Fully Trained

Fully Trained.  For some like military personnel, researchers, athletes, nurses, and educators training for the job can feel like the lion’s share of their jobs. Readiness is a journey not a destination. Disciples of Jesus are similarly always learning. A diagnostic question that provides some definite edges to the indefiniteness of continual training is this: how does a disciple know when he or she has been successful at training? In other words, what are the marks of spiritual maturity, or when is a disciple ready to transition into making disciples of others? Jesus gives a concrete answer to the abstract concept of spiritual maturity. “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). 

In this way, a disciple is different from a trade apprentice. An apprentice could learn all there is about plumbing and soldering, etc., and become fully trained without any character resemblance with the teacher, but a disciple is fully trained only when he or she resembles the character of the Teacher. It is spiritual training of the heart. Truly, it is when Jesus is represented and reflected in the disciple’s life, decisions, and values (effectively skipping over the human disciple-maker to the Lord himself) that a disciple is ready to make disciples of others. And the beat goes on!

An overarching study of the near-synonym maturity (teleios) comes in handy at this point for setting some specifics about when a disciple is fully trained (katartizo). The verse list for spiritual maturity (teleios) divides into three noticeable categories: maturity of thought, maturity in relationships, and maturity as a skill-set (e.g., orthodoxy, orthopathy, and orthopraxy). True, the training never ends for a disciple, but a spiritually mature disciple is ready to make disciples of others when he or she KNOWS Christ deeply (Bible literacy, gospel fluency, and theological competency), LOVES God and others authentically (worship, identity, and interpersonal balance), and SERVES the world purposefully (spiritual disciplines, spiritual gifts, and spiritual calling).

 

Knowing Christ deeply corresponds nicely with the Great Confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Loving God and others derives from the Great Commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind … and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 39). Serving the world purposefully follows the trajectory of the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).