If you are not a disciple of Jesus Christ, will you go to heaven? We’ve been talking about discipleship and some of the more important points to consider about what Jesus said about discipleship.

What We’ve Examined About Discipleship So Far

We’ve looked at the Great Commission (see Matthew 28:19-20), where Jesus said, “Go make disciples,” and He helps to define disciples by saying, “teach them to obey all that I commanded you, after you baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.

We looked at John 8 where He told a bunch of believers, “if you are truly My disciples you’ll abide in My word and you’ll progressively be set free from sin.”

Then we looked at Luke 14 where Jesus laid down three requirements to be His disciple. One of which is we have to hate our loved ones. We talked about that. Another one is that we have to be willing to embrace hardship and suffering for His sake, take up our cross. And thirdly, have to give up all our possessions.

And you see that with the people in the Book of Acts, again, there’s no dichotomy of believers and disciples. No, it just talks about the disciples and all those who believed were disciples. And it affected what they did with their money. They began caring for widows. And people who had a lot started liquidating their assets to meet pressing needs of those within the body of Christ.

And so, these are things to be thinking about as we consider, am I a disciple?

If You’re Not a Disciple of Jesus Christ, Will You Go To Heaven?

Now the question that I posed at the beginning of this episode is, “If you’re not a disciple of Christ, will you go to Heaven”? Because some people think, “Well, I’m not a disciple of Christ, I’m a believer in Jesus.”

I think we’ve pretty well proven that disciples and believers are one in the same. If you’re not a disciple, you’re not really a believer. So to answer the question that I posed at the beginning of this episode, the answer is “no”.

If you’re not a disciple of Christ, you’re not on the road to heaven. You’re a goat who thinks that he or she is a sheep.

“ If you’re not a disciple of Christ, you’re not on the road to Heaven. —DAVID SERVANT

A Lesson From Salt

So, let’s look at the last thing that Jesus said in Luke 14. After He lists these three requirements to be His disciple, He finishes out what He says with these two very significant verses that maybe are a little bit difficult for us to grasp, but I think we can grasp them.

Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. – Luke 14:34-35

“Therefore, salt is good.” Well, okay I agree with that. Do you agree with that? Salt is good. Now, we’re used to salt pretty much as a seasoning; sprinkle that salt on the steak!

But in Jesus’ day, salt wasn’t so much of a seasoning as it was a preservative. You rub salt on the meat and that keeps it from rotting, because you don’t have refrigeration. So this is the best they could do at that time.

So salt is good. You better believe it’s good! It’s preserving a lot of things, although making those things taste pretty salty.

The Impossibility of Salt Not Being Salty

Then Jesus says, “but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?”

Now you could say “Well, wait a second David, he’s talking about seasoning here.” Well yes, because you can tell salt is salt by its taste. It has a seasoned flavor, right? Sure.

So if you put your finger in a little pile of salt there and stick a little on your tongue, if it doesn’t taste salty, there’s a pretty good chance it’s not salt. Right? That’s the conclusion you’d come to.

And I’ve never heard of salt being “unsalty”. And maybe there’s an explanation for something like that in Jesus’ day. Maybe that was some kind of a seasoning that had salt in it and they just called it salt, and on occasion salt wasn’t mixed with the other stuff and so the seasoning became or was “unsalty”. I don’t know. It doesn’t really make a lot of difference for the sake of our understanding of what He’s saying here.

But, because salt itself cannot become tasteless, if it doesn’t have the salty taste, it’s not salt. And maybe that is the point. The impossibility of salt not being salty.

If You’re a Believer in Christ, There Will Be Evidence

Because if you’re a believer, if you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ, there’s going to be absolute evidence for it. You’re going to fit what Jesus listed as what characterizes a disciple.

This is a person that loves Jesus supremely, even more than their loved ones. This is a person who’s willing to embrace suffering and does sacrifice for His sake. This is a person whose check book reflects that they are a disciple of Christ. If you don’t have that, the salt isn’t salty. It really isn’t salt, it’s pseudo-salt.

If We’re Not Disciples, We’re Good for Nothing

“If even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile.”

And I don’t understand why you’d be putting salt in either soil or a manure pile, but there must have been some reason in Jesus’ day. But, again, we don’t have to understand that. (And if you do understand that, please write to me and tell me. I’d love to learn that myself.)

It’s useless for these purposes, it’s not good for anything. It’s even these purposes it’s useless for. It’s thrown out. It’s good for nothing, it has no value whatsoever. It’s worthless.

Can you understand what Jesus is saying here? That if we are not His disciples, we’re good for nothing. “Throw it out.” It serves no use to God.

Something Even the Devil Believes

So you can see the huge danger there is when folks buy into the lie that you can be a believer in Jesus and not be His disciple. Oh my goodness, this is so sobering.

And you have those people whom Jesus warned about in the future judgment of the sheep and the goats (see Matthew 25:31-46) who say, “Lord, Lord when did we see You hungry or thirsty and not feed You or give You drink? When did we see You naked and not clothe You? When did we see You sick and in prison, and didn’t visit You? Because if we had seen you Lord, we’d have done it. We care about You.”

“Depart from Me, I never knew you. You didn’t do it to the least of these, it shows you didn’t care about me. You’re good for nothing.”

Jesus wants disciples. And I would say that’s the major problem in the body of Christ today. We’ve got a lot of people who have head knowledge, and they think it’s saving faith. Or they acknowledge some truth, some theological truth, like Jesus died for everyone’s sins. But the Devil believes that! That’s not it. It’s Jesus. I believe Jesus is Lord. And so I’ve repented and every day I take up my cross and I try to follow Him.

Okay, thanks so much for joining me on this little lesson. God bless you.

The post If You Are Not a Disciple of Jesus Christ, Will You Go to Heaven? appeared first on David Servant.

We’ve been talking on Little Lessons about a very important subject, the subject of discipleship. Because Jesus told His apostles, “Go all the world, make disciples. Teach them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you” (see Matthew 28:19-20).

That’s what Jesus wants. That should be every minister’s goal. That should be every church’s mission statement. That’s what we ought to all personally be pursuing. And we should be evaluating ourselves. Am I truly a disciple of Christ?

The Lie That You Can Be a Believer, but a Not a Disciple of Jesus Christ

If you’ve bought into the lie that you can be a believer in Jesus but not be His disciple, well, that’s a terrible lie to believe. Because it is a lie.

If you’re not a disciple of Christ, you don’t believe in Him. Belief and discipleship are one in the same. True believers are all disciples. All the disciples, they’re the only true believers.

If you said, “I’m a believer, but I’m not a disciple,” you’re not really a believer yet. The preachers and the pastors who are presenting that kind of false dichotomy, they’re doing a huge disservice to their congregations and to their listeners. Because it’s so easy to see from the New Testament that that’s erroneous.

“ If you’re not a disciple of Christ, you don’t believe in Him. —DAVID SERVANT

True Disciples Love Jesus Above All

Well, in our last Little Lesson, we were looking at Luke 14, where Jesus, in front of a huge group of people who are going along with Him, stops and tells them,

“Here’s what you have to do. If you don’t do this, you’re not My disciple.” The first thing, He says, “You’ve got to hate the people you naturally love the most.” We interpret that simply as meaning that my love for my family, in comparison to my love for Jesus, almost has to see like hatred because I love Jesus so much.

I love Jesus with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength because I believe He’s God. And God alone deserves that kind of love. It’s great to ask yourself the question, “Do I love Jesus supremely? Is that reflected in what I do in my life? When I have to make a decision between loving one person or loving another one?”

Again, there’s not always a conflict. I love my wife and my children dearly. Generally, there’s no conflict between my love for my wife and my children and my grandchildren, and my love for Jesus. In fact, I consider my love for my wife as part of an expression of my love for Jesus as well as for my children and my grandchildren.

True Disciples Choose Jesus Over the Approval of Loved Ones

If Jesus is telling me, “David, I want you to spend two months overseas every year. Because of that, you’re going to be apart from your family.” And I said, “No. I love my family too much,” that would be a sign that I don’t love Him enough and that I’m not His disciple.

Glad that in my own life I at least have a chance to evaluate that by some of the things that I sense that God’s calling me to do. We all have those opportunities, don’t we? We have to make a decision. It’s Jesus or this person that I love.

Some families—I’ve heard stories, I’m glad this has never happened to me—where the gauntlet is laid down by Christians’ loved ones. They say, “If you’re going to do that Jesus stuff, you’re no longer a part of our family.”

That happens around the world in places where other religions are very dominant. Those people make the decision to follow Christ. They make it very plain and clear, “We love Jesus the most.” You need to think about that. We all need to think about that. Look at your life. Does it reflect you love Jesus the most?

True Disciples Take Up the Cross

Well, Jesus continued.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. – Luke 14:27

Who’s going to argue with Jesus? He’s the Lord. He knows what He’s talking about. You can not be His disciple, He says, unless you take up your cross and follow him.

Well, again, this is another verse that is worth our thinking about a little bit. Because it seems unlikely that Jesus meant that we should be literally carrying a wooden cross with us wherever we go. We don’t see that played out in the book of Acts. They weren’t carrying wooden crosses around.

It must be symbolic of something. Well, it’s obviously symbolic of death and hardship and suffering. At bare minimum, it means that we have to be willing to pay a price, to suffer for the sake of Jesus.

What Cross-Carrying Means

I wouldn’t be surprised if that phrase “carry your cross” was not a expression that was even coined by Jesus. But perhaps it was one that would have been fairly commonly used within Jesus’s world and by His contemporaries. Because Jesus and the Jews of his day were all living under the thumb of the Roman Empire.

I don’t know how many days you could have walked outside of the gates of Jerusalem and not seen somebody dying on a cross. And not just in Jerusalem, but any other city where the Romans were in control. If you committed a capital offense, that’s what they did to you. They did it publicly. You can imagine living in a country where at any given time, scores of people were hanging on crosses outside of the gates. It would give you a reason to want to stay home, all those people hanging on crosses.

“ Belief and discipleship are one in the same. True believers are all disciples. —DAVID SERVANT

At some point, a Roman soldier said, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” What that symbolized was this was the beginning of the end. We’re going to go crucify you now. Part of your punishment is, as it was in Christ’s case, you’ve got to carry your cross. Here’s the wooden beam. Let’s lash it on you and you’re going to carry it. Then we’re going to nail you to it.

It’s possible that that became an expression to signify doing what you naturally wouldn’t do. Right? You can imagine wives saying to their husbands, “Dear, I know you hate paying those taxes to the Romans. But the tax collector’s coming down the street right now. Why don’t you go get a little money, take up your cross, and go pay the guy?”

You can imagine dads saying to sons, “Son, I know you hate to go dig out the latrine. It’s a dirty, smelly job. But just take up your cross and do it.” Regardless if it was a common expression or not, it clearly represents an embracing of suffering, rejection.

Are You Willing to Be a True Disciple of Jesus Christ?

Of course, you’re going to get that in some form or fashion when you follow Christ. Count the cost.

Are you His disciple, willing to suffer shame for Him? Are you willing to be ostracized, to be looked at as a weirdo?

Again, the scale of persecution varies from country to country.

Well, we’re out of time for today. Thanks so much for joining me. We’ll continue this discussion on our next Little Lesson. God bless!

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