The 21 Laws of Discipleship

1. Transformed by the renewing of your mind.

2. Transformed by training.

3. Transformed by worship.

4. Transformed in community.

5. Transformed by habit.

6. Transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

7. Transformed by imitating a godly example.

8. Transformed by trying really hard. (Yes, discipleship does include trying really, really hard.)

9. Transformed by faith.

10. Transformed by speaking the truth. We are changed more by what we say than by what we hear.

11. Transformed by pain.

12. Transformed by the gospel.

13. Transformed by service.

14. Transformed by finding and using the way of escape.

15. Transformed by going all-in.

16. Transformed by time.

17. Transformed by prayer.

18. Transformed by understanding and using the principle of replacement.

19. Transformed by confessing sin.

20. Transformed by living life in the kingdom.

21. Transformed by sovereign grace.

In many areas of life, you have to do multiple things right to have success. For example, if you want to hit a tennis ball correctly, you have to understand…

• The proper court positioning.

• The proper stance.

• The proper grip.

• The proper backswing.

• The proper eye contact. You can’t hit a ball you are not looking at. There is a tendency to want to look where you think the ball is going. You look up just in time to see a miss-hit ball.

• How to put topspin on the ball. (Without topspin you have to hit the ball so softly that gravity has enough time to pull the ball into the court. If you want to stroke the ball with oomph, you have to know how to topspin the ball.)

• The proper follow-through.

If you get five out of six of these right, the ball will not go where you want it to go. Five out of six equals failure.

If you do everything right, but your grip is off by just a few degrees, the ball will not go anywhere near the right direction.

If you do everything right, but you are in the wrong position on the court, you won’t even touch the ball. You have to get everything right to have success. This is true of almost everything.

• If three of four tires on your car have enough air, you won’t make it very far.

• If seven of the eight pistons are firing properly the engine won’t run right.

• If everything in the car works except the brakes, you will be in big trouble.

• If everything works except the lights, you will be in trouble at night.

If you understand everything about how we are transformed except the power of the Holy Spirit, you will never live the Christian life.

If you don’t understand what the Bible teaches about the power of habit, you will struggle. If you don’t understand the role of faith, Christian living will be impossible. What do we need to believe? How do we come to believe? Do we need to just try really hard to believe? If we can’t answer these questions, Christian living will be impossible. It’s complicated. Don’t try to oversimplify it.

Josh Hunt, The 21 Laws of Discipleship (Good Questions, 2024).

Check out our Bible Study on the 21 Laws of Discipleship by Josh Hunt

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.