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“Christ as Teacher”

Do you have a favorite teacher?

When you hear the word “teacher,” do you think of someone who is pedantic and boring?

Or do you have a completely different reaction and, instead, remember being changed and motivated by a good teacher?

Christ fully embodies the gift of the teacher.

Whether explicitly exhorting you to follow his laws, trying to explain the Gospel through the parables, or even enabling certain events to happen in your life, he is trying to teach you his truth and way of life.

But when we forget that he is a teacher, we ignore his teachings.

Imagine you are back in elementary school and, one morning, a substitute teacher walks to the front of the classroom. Our minds stop paying full attention to what is said from the front because we wrongly think that person is not a “real” teacher. We believe that what he teaches is not true or useful.

When we don’t respect our teacher, we don’t listen, don’t believe, and don’t follow what is taught.

Even if we have the best teacher in the world, if we don’t recognize the power and significance of good teaching in our life, we won’t change.

So it is with Christ as a teacher. Until we embrace him as the most important teacher in our life, we will miss the lessons leading to the full life in Christ. But when we let God truly guide our paths and shape our minds, we change and grow.

As a teacher, Christ often did the following:

• Illustrate truths in a visual or visceral way
• Instruct a path forward in a given situation
• Identify the critical lessons to take away
• Insist what he taught matters
• Initiates the teaching

Questions:

Do you appreciate Christ and how he embodies the gifts of the teacher?

Do you seek understanding from his words? More importantly, do you desire to follow them and incorporate them?

Or do you let it go in one ear and out the other?