What does it mean to be a disciple? A typical definition might sound something like “to be a follower of…”. That is not a bad description at all. Certainly the disciples of Christ followed him, both figuratively and literally. In Jesus’ time, it was common for rabbis to travel around and have their disciples following them, learning from them. They didn’t have textbooks back then that rabbis could assign their pupils to study and learn from, so spending time with the rabbi was the only way for the disciple to take up the rabbi’s yoke. Well, Jesus was a rabbi (which means teacher) and he traveled around with his disciples learning from him as they went.
But being a disciple was about more than just learning from the rabbi. You didn’t follow the rabbi around just so that you could listen to him rattle off nuggets of wisdom every here and there. There was that aspect, but it was about more than just knowing what the rabbi knew; it was about becoming who the rabbi was. Sometimes Jesus would go on a trip with his disciples that would take weeks. The disciple got to spend so much time with Jesus that they learned how to emulate him in their lives. How did He respond to things? How did He interact with people? How did He display God in His own life? All these things and more shaped not only the knowledge that the disciples had, but the life that they lived.
We, too, are called to be disciples following Jesus. “By this we may know that we are in Him: whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the way in which He walked” (1 John 1:6). Discipleship isn’t about just knowing the right stuff, it’s about being transformed to be like your rabbi. It’s about speaking like Him, loving like Him, resting like Him, praying like Him, reaching out like Him, forgiving like Him, and 5 million other facets of who He is. We may not be able to actually see Him in person like the apostles, but we can still observe all we need to know to be a disciple through His Word.
Today, may you not just know what He knew, but may you be who He was.