As far as training Christians how to think and feel and act as a Christian — that is, discipling in the sense of growing them into more and more maturity — that happens in so many ways in the New Testament. Here is just a grocery list of possibilities:

• Titus 2:4 — Older women are to train younger women
• 2 Timothy 2:2 — Paul trained Timothy to train others to train others.
• Ephesians 6:4 — Fathers are to train their children.
• Matthew 28:20 — Missionaries are to teach the nations everything Jesus commanded.
• Hebrews 3:13 — All Christians are to exhort each other every day to avoid sin and to stir each other up to love and good works (see also Hebrews 10:24–25).
• 1 Peter 4:10 — All Christians are to use their gifts to serve others.
• Acts 18:24–26 — Priscilla and Aquila, on the spur of the moment it seems, explained the way of God more accurately to Apollos.

Every Christian should be helping unbelievers become believers by showing them Christ. That is making a disciple. And every Christian should be helping other believers grow to more and more maturity. That is making a disciple.

And every Christian should be seeking to get help for themselves from others to keep on growing. And that is also our discipleship. And the church should think through how all of these kinds of biblical disciple-making find expression in their corporate life.

Your discipleship begins with you! We all as Christians must discover that the transformation of fleshly centered life into a spiritually mature life in union with Christ Jesus is a supernatural as His Spirit becomes preeminent in our thoughts: "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5).

This cannot occur by self-discipline, self-effort, or education in and of itself but rather it is a result of the living Word breathing life giving truth into every fabric of our human estate. This is not an onerous task but a joyful journey into the fullness of Christ's magnificent Grace and finding ourselves basking in His sabbath rest!

Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Let us then observe that the writer of Hebrews first describes for us the Word as an it in verse 12 but is also alive and knows everything. In verse 13 describes a Someone before Whom we are totally exposed and to Whom we are accountable. This is all in the context of Sabbath Rest!

Hebrews 4:12 Zōn gar ho logos tou theou kai ⸀energēs kai tomōteros hyper pasan machairan distomon kai diiknoumenos achri merismou psychēs kai ⸁pneumatos,* harmōn te kai myelōn,* kai kritikos enthymēseōn kai ennoiōn kardias;

Hebrews 4:13 kai ouk estin ktisis aphanēs enōpion autou,* panta de gymna kai tetrachēlismena tois ophthalmois autou,* pros hon hēmin ho logos.

In the original text we see it begins and ends with "logos". A literal translation of the ending phrase would be: "but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom to us the Word." Christ Himself in Whom we are to rest! The entrance to that rest is the Word!

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1–5, ESV)

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It’s easy to skip through a Bible passage and jump to personal application before we’ve really spent time exploring what God is saying. Inductive Bible study is one of the best methods to help us slow down and see what Scripture means, how its earliest audience understood it, and how it should change our lives.

In Logos, you don’t need a workbook or a small group to go through an inductive Bible study. You don’t even need to pull Strong’s Concordance off your shelf. Everything you need is contained in a guided study in Logos (the Inductive Bible Study Workflow).

Once you open the Inductive Bible Study Workflow, simply choose the passage you want to study, and Logos guides you through the inductive method.

Let’s say we’re studying Colossians 1:15–23. Here’s how the Inductive Bible Study Workflow starts off:

It’s easy to skip through a Bible passage and jump to personal application before we’ve really spent time exploring what God is saying. Inductive Bible study is one of the best methods to help us slow down and see what Scripture means, how its earliest audience understood it, and how it should change our lives.

In Logos, you don’t need a workbook or a small group to go through an inductive Bible study. You don’t even need to pull Strong’s Concordance off your shelf. Everything you need is contained in a guided study in Logos (the Inductive Bible Study Workflow).

Once you open the Inductive Bible Study Workflow, simply choose the passage you want to study, and Logos guides you through the inductive method.

Let’s say we’re studying Colossians 1:15–23. Here’s how the Inductive Bible Study Workflow starts off:

Tracing repeated words in the Bible gives us a fuller picture of what the human authors intended. Thankfully, you don’t have to know Scripture’s original languages to be able to find these two key things about biblical words:

1. Where the Greek or Hebrew word appears in other passages
2. How the Greek or Hebrew word was translated in those other spots

Since we’re in Colossians 1:15–23, let’s look at the phrase “pleased to dwell” in verse 19. In the Important Words section of the Inductive Bible Study Workflow, we see eudokeō, which is translated “be well pleased; take delight.” When I click on the Greek word, this tab opens:

That’s the Bible Word Study in Logos, and it shows you every place where that Greek word is used in the New Testament and how it’s translated in each spot. When you scroll down, you can see related words, examples of where it’s used, and more. For now, we want to look at the translation section—that’s the one with the big wheel.

In the top corner of that section, we can see there are 21 uses of the word in the New Testament. Each color on the wheel breaks down those 21 uses by their translation—you can quickly see that “pleased” is the most common way it’s translated, but “delight” is in there, too.

If we click on the Greek word in the middle of the wheel, we can see the entire list of verses where the word appears, sorted by the English translation.

Now that we’ve done a simple word study, let’s say we want to dig deeper into verse 15: What does it mean that Jesus is the “firstborn of all creation”?

Again, in the Important Words section of the Inductive Bible Study Workflow, we see a Greek word translated as “firstborn.” If we click on prōtotokos, it opens the Bible Word Study tab, and we can see the word is used eight times in the New Testament. It’s always translated “firstborn”—which doesn’t really answer our question yet. Scrolling down, we see the Greek roots of the word, which give us a hint about what the phrase might mean.

Let’s make a note: the prōtos part of the word could refer to “birthright,” or it could refer to “be first” or “place of honor.” We can then click on the Greek word in the middle of the circle (prōtotokos) to see all eight places where the word appears in the New Testament.

We’re starting to form some ideas about what it means that Jesus is the “firstborn of all creation,” but let’s see what else we can learn.

As we continue through the Inductive Bible Study Workflow, we get to the Examine Commentary Discussions section.

We have a list of commentaries (it pulls from the commentaries currently in our library), and when we click through, they go straight to the passage we’re studying. The first three commentaries on this list supply these insights:

The context forbids any interpretation of these words that makes Christ first among created beings. . . . The simplest explanation is the best; the ‘first-born’ son was always the father’s heir. God’s Son, Jesus Christ, is ‘heir of all things’ as the corresponding passage in Hebrews plainly says Hebrews 1:2. ¹

The NIV translation correctly states that Jesus is “over all creation.” The term “firstborn” distances Jesus from creation rather than subsumes him under it. Therefore, the point is that Jesus is the firstborn (preeminent) with reference to the creation, just as later Paul argued that Jesus was preeminent “out of the dead.” ²

The title ‘firstborn’ . . . therefore conveys the idea of priority in both time and rank, and we should not foreclose on either of these options (NIV, in its paraphrase, allows only the idea of rank): to opt for temporal priority does not imply that the pre-existent Son of God is merely the first created being. The continuing temporal sense of the word is clear from verse 18 (cf. Romans 8:29), and gives a parallel idea to that expressed in the NEB translation of John 1:1, ‘When all things began, the Word already was’. It is in virtue of this eternal pre-existence that the Son of God holds supreme rank. ³ 

So, putting it all together, we can form the hypothesis that Paul, in Colossians 1;15, is using a familial term to explain how Jesus is over creation. Not only did he exist before creation, but he is superior to all of creation.

The best part: we found all this info without leaving the inductive Bible study we were already doing

1. R. C. Lucas, Fullness & Freedom: The Message of Colossians & Philemon, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 50–51.

2. N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 12, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 75.

3. Richard R. Melick, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, vol. 32, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1991), 217.