Think back for a moment to the math classes in your elementary and middle school days. After you learned the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, you encountered the concept of order of operations. The order of operations is a universal set of rules that dictates which mathematical calculations to perform first when evaluating an equation with multiple steps.
For example, let’s say you come across this problem: 4 + 3 x 2
How do you solve it? Do you move from left to right, and get an answer of 14? Order of operations tells you something else. You start with the multiplication and then move to addition. So the answer to the equation above is actually 10.
It’s confusing because you can’t strictly start from the left and move to the right; instead, you have to skip to multiple places within the equation, and that sometimes means doing things in an order that isn’t strictly linear. Discipleship actually works in the same way, though we don’t typically think it does.
We typically think of discipleship as a linear, left-to-right kind of equation. Here’s the order—we start on the left side with faith and trust in Christ. Next, we add biblical knowledge. Then we bring in spiritual disciplines. And then, when we are mature enough, we move out into the world and begin to serve. But when you look at the pattern established in the gospels and Acts, you don’t find that kind of linear progression, particularly when it comes to service. Instead, you find that service is not the byproduct or aftereffect of spiritual growth; it’s actually the means by which we are being formed into the image of Jesus.
Put another way, service isn’t just the result of discipleship; service is often the means of discipleship.
In the gospels, Jesus chose twelve men to be His disciples. Though they didn’t realize it at the time, these were the men through whom the church would continue into the book of Acts. Jesus, as He discipled them, was training them for this future mission. Jesus did not pull them into a classroom for three years until they reached some level of discipleship, and then sent them out. Instead, Jesus discipled these men in the midst of ministry:
- They learned about compassion while distributing bread to five thousand hungry people.
- They learned about faith while tossing in a storm on a boat.
- They learned about humility while their Master washed the dirt off their feet.
Their spiritual formation didn’t happen before the work; it happened in the work. After all, the core of discipleship is about self-denial. Jesus said that if anyone wanted to follow after Him in discipleship then that person had to die to him or herself. Surely one of the ways that self-denial happens is through serving the community. This is how we actively participate in dying to ourselves, and therefore actively participate in discipleship.
Service, then, is not the effect of spiritual formation; it’s one of the means of spiritual formation. We should not wait either to serve or to provide that opportunity to others. Instead, we should hold up service as a core component of discipleship itself.
