The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

by Dallas Willard

So life in the kingdom is not just a matter of not doing what is wrong. The apprentices of Jesus are primarily occupied with the positive good that can be done during their days “under the sun” and the positive strengths and virtues that they develop in themselves as they grow toward “the kingdom prepared for them from the foundations of the world” (Matt. 25:34).

To be a disciple of Jesus is, crucially, to be learning from Jesus how to do your job as Jesus himself would do it. New Testament language for this is to do it “in the name” of Jesus.

But how, exactly, is one to make one’s job a primary place of apprenticeship to Jesus? Not, we quickly say, by becoming the Christian nag-in-residence, the rigorous upholder of all propriety, and the dead-eye critic of everyone else’s behavior.

A gentle but firm noncooperation with things that everyone knows to be wrong, together with a sensitive, nonofficious, nonintrusive, nonobsequious service to others, should be our usual overt manner.

combined with inward attitudes of constant prayer for whatever kind of activity our workplace requires and genuine love for everyone involved.

And to repeat the crucial point, if we restrict our discipleship to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of the kingdom in our lives.

But now a special word is required concerning those of us whose “job”—what we get paid for—is the work of opening and ministering the kingdom to others. “Church work,” we might call it, or the “full-time Christian service” just referred to.

His work had three main phases, clearly enumerated and illustrated in the Gospels (Matt. 4:23; 9:35; 10:7–8).

The first was simply announcing God’s new move forward in human history.

Time runs its course within eternity.

The second phase of Jesus’ work, in which his disciples were therefore to be apprenticed, was the manifestation of God’s rule from the heavens. This was done by words and deeds whose powers lay beyond, or even set aside, the usual course of life and nature (as well as the effects of evil spirits).

The third phase of their apprenticeship was in teaching about the nature of God and about what his rule among human beings was like.

In summary, then, the disciple or apprentice of Jesus, as recognized by the New Testament, is one who has firmly decided to learn from him how to lead his or her life, whatever that may be, as Jesus himself would do it.

Jesus gave us two parables to illustrate the condition of soul that leads to becoming a disciple. Actually it turns out to be a condition that we all very well

First, he said, “The kingdom of the heavens is like where something of extreme value is concealed in a field. Someone discovers it, and quickly covers it up again. Overflowing with joyous excitement he pulls together everything he has, sells it all, and buys the field” (Matt. 13:44).

Second, he said, “What the kingdom of the heavens is like is illustrated by a businessman who is on the lookout for beautiful pearls. He finds an incredible value in one pearl. So he sells everything else he owns and buys it” (13:45–46).

These little stories perfectly express the condition of soul in one who chooses life ...

And here is the whole point of the much misunderstood teachings of Luke 14. There Jesus famously says one must “hate” all their family members and their own life also, must take their cross, and must forsake all they own, or they “cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26–27, 33). The entire point of this passage is that as long as one thinks anything may really be more valuable than fellowship with Jesus in his kingdom, one cannot learn from him.

What this passage in Luke is about is clarity. It is not about misery, or about some incredibly dreadful price that one must pay to be Jesus’ apprentice.

Given clarity about the condition of soul that leads to choosing discipleship, what are practical steps we can take to bring strongly before us the joyous vision of the kingdom?

The first thing we should do is emphatically and repeatedly express to Jesus our desire to see him more fully as he really is. Remember, the rule of the kingdom is to ask. We ask to see him, and not just as he is represented in the Gospels, but also as he has lived and lives through history and now, and in his reality as the one who literally holds the universe in existence.

Second, we should use every means at our disposal to come to see him more

And what does “dwelling,” or “continuing,” in his word mean? It means to center your life upon the very things we have been studying in this book: his good news about The Kingdom Among Us, about who is really well off and who is not, and about true goodness of heart and how it expresses itself in action.

But dwelling in his word is not just intensive and continuous study of the Gospels, though it is that. It is also putting them into practice. To dwell in his word we must know it: know what it is and what it means. But we really dwell in it by putting it into practice. Of course, we shall do so very imperfectly at first.

There are a few other things we can do that will help us toward discipleship to Jesus—not least, seriously looking at the lives of others who truly have apprenticed themselves to him.

But the final step in becoming a disciple is decision. We become a life student of Jesus by deciding. When we have achieved clarity on “the costs”—on what is gained and what is lost by becoming or failing to become his apprentice—an effective decision is then possible. But still it must be made. It will not just happen. We do not drift into discipleship.

But in the last analysis we fail to be disciples only because we do not decide to be. We do not intend to be disciples. It is the power of the decision and the intention over our life that is missing.

It also becomes clear, in the light of the disappearance of the kingdom and Jesus the teacher, why the making of converts, or church members, has become the mandatory goal of Christian ministers—if even that—while the making of disciples is pushed to the very margins of Christian existence. Many Christian groups simply have no idea what discipleship is and have relegated it to para-church organizations.

Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality.

That is surely what it means to say that he gave his unique Son to die on our behalf. I am thoroughly convinced that God will let everyone into heaven who, in his considered opinion, can stand it. But “standing it” may prove to be a more difficult matter than those who take their view of heaven from popular movies or popular preaching may think. The fires in heaven may be hotter than those in the other place.

For example, much time is spent among Christians trying to smooth over hurt feelings and even deep wounds, given and received, and to get people to stop being angry, retaliatory, and unforgiving. But suppose, instead, we devoted our time to inspiring and enabling Christians and others to be people who are not offendable and not angry and who are forgiving as a matter of course.

But we emphatically reiterate that the intention to make disciples is essential. It will not happen otherwise. We are, of course, not talking about eliminating nondisciple, consumer Christianity. It has its place. But we are talking about making it secondary, as far as our intentions are concerned.

In short, however, you lead people to become disciples of Jesus by ravishing them with a vision of life in the kingdom of the heavens in the fellowship of Jesus. And you do this by proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the kingdom to them in the manner learned from Jesus himself. You thereby change the belief system that governs their lives.

It is not a matter of conspiracy. It is actually something much more powerful. It is an anonymous and many-faceted structure of “authority” that stipulates what is to count as knowledge and reality. It is silently but ponderously conveyed by our entire system of education, Christian and otherwise. The essential teachings of Jesus emphatically do not receive its stamp of approval.

To make disciples to Jesus today, one has to make him and his God real to them, right in the face of all that stands at the center of our world as “official” knowledge and reality.

to enable people to become disciples we must change whatever it is in their actual belief system that bars confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe. That is fundamental and must be taken as an unshakable conscious objective by any maker of disciples.

One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe.

And the reason why clergy and others have to invest so much effort into getting people to do things is that they are working against the actual beliefs of the people they are trying to lead.

What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe.

The fact is that there now is lacking a serious and expectant intention to bring Jesus’ people into obedience and abundance through training.

However, the emphasis all too often is on some point of behavior modification. This is helpful, but it is not adequate to human life. It does not reach the root of the human problem. That root is the character of the inner life, where Jesus and his call to apprenticeship in the kingdom place the emphasis.

As we approach this task, it is very important to understand that the “teaching” to be done at this point—whether directed toward ourselves or toward others—is not a matter of collecting or conveying information.

In our culture one is considered educated if one “knows the right answers.” That is, if one knows which answers are the correct ones. I sometimes joke with my students at the university where I teach by asking them if they believe what they wrote on their tests. They always laugh. They know belief is not required. Belief only controls your life.

The ordinary members of a church have an immense amount of information about God, Jesus, what they ought to do, and their own destiny. It has come to them through the Christian tradition. Some parts of it are false or misguided, to be sure. No one completely avoids that—even me. But generally we have the “right answers,” and those answers are very precious indeed. But as things stand we are, by and large, unable to believe them in the way we genuinely do believe multitudes of things in our “real” life.