Renewed People

Discipleship

Discipleship is how God’s renewing work happens in every person. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has opened the way for all people to approach Him, to know Him, and to enter the fullness of human flourishing and what Scripture calls salvation and eternal life.

Following Jesus Christ

In the Gospel of Luke, after a long and fruitless night of fishing, Jesus instructs a weary group of fishermen to lower their nets again. Simon responds,“Master, we have worked all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” The nets are suddenly filled beyond capacity and the fishermen see that the who stands before them holds authority over the waters and the creatures within them. In response, they pull their boats to shore, leave everything, and follow Him.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), and the same Jesus continues to call all people today. This call is grounded in the history-shaping reality of His incarnation, His resurrection, and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus reveals eternal life as the restored capacity to know God, to recognize His truth, and to live as His children. Eternal life begins in the present through faith in Christ and reaches its fullness when we see Him as He is. John affirms both realities: we are already God’s children, and we await the day when this identity is fully revealed. When Christ appears, we will be made like Him, for we will see Him clearly.

Paul brings this into the daily life of discipleship. In Christ, a new creation has begun. The old order has passed away, and a new life has been inaugurated. This life grows within us because Christ dwells in us, the hope of glory.

John's letter in Revelation provides the larger horizon of this hope. God is bringing His work to completion. He will dwell with His people. Creation will be renewed. All things will be made whole under His reign.

To follow Jesus is to enter the life that truly flourishes. It means:

Among all the voices and ways of life past and present, we come to recognize that Jesus Christ alone is preeminent. His life, His teaching, His death, His resurrection, and His living presence reveal both the truth of God and the truth of our own lives.
We see Jesus for who He is, the Creator and Lord of all. “In Him all things were created, and in Him all things hold together.”
We learn to listen to His voice, attend to His presence, and receive the friendship He offers. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you… You are my friends.”
We entrust our lives to His way, reflect His wisdom, and allow His love to shape our identity and purpose. Jesus becomes for us the true image of what it means to be human.
As we know Him, we are transformed into His likeness, and our lives begin to bear the marks of the new creation He brings.

Jesus Christ is the source and image of full human flourishing

Jesus is the true image of human flourishing, the fullness of what it means to be alive in God. In Him we see not only who God is, but who we are meant to become. Scripture speaks of this life as one that is “worthy of the Lord,” a life that bears good fruit, grows in the knowledge of God, is strengthened with His power, endures with patience, and gives thanks with joy (Colossians 1:10–12).

This growth into Christlikeness is the work of the Triune God. The Father purposes it, the Son reveals and accomplishes it, and the Spirit brings it to maturity. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), the true human in whom God’s intentions for creation are fully realized. Paul describes this transformation as “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), and the aim of Christian ministry is “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).

To grow into Christ means being steadily reoriented to Him. Paul writes, “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Colossians 2:6), and “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17; cf. Romans 12:1). Christ becomes the center of our identity: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He is the pattern of the new self, “renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created it” (Colossians 3:10). Christ becomes the center of our relationships and our understanding of creation itself.

It means :

To learn the ways of Jesus and to share His quality of life. We are shaped by His humility, mercy, courage, obedience, truthfulness, and love. His life becomes the pattern for our life.
To live through the story of God revealed in the gospel. Our sense of purpose, identity, hope, and action is formed by the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Christ. His story orders our story.
To understand that in becoming Christian, we become more fully human. In Christ we recover the humanity God intended. As we grow in Him, our capacities to love, to choose what is good, to endure, to forgive, and to hope are strengthened and renewed.

Flourishing is life in God

Flourishing begins with God and is sustained by God. To be a disciple of Jesus is first a gift, not an achievement. It is the awakening of our lives to the presence, grace, and activity of the Triune God. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit form the foundation of our existence; our life begins in God, is sustained by God, and moves toward God.

Paul gives language to this shared life with God. He begins with gratitude because life in God always begins with what God has done: “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Colossians 1:3). He then names the visible signs of this life taking shape in a community: “your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints” (Colossians 1:4). And he recognizes the source of this life together as “love in the Spirit” (Colossians 1:8). Life in God is not a solitary pursuit. It is participation in the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit—a life held by the Father’s care, renewed through Christ, and empowered by the Spirit who binds us together in love.

Because this life is rooted in God, it is holistic. God does not renew us in fragments. He restores the heart: “Put on a heart of compassion” (Colossians 3:12). He renews the mind: “Set your minds on things above” (Colossians 3:2). He reshapes our bodily life and actions: “Treat the parts of your earthly body…” (Colossians 3:5). The God who declares, “I will be their God” (Revelation 21:3), claims the whole person. Life in God reaches our emotions, our thoughts, our desires, our habits, and our physical lives. It forms us into people who belong to Him in everything.

Life in God is also a life of abounding grace. We are not left to ourselves to discern God’s will or to rely on our own strength. Paul prays, “We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives” (Colossians 1:9). The Spirit instructs, convicts, guides, strengthens, and comforts. Our discipleship unfolds as God works within us. We live, not by self-effort, but by the ongoing activity of God who forms us according to His purpose.

It means:

To cultivate awareness of God’s activity. We learn to listen, discern direction, and practice disciplines that open our lives to God. As Eugene Peterson reminds us, we need “a spirituality adequate to our discipleship,” so that our inner life can sustain the work God entrusts to us.

To develop a relationship with God shaped by our particular calling. The Spirit meets each person uniquely. Every disciple learns rhythms of prayer, Scripture, worship, service, and obedience that sustain them in their own vocation.
To rely on God’s sustaining grace. We are upheld by God for what He calls us to do. Life in God is a continual receiving: strength for the work, wisdom for decisions, endurance in difficulty, and joy in obedience.

Flourishing of a person is fuller sense of identity and uniqueness

Life in Christ restores and deepens our true identity. Discipleship forms us into whole persons who reflect the uniqueness God has given each of us. Scripture describes this transformation as “putting on the new self” in Christ (Colossians 3:10). Our uniqueness is part of God’s design. As one writer puts it, “Uniqueness is a great gift of God, but a great curse without God.” Only in God’s presence do our histories, temperaments, desires, and gifts find their true meaning. We are God’s handiwork, “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10), and each person’s story becomes a place where God reveals His grace.

This journey of becoming whole is never isolated. We walk a path already traveled by the people of God. A great cloud of witnesses - Abraham, Rahab, David, Samson, and generations of saints - have gone before us, their lives pointing to Christ, the One who makes us alive. Through history the Spirit has formed disciples in every age: Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, C. S. Lewis, A. W. Tozer, Dallas Willard, and many others, including those who shaped our own faith. Their stories remind us that discipleship is always lived in community. In the local church, we receive the same grace they received, and we learn to follow Christ within a people being drawn toward the same transforming beauty Augustine called “Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”

This same beauty, revealed in Christ, invites every generation—and each one of us—into a lifelong journey of knowing God, becoming like Christ, belonging to His people, and bearing fruit in the world. Through this journey the Church fulfills her mission: to present every person mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28).

It means:

To grow into the unique identity God has given each of us. Our histories, personalities, and gifts are not obstacles but places where God meets us. Spiritual pathways stretch us so that our identity is formed in Christ rather than in comparison or self-determination.
To allow children, youth, and adults to mature appropriately. Flourishing respects the pace and season of each person’s development. Kids can be kids, and growth happens in ways that fit one’s stage of life.
To recognize that our personalities are not barriers to knowing God but entry points. God works through our particular ways of seeing, relating, thinking, and feeling. In Christ, our self-understanding is deepened and redeemed.
To offer our skills and interests to God. What we enjoy and do well becomes material for discipleship. God shapes our abilities for service, witness, creativity, and the good of others.

Flourishing of a person is in-relation

Flourishing in Christ takes shape within community. Disciples grow as they become increasingly grounded in the shared life of God’s people. Paul describes this communal life in Colossians: “the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you already heard in the word of truth, the gospel” (Colossians 1:5). This gospel, Paul says, is “bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world… just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace” (1:6). The Colossians learned this life from Epaphras, and we learn it from those who teach, mentor, encourage, and walk with us in the church today.

Christian community becomes one of the primary places where God is encountered. Mike Mason captures this truth when he writes, “There is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being… to be in the presence of even the meanest, lowest, most repulsive specimen of humanity is still to be closer to God than when looking up into a starry sky or at a beautiful sunset.” The presence of others imperfect, ordinary, redeemed becomes a school of love that shapes us into the likeness of Christ.

To flourish is to learn how to live with God’s people: to receive, to forgive, to be known, to belong, and to participate in the shared work of the gospel.

It means:

To recognize that Christian formation is communal. We grow through worship, conversation, prayer, correction, encouragement, and shared life with other believers.
To learn to love and be loved. Community becomes the place where we practice patience, generosity, truthfulness, forgiveness, and mutual care-the very qualities that reflect Christ.
To see every person as someone in whom God is at work. We learn to regard others not according to status, usefulness, or similarity, but as people bearing God’s image and caught up in His redeeming purposes.

Flourishing toward the vision of God

Christian flourishing is the life God intends for His people—a life that begins now in knowing Jesus and reaches its fulfillment in seeing God face to face. Jesus promises that “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and John teaches that we are already God’s children while we await the day when “we will see Him as He is” and be transformed into His likeness (1 John 3:2).

Through Christ, a new creation has begun; the old has passed away, and He lives in us as the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). The book of Revelation looks ahead to the day when God will dwell with His people, creation will be restored, and all things will be made new (Revelation 21:3–5).

Discipleship invites us to live in that future now - learning to know God, grow in Christlikeness, and embody the hope of the world to come - because this is the flourishing for which we were created and the promise God will complete in Christ.

On "Renewed People"

Curated by the Leadership Collective — For updates, questions or shared discernment, contact connect@renewalchurch.ca

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