The Cost of Discipleship
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Persecution has followed the church from its earliest days. Yet God uses even opposition to spread the gospel of salvation. Today, R.C. Sproul shows why persecution is inseparable from our identifying with Christ as His disciples.
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Meet Today's Teacher:
R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are people who are hated in this world for no other reason than that they belong to Christ. |
| 0:08.1 | And that somehow doesn't seem very fair, and we may get our feelings hurt, but the church |
| 0:16.5 | needs men and women who understand the cost of discipleship and are willing to bear that cost |
| 0:26.4 | patiently, trusting God, and not allowing persecution or slights or slanders from outside the |
| 0:35.9 | church to make us bitter or hostile towards the people |
| 0:42.3 | who are bringing that persecution because among them we all once were. |
| 0:59.5 | The cost of discipleship is high. Many before us and many in our day have paid the ultimate price for the cause of Christ |
| 1:04.8 | and the advancement of His kingdom. |
| 1:07.5 | Welcome to renewing your mind on this Monday. |
| 1:10.2 | Over the next two days, R.C. Sprole will consider the persecuted church as he explains why |
| 1:15.3 | the early church grew so strong and what we can expect by remaining faithful to Christ. |
| 1:21.9 | Let's join R.C. Now. |
| 1:26.3 | One of the oldest maxims that we have in Christian history is the axiom that the blood of the |
| 1:35.3 | martyrs is the seed of the church. |
| 1:39.9 | Of course, that phrase calls our attention back to the first century Christian community where |
| 1:47.2 | so many of the members of the early church bore witness to their faith even to the point of |
| 1:57.0 | death. |
| 1:58.7 | In fact, the New Testament word for witness is the word martyria. That is, |
| 2:06.5 | martyria means witnessing or to bear witness. And from that Greek word that means to witness, |
| 2:14.5 | we have derived the English word martyr. |
| 2:19.9 | Now, obviously, in the New Testament community, not all of those who bore witness to the |
| 2:26.2 | truth claims of Christ were martyred, but all martyrs bear witness to their faith. |
... |
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