Did you know that there’s actually a difference between discipleship and salvation? In Matthew 16:24, the bible reads “Then said Jesus unto his disciples ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’” What a lot of Christians like to do is to take this verse out of context by automatically assuming that every believer is a disciple. And because they fail to understand the distinction between a believer in Christ and a disciple, they also fail to take into account that not every Christian in the body of Christ is at the same stage in their walk with Christ. Because let’s face it. Some of us are still babes in Christ in need of milk whereas others desire strong meat and are disciples. But that doesn’t make a believer any less of a child of God than a disciple. In order to fully understand what this verse is saying, we have to look at the requirements of both a believer and a disciple.
In Acts 16:30-31, there was a man who asked a simple question “What must I do to be saved?” and the answer that was given to him was “to believe on the lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The only requirement in order to be saved is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and that’s because salvation is a free gift and it’s supposed to cost you nothing. If we now look at the requirements in order to be a disciple, what we see in Luke 14:33 is that Jesus actually says in order to be his disciple, you have to forsake all that you have and follow him. That’s because discipleship will cost you everything. To further prove this point, we’re going to look at a specific encounter where Jesus actually healed 10 lepers but out of those 10 lepers that Jesus healed, only one comes back to praise him and give him glory. Sadly this is the reality among born-again Christians, which is that not every born-again Christian will serve God after they get saved. The harvest truly is plentiful but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore to the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.