The Great Educator

“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”-Galatians 1:12

The best lessons are not learned in a classroom.  The best teacher does not stand at a blackboard.  We learn about this world, by being in this world.  Experience, others, and the things around us teach us.  The spiritual world is not always learned in the same fashion.  The Spirit can use natural things to show us spiritual things, did not Jesus do the same?  However, without the Spirit to translate these lessons, it will fall on deaf ears.  To understand spiritual things, you must have the Spirit.  We need Jesus, the great educator.

   It seems as time goes by that we have an increase in information but not an increase in education.  The Western world that we live in does not lack for information.  However, information does not automatically equal education.  Education is an enlightening experience, a personal realization founded in information received.  It is Nathans parable to David, Jesus’s instruction to his disciples, and Paul’s time in the wilderness.  The world does not lack for information, nor does the Western church culture.  We have sermons preached in church’s, audio sermons, pod-casts, Bible study groups, articles, blogs, books, movies, radio shows, and let’s not forget (I say with sarcasm)….the Bible.  If you took all the other stuff away, the Bible would be more than enough.  There is ample provision, and yet we as a society are in a state of spiritual dehydration; marked by a misplaced moral compass, complacent attitude toward spiritual matters, and overall disregard of God’s instruction.  Logic would tell us that the more information we obtain about God the closer to him we become, but the scriptures suggest otherwise.  Those that were the most informed in Jesus’s day had the least amount of faith, and those who were probably the least informed had the most faith.  “So what then?” You might ask.  “Do we strive to know nothing?”  Yes! Exactly!  Stop and consider, Paul writes that the things which were gained unto him he counted but dung that he might win Christ.  All the information he had amassed about Jewish law, and the education (so it would seem) that he had received, it meant nothing to him; and he gave diligence to keep it that way.  This is because he understood that the obtaining of the Spirit, the education of the Spirit, it does not come through a wealth of information and fact-finding, rather a voluntary poverty.  Willingly impoverishing yourself to: what you think is right, what you think is just, and what you think is god; and wholly yielding to the teachings of the Spirit.  The Bible is our information source, and the Spirit our instructor; everything else is a byproduct used at the Spirits discretion to aid in illuminating spiritual things. 

The Spirit is the educator to the children of God and the divider of the saint and the sinner.  The spirit teaches as no man can teach and reveals truth that enlightens to change; a change that occurs both within and without.  When the Spirit teaches, it promotes change in the people, because it teaches absolute truth, and as it teaches, everything about us continually yields to this education.  God help us to exalt this kind of education, and facilitate this brand of information.