Dallas Willard - The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

Spiritual Formation and
the Development of Character

J oy to the world, the Lord is come, let Earth receive her King! Let every heart, prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing! So sings the grand old Christmas carol, with the implication that now, with the coming of Jesus into our world and our lives, things are going to be really different. And that theme is sustained through the ages up to the present. No knowledgeable person can think anything else. Transformation into goodness is what the Good News is all aboutisnt it?

But there is a great deal of disappointment expressed today about the character and the effects of Christian people, about Christian institutions, andat least by implicationabout the Christian faith and understanding of reality. Most of the disappointment comes from Christians themselves, who find that what they profess just isnt workingnot for themselves nor, so far as they can see, for those around them. What they have found, at least, does not exceed all expectations, as the standard evaluation form says. Disappointment books form a subcategory of Christian publishing. Self-flagellation has not disappeared from the Christian repertoire.

But the disappointment also comes from those who merely stand apart from visible Christianity (perhaps they have no real knowledge of the situation, or have just had enough), as well as from those who openly oppose it. These people often beat Christians with their own stick, criticizing them in terms that Jesus himself provides. There is an obvious Great Disparity between, on the one hand, the hope for life expressed in Jesus found real in the Bible and in many shining examples from among his followersand, on the other hand, the actual day-to-day behavior, inner life, and social presence of most of those who now profess adherence to him.

The question must arise: Why the Great Disparity? Is it caused by something built into the very nature of Jesus and what he taught and brought to humankind? Or is it the result of inessential factors that attach themselves to Christian institutions and people as they journey through time? Are we in a period when both rank-and-file Christians and most of their leaders have, for some reason, missed the main point?

If your neighbor is having trouble with his automobile, you might think he just got a lemon. And you might be right. But if you found that he was supplementing his gasoline with a quart of water now and then, you would not blame the car or its maker for it not running, or for running in fits and starts. You would say that the car was not built to work under the conditions imposed by the owner. And you would certainly advise him to put only the appropriate kind of fuel in the tank. After some restorative work, perhaps the car would then run fine.

We must approach current disappointments about the walk with Christ in a similar way. It too is not meant to run on just anything you may give it. If it doesnt work at all, or only in fits and starts, that is because we do not give ourselves to it in a way that allows our lives to be taken over by it. Perhaps we have never been told what to do. We are misinformed about our part in eternal living. Or we have just learned the faith and practice of some group we have fallen in with, not that of Jesus himself. Or maybe we have heard something that is right-on with Jesus himself, but misunderstood it (a dilemma that tends to produce good Pharisees or legalists, which is a really hard life.) Or perhaps we thought the Way we have heard of seemed too costly and we have tried to economize (supplying a quart of moralistic or religious water now and then).

Now we know that the car of Christianity can run, and run gloriously, in every kind of external circumstance. We have seen itor at least, anyone who wishes to can see itmerely by looking, past the caricatures and partial presentations, at Jesus himself and at the many manifestations of him in events and personalities throughout history and in our world today. He is, simply, the brightest spot in the human scene. There is no real competition. Even anti-Christians judge and condemn Christians in terms of Jesus and what he said. He is not really hidden. But for all his manifest presence in our world, he must be sought. That is part of his plan, and for our benefit. If we do seek him, he will certainly find us, and then we, ever more deeply, find him. That is the blessed existence of the disciple of Jesus who continuously grows in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).

But just there is the problem. Who, among Christians today, is a disciple of Jesus, in any substantive sense of the word disciple? A disciple is a learner, a student, an apprenticea practitioner, even if only a beginner. The New Testament literature, which must be allowed to define our terms if we are ever to get our bearings in the Way with Christ, makes this clear. In that context, disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth.

In contrast, the governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be Christians forever and never become disciples. Not even in heaven, it seems, for who would need it there? That is the accepted teaching now. Check it out wherever you are. And this (with its various consequences) is the Great Omission from the Great Commission in which the Great Disparity is firmly rooted. As long as the Great Omission is permitted or sustained, the Great Disparity will flourishin individual lives as well as in Christian groups and movements. Conversely, if we cut the root in the Great Omission, the Great Disparity will wither, as it has repeatedly done in times past. No need to fight it. Just stop feeding it.

Jesus told us explicitly what to do. We have a manual, just like the car owner. He told us, as disciples, to make disciples . Not converts to Christianity, nor to some particular faith and practice. He did not tell us to arrange for people to get in or make the cut after they die, nor to eliminate the various brutal forms of injustice, nor to produce and maintain successful churches. These are all good things, and he had something to say about all of them. They will certainly happen ifbut only if we are (his constant apprentices) and do (make constant apprentices) what he told us to be and do. If we just do this, it will little matter what else we do or do not do.

Once we who are disciples have assisted others with becoming disciples (of Jesus, not of us), we can gather them, in ordinary life situations, under the supernatural Trinitarian Presence, forming a new kind of social unit never before seen on earth. These disciples are his called-out ones, his ecclesia. Their walk is already in heaven (Philippians 3:20), because heaven is in action where they are (Ephesians 2:6). Now it is these people who can be taught to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. In becoming his students or apprentices, they have agreed to be taught, and the resources are available, so they can methodically go about doing it. This reliably yields the life that proves to exceed all expectations.

Jesus put it this way to his little group of immediate followers: I have been given say over all things in heaven and in the earth. As you go, therefore, make disciples of all kinds of people, submerge them in Trinitarian Presence, and show them how to do everything I have commanded. And now look: I am with you every minute until the job is done (Matthew 28:1820). We see in world history the results of a small number of his disciples simply doing what he said, with no Omission.