Richard Foster writes: “Perhaps the greatest malady in the Church today is converts to Christ who are not disciples of Christ–a clear contradiction in terms. This malady affects everything in church life and in large measure accounts for the low level of spiritual nutrients in our local congregations. To counter this sad state of affairs, we must determine that, regardless of what others do, our intention is to come under the tutelage of Jesus Christ, our ever-living Savior, Teacher, Lord, and Friend.”
Dallas Willard reminds us that: “Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated through by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus same He came to bring (John 10:10).”
In Devotional Classics, in which both of these quotes are found, it is noted that Jesus instructed His followers to obey everything that He had commanded (Matt. 28:16-20). A good exercise, in this period of Lent, would be to go through the gospel of Matthew to list all the things Jesus commanded us to do. The results would make up a mosaic of what the basic Christian life should look like according to Jesus.