Elijah: Faith and FireSýnishorn

Just Like Me

Read Acts 14:15. 

Legendary. Larger than life. A “colossus amongst ordinary men”(1) is how Elijah is described by many scholars who have written about his place in biblical history. 

The Bible sets him beside Moses as the primary prophetic figure of the Old Testament and uses him as a point of spiritual reference throughout the New Testament, centuries after he lived. He seems almost superhuman, right? An exception to the rule instead of an example to which we can aspire. 

Yet before we even let that doubt begin to blossom in our minds, the writer of the Book of James tells us something we all need to remember. 

Turn to James 5:17. In your notes, write just the opening phrase of it—the part up through the first comma or so. Why is this point important to readers like us today?

I tend to put other people on a pedestal—people who appear to experience God and exercise their faith at a level that seems beyond my reach, people for whom He appears to be present, active, and available in ways that apparently don’t apply to the rest of us.

I’ve noticed many reasons why we all tend toward this. I’ll mention two of them, then I’ll let you personally and prayerfully consider them: (1) the pedestal creates a safe distance between us. It makes me think the reason there’s such a difference in how they live, versus how I live, is because they’re just so different from me to begin with. And so (2) the pedestal allows me to set a lower bar for myself. Since living like them is so far above me, I feel like I can afford to placate my own laziness, my complacency, my lack of spiritual sacrifice and diligence. After all, who am I? I’m not even in their league. They’re in a whole other category. I’m just an ordinary person.

We get ourselves (and others) into so much needless trouble when we insist on building these pedestals for people who, underneath it all, are Just. Like. Us. 

Just like Elijah.

So while Elijah is an example for us, he is not an exception to us. We must resist our tendency to venerate him and other biblical heroes like him. None of the biblical heroes were intended to be an exception; they are all meant to be examples to us of what happens when an ordinary life intersects with an extraordinary God. 

(1) F. B. Meyer, The F. B. Meyer Collection, Elijah and the Secret of His Power, preface.