Where Discipleship Begins

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul uses the dual images of light/darkness and sleep/awakening to describe the task of discipleship.  Paul's Greek readers would have been very familiar with these images, which were used to demonstrate the duality of wisdom/ignorance.

Wisdom to Paul's readers was considered a gradual process where we discover that what we have been told is true is actually false, and that the prevailing culture around us lives in a state of perpetual ignorance.  Wisdom lies in the process of being freed from the ignorance of our prevailing cultural mindsets.

Discipleship, similarly, begins with the moment when we choose to allow Christ to work within us to free us from the darkness of sin and ignorance.  That moment does not end the process of discipleship, in the same way that the First Sunday of Advent begins, rather than ends, the liturgical year.  The moment of justification, when we accept Christ as Lord, begins the process by which we seek to walk into the light.  Discipleship begins with this yearning for the light of Christ.