Quotes about Disciples

Most but not all uncertainties in the minds of disciples—and this is only somewhat less so for people in general—are the result of unclarities and failures to understand. These shut down confidence and love, and we must never rest until they are cleanly dispersed from the mind.

Of his performing the miracle, Jesus told his disciples, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me… While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Disciples of Jesus do not mimic Jesus; we manifest him. We are personators of Christ, not impersonators. Christ's presence in our lives is more "thereness" than "likeness," more "withness" than "whatness." Jesus made our creation in the imago Dei more "spit" than "image" (as in "spit 'n' image").

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which "God is satisfied, and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

This final meal that Jesus ate with His disciples, commonly referred to as the Last Supper, was really a Passover Seder (ceremonial meal) that Jesus and His disciples celebrated. Not only did Jesus eat the Passover with His disciples, but He also taught them how the key elements of the Passover Seder pointed to and found their ultimate fulfillment in Him.

After celebrating Passover, Jesus and His disciples walked to the Mount of Olives, to the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36). The fact that Jesus spent the final hours before His arrest in a garden is significant. First, the fall of man occurred in a garden—so Jesus, who is the second Adam, also entered into a garden as He prepared to give His life to atone for the sin of the first man and woman.

Christian identity, the role disciples have been called to play, requires being with others. It takes two or three gathered in Christ's name fully to represent him. It takes a company.

Jesus is a person, not a proposition; however, language is the means the Spirit uses to enable the gospel to become the all-encompassing framework that allows disciples not only to think but also to situate themselves in relation to the truth, goodness, and beauty of what is in Christ.

Doctrine forms disciples when it helps the church to act out its new life in Christ.

The long-term challenge for disciples, however, is to represent the gospel not by seeking literally to duplicate past scenes but rather by continuing to follow Jesus into the present in ways that are both faithful and (necessarily) creative.

The basic gist: theology has been more or less banished from Jerusalem. Theology is in exile and, as a result, the knowledge of God is in ecclesial eclipse. The promised land, the gathered people of God, has consequently come to resemble a parched land: a land of wasted opportunities that no longer cultivates disciples as it did in the past.

From the Book of Mormon we learn how disciples of Christ live in times of war.