To be a disciple means, simply, first to believe and then to be obedient.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” Jesus told his disciples the night before he died (Jn. 14:15). True for them, it’s also true for us. Being a disciple means putting your money where your mouth is. It means more than words. This is the difficult, liberating way of Jesus—the way of the cross and resurrection.

It means making our own minds like the mind of Christ. The poor translation we use says “attitude” of Christ; more powerfully and more commonly it’s translated the “mind” of Christ (Phil. 2:5). To be a disciple means to humble oneself like Christ and to be obedient like Christ, even when it hurts. Humility the model, humility modeled in Christ himself—that’s the true way of the Christian, the way for anyone who genuinely claims the glory of being a disciple.

Which is why in the gospels so many people do not get it, failing to respond to the call of Jesus. Because the humble way is not appealing on the surface, because it doesn’t value status and heritage the way we normally value it. Because the humble way is the way of faith and nothing else. It’s radical love and the cross and some sort of death, always the death of the prideful self and whatever follows on from that. That’s why even though there are so many Christians, there are still so few disciples. Because of this: what real humility really implies.

So, here’s the challenge: Do you want to be a disciple? If so, then what that looks like is humble obedience, the emptying of self. “Do you see that humility makes us righteous?” St. Bernard of Clairvaux once asked his brothers. It is a simply but truly difficult path. But there is no other form of discipleship, only the false charade of a fake Christianity. That’s the call today—authentic discipleship. Pray for the strength to embrace it!