Over the next few weeks, I will be writing again on discipleship. I begin with one of Paul’s favorite terms, “In Christ.” “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Behold: The old has gone and the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The “in Christ is what is called a spherical dative. In other words, if anyone is the sphere of Christ’s influence, they are a new creation. Jesus puts the “in Christ” in a slightly different way in John:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love (John 15:1-10).
The Greek word (Meno) has many similar meanings, each of which makes it clearer what it means to be a disciple.
- to remain
- to abide, to stay (in a place)
- to expectantly await or continue (in a state)
- to endure (in a task)
- to exist permanently in, inseparably united in a relationship [1]
Remaining in God
It seems to me that Jesus intends for each of these meanings to be included in our relationship with God and others. We are to stay connected to Jesus, remain with Him, expectantly wait for His next “mighty act of God,” and endure through difficult times. Our relationship with God is meant to be permanent as we remain united with God in Christ. The same thing might be said of our relationship with a church and other Christians. We need to “abide” with those people God has placed in our care and into a relationship with us.
The Jewish theologian and author, Martin Buber, emphasized the importance of personal, loving relationships—what he called “I Thou” relationships—with nature, other people, and God. Buber begins by recognizing that God is not merely an idea or a principle of the universe that we can understand abstractly or objectively, but a person whom we come to know through His creative, revealing, and redeeming acts. It is God’s initiative in revealing Himself as the Divine Person that makes it possible and necessary for us to intimately know God as a “Thou.”[2]
This is crucial for understanding why we must keep personal relationships with God and others as we grow as disciples. It also reminds us that there are limits to the spiritual growth that biblical and theological knowledge can provide. When our level of abstract (“I-It”) knowledge of God, the Bible, theology, etc., exceeds our personal (“I Thou”) relational knowledge with the living God, our discipleship stalls and declines. In ministry, I have repeatedly seen, both in my own life and in the lives of other pastors and teachers, how too much abstraction and not enough loving communion with God can hinder not only our spiritual lives but also the spiritual lives of others. One reason why annual retreats, times of silence and solitude, and sabbaticals are so vital for Christian leaders is that these periods help us build a relationship with God.[3]
Remaining with Others
In the letter of James, we find one of the most convicting passages in all of Holy Scripture: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (I John 4:20). When Jesus speaks of “abiding” or “remaining in him,” he concludes his teaching with some words about loving one another:
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now stay in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love (John 15:10).
The idea is that if we love God, we will love other Christians; indeed, we will love the entire world just as God has loved us. Recently, I have been listening to the Gifford Lectures by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. In this fourth lecture, he discusses the agapic love of Jesus. In doing so, he quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
A true act of love, unlike imaginary love, is hard and forbidding. Imaginary love yearns for an immediate heroic act that is achieved quickly and is seen by everyone. People may actually reach a point where they are willing to sacrifice their lives, as long as the ordeal doesn’t last too long, is quickly over-just like on stage, with the public watching and admiring. A true act of love, on the other hand, requires hard work and patience, and, for some, it is a whole way of life.
And again:
Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you–alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child! Father Anfim taught me to love children. The kind, silent man used often on our wanderings to spend the farthings given us on sweets and cakes for the children. He could not pass by a child without emotion. That’s the nature of the man.[4]
The notion is that we must love the world with exactly the same kind of love that we must have for God. Just as it was hard, dreadfully hard for God to love the world enough to give of his Word and rescue the world in awful suffering and patience, we too must show that same kind of love to others. None of us can be everywhere or love everyone, so we are called to love those closest to us, family, friends, co-workers, fellow church members—all those with whom we come into contact in our day-to-day lives.
Back to Buber (and Pete Scazzero)
When introducing Buber’s insight, Scazzero shares a meaningful story from Buber’s life. One day, during an inspiring spiritual moment in Buber’s life, a young man visited him. Martin Buber paid attention to the young man and said all the right things, but he wasn’t truly listening to him as a person. Later, he learned that the young man had committed suicide after leaving his office. This experience made him realize that he had been relating to the young man as an object —a student —rather than as a person. It was this realization that prompted his first steps toward understanding and teaching the importance of the “thou” relationship.[5]
I don’t know a single counselor or pastor who hasn’t had a similar, though less dramatic, experience. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to an older person tell stories, thinking, “I am going to fall asleep if this goes on much longer.” Or how many times someone came to my office for counseling for the third or fourth time, repeating the same story. In these moments, it’s easy to treat the other person as an object: “This is my parishioner. I have to pay attention,” rather than seeing them as a person: “This is a child of God whom I’m called to help.”
In his books and teachings, Pete Scazzero asks us to ask ourselves three important questions as we relate to people:
- Am I fully present or distracted?
- Am I loving this person or judging them?
- Am I open to being changed by this encounter?
Two of these three questions are obvious. The third needs a bit of explanation. Being open to being changed doesn’t mean “Being open to deny my faith.” It means that each person we relate to causes us to change and grow in some way. [6]
I think this is similar to the difference between being a tourist and living in a different culture. I’ve been both. When you’re a tourist, you’re there for just a few days or maybe weeks. Although you’re interested in the differences between your culture and theirs, you aren’t really being changed. You’re just visiting. But when someone spends a long time in another culture, they’re subtly changed. You never see your own country quite the same way again. If it’s a different part of our country, you never see our country in quite the same light again. You haven’t stopped being an American. You haven’t stopped being a Christian, but you have become deeper and richer as a human being.
Becoming a deeper disciple does not necessarily mean becoming a different kind of disciple. It means becoming more fully what Christ desires us to be. It means allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our lives, including in completely unexpected ways.
Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] See Meno in Greek Lexicon https://biblehub.com/greek/3306.htm
[2] Martin Buber, I and Thou 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Scribners, 1958). In his book, he describes the difference between relationships in which we view nature, other human beings, or spiritual realities as persons (a “thou”) or objects (an “it”). God, as a spiritual being can be objectified, but not personally known as an object, only as a person. Id, at 135.
[3] G. Christopher Scruggs, Crisis of Discipleship: Renewing the Art of Relational Disciplemaking, Revised and Expanded Edition (Richmond, VA: Living Dialog, 2023), 49. This section of the blog is excerpted from the book, which can be obtained from Living Dialog Ministries.
[4] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, found at https://homepages.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/classes/las400/handouts/karamazov/book6chapter03c.html, and https://dostodec.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/some-of-my-favorite-zosima-quotes/ (Downloaded October 2, 2025). Volf’s lectures, Gifford Lectures 2025 Lecture 4: Dostoevsky and Genesis on Unconditional Love for the World, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pd9FsK7uf8. I recommend all his lectures.
[5] Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021), 134-5.
[6] Id, at 146-7.