As I was reading something from the Gospels the other day it occurred to me that Jesus’ first disciples started following him long before they recognized his divinity or developed anything like a theology of incarnation or Trinity. They were disciples before they were worshipers, technically speaking.
We normally think of things the other way around, it seems to me. Typically we see the first step as “belief,” specifically, belief in certain facts: that I am a sinner, that I cannot save myself, that Jesus is fully God and fully man, etc. First (we think) people must worship Jesus as Savior and God, get a few theological facts straight, and then we can start talking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We don’t seem to talk much about following Jesus until people have “crossed the line” of becoming a worshiper of Jesus.