How can the body of Christ live radically in a world of apathy? In this video, Pastor David Platt explains how the Church can tangibly practice radical living through disciple-making. Living radically is never as overwhelming as we perceive it to be. Rather, it often looks like brothers and sisters in Christ spurring one another on and learning from one another. As the Church joins together in love and commitment, the gospel is brought to the nations. Living radically truly is just what life in full surrender to Jesus looks like.
- The Necessity of the Church in Radical Living
- Disciple Making in Community
- The Great Commission
Living Radically as a Church
So to think you can be radical for Christ, apart from the church, would miss the whole point. Because when we were called to Christ and when we surrender to Christ, we surrender to who he is as well as his body. The church, we’re not alone in this thing. We’re with brothers and sisters who are walking this journey who have been brought together in Christ and join with one another in a partnership for the sake of his name and his gospel being spread to the ends of the earth. So this is what it means to be a part of the church.
And so a radical commitment to Christ inevitably results in a radical commitment to the church. Coming alongside of brothers and sisters and saying, “Okay, how do we live this life out together, spurring one another on toward Christ, encouraging one another in Christ, learning from one another, teaching one another.”
What Disciple-Making is All About
This is what disciple-making is all about. And then we do that together through the community of Christ’s followers, we go together into the nations. And this is where the local church is the means that God has promised to bless for the accomplishment of the great commission, that he’s going to accomplish the great commission through individual believers joined together in local churches who together are making disciples of all nations. And so there’s no question that if we are surrendered to Christ, that will automatically mean that we are in love with the church and we want to be a part of joining together in churches that are spreading the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
