and then went back to their own homes and work, and tried there to live as He had taught. But whether they actually left home to go with Him, or stayed at home and tried to serve Him, those were His disciples who in their lives tried to follow and obey Him, having accepted His word about Himself and about themselves, and about the Father of them all, of whom He told them. Now, being a disciple to-day is just what being a disciple then was. The bodily withdrawal of Jesus does not affect the case, except for good. It was expedient, He said, that He should go away, so that discipleship would not be supposed to be dependent upon His presence. To accept Him and His Spirit and His message and—as men only understood after He was gone—His mission and work, and to accept this in a real and vital way, is to be His disciple. This requires no strange process, no intricate, preliminary steps. Any child can be Christ's disciple. All that he needs to do is to love Christ, to trust Christ, to accept Christ as his true Friend and Saviour. As he grows older these things will mean more to him, but this increase of meaning will not affect the fact that their first meaning was valid and sufficient for that time. “I am a follower of Henry George,” says one man. “I am a disciple of Karl Marx,” says another. “I follow Herbert Spencer,” says a third. These men have no difficulty in understanding what these phrases mean. These disciples follow their masters, believe that they are right in their teachings, and reliable and trustworthy in their guidance. “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.” That means at least as much as these other phrases mean. But it means far more. Jesus' doctrine was not a teaching about land or property or economic principles. It involved all these. But it was primarily a personal teaching. It asserted things about Himself and about other men, and about their relations to Him. To be His follower means to accept what He said on these personal questions, and to adjust life to it. How may we know whether we are disciples of Jesus? There are four good tests: 1. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” 2. “If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples.” 3. “If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.” 4. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.”