Outside the Camp

Our last dis­cus­sion focused on the road laid down by Jesus for his fol­low­ers who came after him. In this install­ment we will look at these ones, the very first to know and fol­low Jesus’ Way. In order to do so, we will exam­ine some of the ways the Scrip­tures describe them.

Dis­ci­ples & Apostles

Jesus’ fol­lower were called dis­ci­ples, or stu­dents. In that time a dis­ci­ple not only learned through lis­ten­ing to his teacher’s instruc­tion; but also by observ­ing his con­duct. Among his dis­ci­ples, “He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach” (Mark 3:14) By being in his clos­est com­pany they could observe all facets of his life and learn directly from him. This enabled them to preach, not only in word but in action. Dis­ci­ples of Christ were thus defined not only by their teach­ings but by their con­duct. Prior to ascend­ing back to the Father, Jesus gave his dis­ci­ples, a com­mis­sion that Matthew records as:

Go there­fore and make dis­ci­ples of all the nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teach­ing them to observe all things that I have com­manded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:16–20

So these dis­ci­ples were given the task of mak­ing other dis­ci­ples; and in doing so they were entrusted to pass down Jesus’ com­mands. Just as the orig­i­nal dis­ci­ples man­i­fested the char­ac­ter of Christ; they would teach oth­ers to do so as well.

Among Jesus’ orig­i­nal dis­ci­ples, the twelve he par­tic­u­larly selected were called “apos­tles”, which means “sent ones”. By keep­ing them in his con­stant com­pan­ion, Jesus was thus prepar­ing them to show his way to oth­ers. When they went out to all parts of the world, it was not to get peo­ple to give men­tal accep­tance to some the­o­log­i­cal creed but rather to teach them to phys­i­cally observe in their lives the things that Jesus com­manded and the way he him­self lived. These sent ones were to demon­strate Jesus and make fol­low­ers. As an apos­tle, Paul could later write, “Imi­tate me, just as I also imi­tate Christ.” (1 Cor 11:1)

Wit­nesses

Shortly before leav­ing this world and going back to the Father, Jesus proph­e­sied that his apos­tles would “serve as wit­nesses.” (Luke 21:3) Later, Jesus again fore­told, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be wit­nesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Though his apos­tles had pre­vi­ously man­i­fested fear­ful­ness before men, Jesus gifted them the power of the Holy Spirit to enable them to give a bold tes­ti­mony for his sake. The “Acts of the Apos­tles” records how these men gave a pow­er­ful wit­ness to Jesus, even in the face of per­se­cu­tion. (Acts 3:15; Acts 10:39–41) All are called to give up much in ser­vice of Jesus, even their phys­i­cal life. The Bible speaks of some wit­nesses who made such a sac­ri­fice such as Stephen and Antipas (Acts 22:20; Rev 3:14). That is why the Greek word for wit­ness, mar­tys, has birthed the term, “mar­tyr”, or some­one who dies giv­ing the ulti­mate wit­ness of their belief.

Chris­tians

This small fol­low­ing of Lord car­ried his name and this shows up in some of the early names applied to them. Some opposers referred to them as “the sect of the Nazarenes”; because they fol­lowed Jesus who was from Nazareth. (Acts 24:5) One of the ear­li­est com­mu­ni­ties of dis­ci­ples was in Anti­och where believ­ers in Jesus were given the name “Chris­tians” (Acts 11:26) Chris­t­ian means “lit­tle Christ” or “like Christ”. This was not some throw away title; in order for these ones to merit this descrip­tion it serves they would have to be liv­ing as Jesus.

The Fam­ily of God

Dur­ing in his life, Jesus was bring­ing together a new fam­ily, the fam­ily of God. In the early con­gre­ga­tion the real­ity of this new rela­tion­ship between believ­ers comes to the fore. In Paul’s let­ters the con­cept of fam­ily is a com­mon metaphor in describ­ing rela­tions between mem­bers of the Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tion. He sees believ­ers as mem­bers of “a fam­ily of faith” (Gal 6:10) as well as mem­bers of “God’s house­hold”. (Eph­esians 2:19)

In see­ing Chris­tians as mem­bers as one big fam­ily Paul brings to the cen­ter the spir­i­tual rela­tion­ship that Jesus was fos­ter­ing. Paul refers to the mother of Rufus as his own mother. (Romans 16:13) At times he refers to him­self as a mother, a father, and those that he brought to Christ as his chil­dren. (2 Cor 6:13; Gala­tians 4:19; 1 Thess 2:7, 11) Paul instructs his pro­tégé Tim­o­thy to view older men as fathers and older woman as moth­ers, and young men and women as broth­ers and sis­ters. (1 Tim 5:2) And in his let­ters, John too refers to mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion as his chil­dren. Fur­ther­more, the most often used famil­ial ter­mi­nol­ogy that we find in Scrip­ture is “brethren”, or broth­ers and sis­ters. This is most fit­ting because we share the com­mon rela­tion as fel­low chil­dren of God.

Con­se­quently, it is no mis­take that the cen­tral meet­ing place of the Chris­t­ian fam­ily was not in a reli­gious “church” build­ing but in the home and the fam­ily table. When Jesus sent his dis­ci­ples out to preach he instructed them to find a peace­able home and stay there. The Lord him­self used the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany as such a place and many accounts of his teach­ing are against the back­drop of a meal. The book of Acts reports how the early Chris­tians con­tin­ued in this tradition:

So con­tin­u­ing daily with one accord in the tem­ple, and break­ing bread from house to house, they ate their food with glad­ness and sim­plic­ity of heart, — Acts 2:46

and again,

Now the mul­ti­tude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; nei­ther did any­one say that any of the things he pos­sessed was his own, but they had all things in com­mon. And with great power the apos­tles gave wit­ness to the res­ur­rec­tion of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there any­one among them who lacked; for all who were pos­ses­sors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the pro­ceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apos­tles’ feet; and they dis­trib­uted to each as any­one had need. — Acts 4:32:35

the Way

Within the col­lec­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings, it is seen how Jesus’ first dis­ci­ples spread his mes­sage. Acts 2:42 describes how they “devoted them­selves to the apos­tles’ teach­ing”. What was the apos­tles teach­ing? Sim­ply, it was Jesus Christ! Paul writes of this basic mes­sage, say­ing, “For I resolved to know noth­ing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him cru­ci­fied.” (2 Cor 2:2)

The oral teach­ings of Jesus were later recorded in writ­ten form in the works that came to be known as the Gospels. As the apos­tles estab­lished var­i­ous groups of believ­ers they would write let­ters of instruc­tion to dif­fer­ent groups remind­ing them of their teach­ing on Jesus. For instance, the let­ter known as 1 Peter calls atten­tion to the suf­fer­ing that Jesus sub­mit­ted to for the sake of good and encour­ages Chris­tians to endure sim­i­lar tri­als and 1 John high­lights the need for believ­ers to remain in unity with Christ by obey­ing his com­mands, pri­mar­ily his com­mand to show love.

This preach­ing of Jesus empow­ered oth­ers to come to know Jesus’ true way. It comes as no sur­prise to see Jesus’ faith­ful fol­low­ers embrac­ing this iden­tity. In the book of Acts this group is repeat­edly referred to as “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9) This term calls to atten­tion that these ones were fol­low­ers of Jesus and com­mit­ted to the fact that he was the way of life for them.

Jesus is the way!