Being a Male Disciple Instead of Pursuing Biblical Manhood or Masculinity

The path forward is not a sharper theory of masculinity but a more deeply formed male disciple. Discipleship grounded in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20) — recognizing God’s reality, developing a theological disposition, cultivating Theo-logic, and exercising disciplined inquiry — clarifies what the particularity of being male is for: the faithful embodiment of the Triune God’s claim within whatever social position a male occupies.

Key Takeaways

The Great Commission names three irreducible elements of discipleship. (1) Christ’s authority over all nations (Matt 28:18), (2) baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19), and (3) teaching others to “observe all” Christ commanded (28:20). Each element constrains what Christian manhood can legitimately mean.

Learning obedience is formational, not informational. Heb 5:8 — “he learned obedience through what he suffered” — sets the pattern. Scripture names learning as four interlocking knowledges: propositional (Prov 9:10), procedural (1 Thess 4:1), perspectival (Dan 3:16–18), and participatory (Jn 15:1–11).

Theological Disposition is the pre-reflective outcome. A theological disposition is not a set of doctrinal propositions held intellectually but a trained sense of how the world works — instinctual, cultivated through practice, obedience, and communal formation. Cultural masculinity trains its own disposition; Christian discipleship trains the opposite.

Male particularity is clarified by discipleship, not preserved against it. Christian men and women aim at the same thing — conformity to Christ. Conformity is not uniformity: what discipleship requires of a particular male will differ depending on his social position, temptations, and pressures. Bondservants and masters (1 Cor 7:17–21; Eph 6:5–9) both bear the name of the Triune God; neither receives an exemption from discipleship.

Matt 5:19; 11:29; 13:52; 22:37; 28:18–20

Deut 4:6, 10; 6:5, 7; 8:3; 17:18–20; 30:15–20

Rom 6:15–23; 12:2, 10

Heb 5:8, 14

1 Cor 7:17–21; 12:12–13; 16:13–14

Eph 6:5–9

Prov 4:7–9; 9:10; 1 Thess 4:1; Dan 3:16–18; Jn 7:17; 15:1–11; Jas 1:22–25; 1 Jn 2:4; Mal 3:10; Acts 15:1–29

Mark Driscoll, Act Like a Man

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (as parallel genre)

How Does Discipleship Actually Work According to the Great Commission?

If our goal as Christian men is to become male disciples of Jesus, we need to understand how discipleship works. In Matthew 28:18-20, widely known as the Great Commission, “making disciples” is associated with three key elements: (1) Christ’s authority, (2) baptism, and (3) teaching/learning. Each of these elements informs what it means to be a disciple, and offers some idea of how to go about becoming a disciple.

First, we need to recognize that the command to make disciples is rooted in Christ’s authority. Having been given “all authority in heaven and on earth” (28:18), making disciples “of all nations” becomes the logical consequence. The “therefore” of v. 19 signals that the mission flows directly from the authority claim. Jesus is Lord over the nations. As such, he calls his people to go out into the world to draw others under his authority. While making disciples tends to happen at the individual level, the implication of becoming a disciple is clear: one has recognized the authority of Christ, professed loyalty to him, and begun the process of learning to observe all Christ commanded.

Finally, making disciples requires teaching and learning. Those who have learned to be disciples throughout Jesus’s ministry are now called to teach others. This training (cf. Matt 13:52) prepares us to live under the authority of Christ as we “observe” or “keep” all of Christ’s commandments. Here again, we see the connection between Christ’s authority and discipleship. Christ commands, disciples follow.

As we think, then, about how discipleship works, we are thinking about being trained to live under a world order over which Christ has been given authority. That order is not new because God’s position hasn’t changed. With the resurrection of Christ, there is a new element. A human has been vindicated and elevated to a place of authority. This human is the one we are to emulate and obey. Discipleship, then, is a matter of setting our agendas aside to serve those of the kingdom. As Jesus was unwavering in keeping the will of the Father, so we are to learn to be disciples who bear the name of the Triune God faithfully and follow the ways of the only one whose life resulted in resurrection, ascension, and glorification.

This understanding of discipleship is crucial given the arguments for masculinity that are often advanced. Consider the implications of this reading for the notion of dominion. For instance, in Act Like a Man, Driscoll references Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…”), connecting that dominion to ambition, competition, and appropriate aggression. He goes on to set up a binary opposition, saying, “Men are made for dominion, rule, and authority and, if God’s men don’t rule, then Satan’s men will. It’s very simple. Either God’s sons exercise dominion or Satan’s sons exercise dominion.”

As disciples, we are learning to live under Christ’s authority. We are learning to imitate him and the way he lived. As such, when we think about ambition, we are thinking of the ambition of building God’s kingdom. When we think about dominion, we are thinking about resisting the ways of the world. Consider, for instance, the conquerors in Revelation. These are not men and women who expand their territory or gain some form of control over “Satan’s sons.” In a very real sense, the book of Revelation portrays a situation in which those who rebel against God are abusing their power over the economic and political systems of the earth (Rev 11:7; 13:7). Exercising dominion in this setting is about refusing to compromise even when such a refusal has negative, near-term consequences. As Revelation 12:11 states, “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death (cf., 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). Discipleship is the process of following Christ to be what we were created to be, not masculine men, but faithful humans bearing the name of the Triune God.

How Do Christians Learn Obedience?

If discipleship involves learning to observe all Christ commanded (28:20), we need to develop some understanding of how to go about learning obedience. God taught his people lessons in the Wilderness (Deut 8:3) and calls for the law to be passed down from generation to generation (4:10; 6:7; 11:19; 33:8-11). The Israelite king was to write out a copy of the book of the law and have it approved by the priests “that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of his law and these statutes” (17:18-20). This final reference makes clear the connection between learning and obedience (cf. Matt 5:19; 11:29). Like Christ, we learn obedience through suffering (Heb 5:8). This means that the circumstances that press against us are not obstacles to discipleship but the contexts in which we become disciples. The goal of learning is intended to be formational, not just informational.

What does learning entail? It isn’t enough to say that learning is limited to information (knowing that) because, as a text like the Great Commission makes clear, learning involves action. So, as we think about what we are doing when we learn to live under the authority of Christ, we need to consider the whole of our existence. To do so, I would suggest the following framework:

Recognizing God’s reality- We accept that we were created in God’s image. While it is common (and appropriate) to associated God’s image with human dignity (Gen 9:6), we must also recognize that being made in the image of God involves an obligation. If being made in God’s image involves reflecting God’s glory to the world, we must live in accordance with God’s instructions (Gen 2:15-17). Post-fall, doing so requires us to reorder our loves and reorient our attention so that we respond to God from within a given situation rather than responding to the situation as if God were absent or irrelevant.

Developing a Theological Disposition- We develop a deep theological sense of the way the world works. A theological disposition is not a set of doctrinal propositions we hold intellectually but our underlying sense of how the world works that has been trained into us through practice, obedience, and communal formation. Deuteronomy 30:15-20 presents this as the choice between life and death, blessing and curse. It is not primarily a matter of correct belief (though correct belief is certainly important) but about accepting that the Triune God has a claim on our lives and conforming our behavior to his authority. The disposition is formed by recognizing reality and by responding faithfully to reality, particularly the reality of the Triune God.

Developing Theo-Logic- We learn to reason from within our relationship with God rather than from within the assumptions of the surrounding culture. Theo-logic is a shared way of reasoning in which our relationship with God and one another shapes our rationality (Phil 2:1-11; Rom 12:10). The goal is patient, cruciform, faithful thinking. It is thinking shaped by the patterns revealed in Christ and in God’s word rather than by the logics of bravado and machismo.

These patterns often exist in opposition to cultural notions of masculinity. Gender ideologies, however they are expressed, tend to produce a logic of comparison, competition, and self-assertion. Theo-logic runs in the opposite direction. It assumes that obeying God is always the best option (Mal 3:10; Jn 7:17) and produces judgment oriented not toward what benefits the individual male but toward what the Spirit is doing in and through the community (Acts 15:1-29). This is why Paul can speak of mature courage and mature thinking in the same breath in 1 Corinthians 16:13-14. The courage he commends is not self-sufficient but rooted in mutuality, interdependence, and self-giving.

Disciplined Inquiry- We engage the circumstances of our lives with mature Christian discernment guided by multiple ways of knowing (Heb 5:14). Disciplined inquiry involves knowing that (propositional knowledge: Prov 9:10), knowing how (procedural knowledge: 1 Thess 4:1), knowing from a point of view (perspectival knowledge: Dan 3:16-18), and knowing by being (participatory knowledge: Jn 15:1-11). These are not four separate activities but four dimensions of a single integrated engagement with reality. The male disciple who has developed this capacity does not respond to the pressures of his environment as though God were absent or irrelevant. He responds from within a formed theological intelligence that has learned to read those pressures correctly.

What Does It Mean to Be a Male Disciple Rather Than to “Be a Man”?

Discussions of Christian manhood tend to reach for cultural scripts. They drift toward masculinity ideologies instead of doing the exegetical and formational work required to know what they are reaching for. The result is a misdirected telos. Men are given a standard other than Christ and called to conform to it. That is not an impoverished form of discipleship. It is a substitute for it.

The male/female distinction is not in question here but the cultural notions of masculinity that present themselves as “biblical.” The relevant question is not whether there is a stable, relatively rigid conception of masculine to which all men, Christian or not, should conform. Instead, the question is whether a given male has committed himself to be a disciple of Jesus. Both men and women are aiming for the same thing: conformity to Christ. Conformity is not uniformity. Because males and females are embedded in the world differently, what it means for a particular male to be a disciple will differ from person to person. Being male shapes the specific pressures a man will face, the particular social positions he is likely to occupy, and the temptations that will be most insistent.

What this requires is not a sharper theory of masculinity but a deeper commitment to discipleship. It requires communities of men learning together to recognize God’s reality, to develop a theological disposition, to cultivate Theo-logic, and to engage their circumstances with disciplined discernment. It requires, in other words, what the Great Commission demands: men who are being taught to observe all that Christ commanded (Matt 28:20). The measure of that is not cultural, but theological. It is conformity to the one to whom all authority has been given.

The practical shape of this discipleship will vary. A bondservant and a master both bear the name of the Triune God. Neither receives an exemption from discipleship on account of his social position, and neither receives a mandate to seize the sort of dominion that cultural scripts associate with success. Both are called to glorify God within the position they occupy. This is not a counsel of resignation. It is a recognition that the kingdom of God advances through faithful embodiment, not through cultural achievement. The man who washes feet, weeps at graves, welcomes children, and submits to suffering on behalf of others is not a weakened man. He is a discipled one.

Why Isn’t the Solution a Better Theory of Masculinity?

The alternative is not a more sophisticated theory of masculinity. It is discipleship. This process is not something a man does in isolation. It occurs within the body of Christ, where the members are learning together, in their differences, to be governed by the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things (1 Cor 13:7).

A Christian man, formed by this process, does not need to be told what a masculine man looks like. He is learning to look like Christ. That is a more demanding standard than any cultural script—and a more liberating one. It does not ask a man to perform an identity constructed from the outside. It asks him to become, through the long obedience of discipleship, the particular kind of human being God has called him to be: male, embodied, situated in a specific time and place, and entirely dependent on the one to whom all authority has been given.

About the Author