1. The Christ Life
To Israel as a nation had been intrusted the sacred gift of teaching; but the power had departed from this people because they had mingled their educational ideas with the heathen, and had so far forgotten the commands of Jehovah that they were sending their children to heathen teachers, inviting into their midst the prophets of Baal. (2 Kings 17:15-17; Jer. 19:4, 5) That nation whose prophets had more than once warned the kings of the earth of impending danger, heard no longer the voice of God. For nearly four hundred years no prophet had arisen in Israel. "Prophecy had become so completely extinct--the Spirit had so utterly departed from Israel--that it was apparently assumed by many that a new prophet was an impossibility." Had the God who brought their fathers out of Egypt, who had driven out the nations before their face,--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,--had He forsaken His people? Often the question was asked, as the family circle formed around the table. Almost with bated breath mothers awaited the birth of a child, hoping it might be the chosen of God, but still no prophet came.
Israel Prior to Birth of Christ
The priests in Israel went on in their formal round of duties; yearly the nation assembled at Jerusalem for the annual feasts. Thousands of victims were slain, and the blood ran freely from the altar; but there was no answering fire, no glow of the Shekinah. Jewish children sat day after day at the feet of masters in Israel, listening to the repetition of tradition and the words of the Talmud; but the life had departed from the instruction, and there was no response in the souls of men. Heaven waited anxiously for the opening of some soul to the inflow of God's Spirit, but the avenues through which it should have come were closed. Teachers who should have been "under the full control of the Spirit," knew not what it was to hear the voice of God; and children, fed only with physical and mental food, grew to manhood with shriveled spiritual natures, to become in turn the teachers of the next generation. As Israel's governmental prosperity was due to her educational system, as her land produced abundantly when the children were properly taught, and as the nations round them bowed in respect to the chosen of God so long as they adhered to the system of education once offered, it is no wonder that the year 5 b. c., following centuries of departure from these truths, found Palestine in the iron grasp of Rome, and its people scarce able to pay the necessary tribute. Heaven's eye saw this and more.
John the Baptist
Among the priests who ministered in the temple was one who looked for a deliverer, and to him the angel Gabriel came with the words: "Thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John." Although this man had touched the chord on which angels sang, and was enabled to feel the pulse-beat of the Eternal, the angel's words startled him, and he believed them not. And that the sounds of earth might for a time be shut out, and Zacharias be enabled to listen only to the voice of God, the angel laid his hand upon him, and he remained speechless until the day of the fulfillment of Gabriel's words.
The Education of the Forerunner A prophet was born who was to turn the hearts of Israel to their God. He came in the spirit and power of Elias, preaching repentance. His life was one of loneliness and poverty. His time was spent away from the cities and multitudes; for Jerusalem, the appointed leader of nations, no longer offered an education fitted for her own prophets. And so God trained John. Of those born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist.
Jesus of Nazareth
Once more heaven and earth were linked. How small the chain! Only, as it were, the size of a thread, and the connecting link was the heart of a woman! But in the town of Nazareth, the lowly and the despised, lived a young woman, betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter of Galilee. Looking into the future, little more than dreaming of life and its hopes, she lifted her eyes, and beheld an angel. The soul longing to be in tune with God, brings angelic hosts to earth. If that yearning be but a mother's longing, heaven bows a listening ear; the throb is felt throughout creation. So close is God to man! The words, "Hail, highly favored, the Lord is with thee," startled Mary, for she had not expected such a quick response. She was troubled, but the angel said, "Fear not, Mary." "The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." "The fullness of time had come." God, having waited years for Israel to return to Him, now accomplished the master stroke of the Godhead. Creation wondered.
The Spirit overshadowed Mary; it thrilled her nerves, and touched to life the germ of a new being. To humanity was given the power to form a body for the indwelling of the God of heaven. "A body hast Thou prepared Me." The treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the more glory might abound to God. "Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character and life." (See John 1: 14, R.V., mar.)
Early Education of Christ
The early years of the Christ child found Him sitting at His mother's knee. From her lips and from the scrolls of the prophets, He learned of heavenly things! Nature was His unwearied teacher; from her He gathered stores of scientific knowledge. He studied the life of plants and animals, and the life of man." "The parables by which, during His ministry, He loved to teach His lessons of truth, show how open His spirit was to the influences of nature, and how He had gathered the spiritual teaching from the surroundings of His daily life." "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks," so panted His soul for spiritual intercourse with the Father; and that longing which led Him to listen attentively for the voice of God in nature, developed the highest powers of His mind.
The Spiritual First in Christ's Education
His was not a sudden growth, but gradual, as with other children; and while developing a strong physical body, "the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom." The secret of the difference between Jesus and His companions is revealed in this verse. Most children develop mentally and physically, especially during their first twelve years; but the spiritual nature of Christ was the leading one and in His threefold nature the mental and physical were always well balanced by the spiritual. As Hinsdale says: "The divine mind, the human heart, and nature are closely united" in Him. He did not seek instruction in the rabbinical schools, for they had lost the spirit which to him was life.
Christ Recognized His Lifework
At an early age, probably not later than twelve, He recognized His life work, and henceforth every energy was bent in one direction. His lot was to reveal the divinity of God, to show the possibilities of the God-man, to prove to the world that it is possible for God and man to unite and for the spiritual nature to rule; and proving this, to show that the heavenly instituted system of education was not a failure, although at that time it was in disrepute.
Christ Chose the Spiritual Plane
The age of twelve was a critical period in the life of a Jewish child, for it was then that the physical nature was approaching maturity. The next few years meant much to the youth, for he then had it within his power to choose for life the plane upon which he expected to live. If physical strength and the gratification of the natural senses are the height of ambition, by yielding to temptations of this nature at about this age the life-habits are fixed. Perhaps in other countries the development is somewhat slower, owing to climatic influences, but from twelve to sixteen every youth struggles against tendencies and ambitions which a few years later cease to be temptations. It was so with Christ; but as He stood watching the paschal services at the time of His first visit to the temple, "day by day He saw their meaning more clearly. Every act seemed to be bound up with His own life. New impulses were awakening within Him." For years, that service, established to appeal to the spiritual nature, had degenerated into the mere slaying of beasts. For the first time a soul was touched, and heavenly impulses were awakened. It was then that the temptation to pass a life in physical ease was met and overcome. Heaven seemed to open to the child's eyes, and He heard the call of God to a life with Him. He sought to be alone, and in the silence His heart caught the vibrations of heavenly beings, and the grosser physical nature was abandoned forever.
Christ and the Rabbis
The resolve formed, a new light and power seemed to take possession of His mind, and entering the school conducted in the temple, He listened eagerly to hear from the lips of the rabbis some spiritual lesson. "The doctors turned upon Him with questions, and they were amazed at His answers." He manifested such deep piety, and His questions opened to the minds of His listeners such depths of truth, that wonder filled their minds. A harp swept by heavenly zephyrs was before them, and the music fell on untrained ears. The first work of the heaven-sent teacher had begun. "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business? "He asked, as Joseph and Mary met Him at the temple gate. They saw Him with physical eyes, and thought Him all their own; but the eye of the child had pierced the cloud which hung between heaven and earth.
Manual Training in Christ's Life
From Jerusalem He returned with His parents, and aided them in their life of toil. "He hid in His own heart the mystery of His mission, waiting submissively for the appointed time for Him to enter upon His work." Those eighteen years, were years of toil and study. Each day drew Him nearer to the time when a voice from heaven should proclaim Him a divine teacher. He was not impatient, but as a carpenter did thorough work; as a son, He was obedient; and as a subject, He was law abiding.
The Age of Strongest Spirituality
He never lost sight of the fact that He had a mission, and that it took a spiritual life to fulfill that mission. He was tempted in all points, and suffered in the temptation; but each resistance was a round added in the ladder He was building toward heaven. There was a law in Israel calling the priests to their sacred office at the age of thirty. This statute was based upon a law of human nature. The allotted time of man's life is divided into two portions. The first forty years is a time of growth, the last thirty a period of decline. Of the first half we have the age of physical development, then a time when the intellectual powers are in the ascendency, and from twenty-five to thirty or thirty-five is the time of special development in the spiritual nature. Every man has three chances in life; and the choice made, whether for worldly honor, for intellectual powers, or a life of faith, depends wholly upon the object constantly kept before the child by its educators. Had Christ been under the influence of the teachers of His day, the probability is that He would have chosen to live either on the physical or the intellectual plane, for this was the choice made by all the pupils of those schools, but His early training by Mary, who, as a mother, had yielded herself as the "handmaid of the Lord," and His close communion with God through the works of nature, guided Him into right channels, and at the auspicious moment He voluntarily offered Himself to His Father to fulfill the mission which it lay in His power to reject. Of His later struggles the record is silent. There came a period, however, when He might have posed as an intellectual leader, but His earlier decision led Him to pass this temptation unsullied. To prove this true, we need only to study the nature of the temptations presented in the wilderness. That He remained true to His mission is due to early training. This will not be controverted, for it is a divine law seen everywhere in nature. (Prov. 22:6)
2. The Ministry of the God-Man
Jesus as a Teacher
One of the gifts of the Spirit is that of teaching, and Christ was a born teacher. Acquired ability amounts to but little where the spirit of teaching is wanting. Christ was a teacher both by virtue of His nationality, since all Jews were called to be teachers, and also by direct appointment; for He had to accomplish in His own life what the nation had refused to accomplish. He carried with Him no credentials, no statement of scholarship signed by the doctors of Israel, for none of these schools had known Him as a pupil; yet Nicodemus, a master teacher in Jerusalem, after listening to His words, sought Him in the quiet evening hours, and addressed Him as Rabbi,--Teacher. In the course of the conversation this learned man said." We know that thou art a divine teacher, for no man can do as Thou except God be with him." It was as a teacher, and more, as a divine teacher, that He was known from the very beginning of His ministry. His ministry was a ministry of teaching. He was known as a teacher, not so much by the words He spoke as by the life He lived, and the works He did.
As a Teacher, Success Depended Upon the Life
The words of Bushnell are true: "We can see for ourselves in the simple directions and freedom of His teachings, that whatever He advances is from Himself." He was giving Himself, and that He had a self, a divine self, to give is due to the education of the child and youth. God's image was perfect in Him, and when the time of ministry came, there shone from Him what previous years had been developing in Him. This is the object of Christian education. The same author further says: "He is the high-priest ... of the divine nature, speaking as one that has come out from God, and has nothing to borrow from the world. It is not to be detected ... that the human sphere in which He moved imparted anything to Him. His teachings are just as full of divine nature, as Shakespeare's of human." What a commentary on the two systems of education, the one choosing inspiration as a basis; the other, the product of the human brain!
He Taught as One Having Authority
Bushnell continues: "In His teaching He does not speculate about God, as a school professor, drawing out conclusions by a practice on words, and deeming that the way of proof; He does not build up a frame of evidence from below, by some constructive process, such as the philosophers delight in; but He simply speaks of God and spiritual things as one who has come out from Him, to tell us what He knows. And His simple telling brings us the reality; proves it to us in its own sublime self-evidence; awakens even the consciousness of it in our own bosom; so that formal arguments or dialectic proofs offend us by their coldness, and seem, in fact, to be only opaque substances set between us and the light. Indeed, He makes even the world luminous by His words--fills it with an immediate and new sense of God, which nothing has ever been able to expel. The incense of the upper world is brought out in His garments, and flows abroad, as perfume, on the poisoned air." And no wonder, for from a child He had breathed the atmosphere of heaven. Every child should have the same privilege.
Principles of Christ's Education
When the two teachers, Christ and Nicodemus, the representatives of two systems of education, the divine and the worldly, met, Christ outlined to his questioner the principles upon which His system was based: (John 3)
1. Its primary object is to prepare its pupils for the kingdom of God, a spiritual kingdom.
2. The first step is a spiritual birth; for "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit." "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
3. This the natural man cannot understand, for it is spiritually discerned. As well might I try to explain it to you, Nicodemus, as to explain the blowing of the winds; you can see the results, but the truth cannot be grasped by the senses. Do you pose as a teacher in Israel, and know not these things? "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? "I have but begun to tell you of the plan of the Father. There are yet many things, "but ye cannot bear them now."
4. The things I teach are as light in the darkness. "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, ... but he that doeth truth cometh to the light." It is thus that I distinguish true scholars from the false. When truth is offered, some believe, and whosoever believes in the Son of man shall have eternal life.
Nicodemus said: "How can these things be? "He longed for proof, for demonstration. "Proof is indeed the method of science, including theology; it has, no doubt, a function in religious teaching; but it is not the method of the highest form of religious teaching. The fundamental truths of religion are directly revealed to the human consciousness, and are not argued out or logically established. ... The greatest religious truths lie deeper than formal reasoning. This is the reason why the greatest religious teachers have worked below the proposition-and-proof level; as said before, they have something of the prophetic gift. It may be added that no preacher [or teacher] who works mainly on this line will attract the most religious minds; he will not attract even those who have the piety of the intellect, to say nothing of the piety of the affections and the will. He may develop logical acumen, critical ability, and controversial power, but he will prove unequal to the generation of spirituality. ... Such a minister will be sure to lead his flock into the error that is now far too common,--of assigning a disproportionate place in religious faith and life to the under' standing, to the partial exclusion of the heart." [1]
His Pupils
His actual work as a teacher is seen in His dealings, first, with the apostles, His immediate followers, who were in training that they in turn might become teachers; second, with the multitudes who thronged His way; third, with the children who were brought to Him by mothers, and who were taught by Him, that mothers and apostles might the better know how to deal with youthful minds. Primarily, His was a training-school for workers, and His pupils represented every phase of human disposition. He chose humble fishermen, because their minds were unprejudiced, and they had less to unlearn before accepting the truth. "He knew what was in man." That is, He had insight into the minds and hearts, and knew just what was needed to awaken the soul-life of each student. This is a necessary gift in the successful teacher. How much that is now taught would be dispensed with if teachers could read the soul conditions of pupils, and then feed them with only such food as would nourish. This, too, is Christian education. Before the teacher can have such an experience, however, he must have soul culture, and be in such close touch with the fountain of truth that he can draw whatever is needed. The well is deep, and faith alone can bring the water of life to the surface. (John 4)
His Schoolroom the Country
With His chosen apostles, Christ "withdrew from the confusion of the city to the quiet of the fields and hills as more in harmony with the lessons of self-abnegation he desired to teach them.
Here, surrounded by the works of his own creation, he could turn the thoughts of his hearers from the artificial to the natural." Those schools to-day which are located in some quiet country place afford the best opportunities for education.
Textbooks
The books used seem to be two, and only two: the writings of the prophets and the great book of nature. Hinsdale says: "Scripture furnishes the basis of His teaching. ... It is impossible to say how many distinct recognitions of Scripture are found in His teachings, but the number and range are both large. ...One of the most interesting of these [methods] is his constant habit of expanding Scripture, or, as we might say, of reading into it new meanings. He thus treats not merely prophetic passages, but also dogmatic passages; moreover, His meanings are sometimes new, not merely to the Jewish teachers, but also to the authors of the passages themselves." [2] This was because the teacher was led by the Spirit of truth, which guides into all truth.
His System Emphasized the Practical
It must be remembered that this instruction was given to men of mature minds, and tended to fit them to become teachers of all men in whatever station. Probably none of the apostles were under thirty. They were men who had become settled in a life work. John, the youngest, was most susceptible to spiritual teaching, and at length developed this nature so fully that his spirit left his body in vision. (Rev. 1:10) Painter expresses well the method of instruction followed by Christ. He says: "He observes the order of nature, and seeks only a gradual development,--'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.'With His disciples, He insists chiefly upon the practical and fundamental truths of religion, building, as it were, a substantial framework in the beginning, which the Holy Spirit was to conduct afterward to a harmonious and beautiful completion." [3]
Visible Results of his Teaching
It was thus that all the truths we call doctrines were taught. The lesson on the resurrection was at the tomb of Lazarus; the one on Sabbath observance was in the synagogue, healing the withered hand, or bidding the dumb to speak. "One finds in His program," says a French writer, "neither literary studies nor course of theology. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the moment of action arrives, the disciples--those, unlettered fishermen--have become orators that move the multitudes and confound the doctors; profound thinkers that have sounded the Scriptures and the human heart; writers that give to the world immortal books in a language not their mother tongue." If the worth of a system of education is to be judged by results, the world must hold its peace when looking upon the work of Christ. Astonishment will again take hold of men when Christians return to His methods. Of His reference to nature we have no need to write, for His parables are the wonder of the ages, and take a unique position in the literature of all times. Christ was not, as many other teachers, a writer of books. His writing was on the hearts of men. He spoke, and the vibratory waves set in motion have continued until to-day, and still beat upon our hearts. The soul of the spiritually minded hears, and men to-day become pupils of the Man of Nazareth as verily as did Peter, James, and John.
Indications of a Completed Course
A student was ready to go forth from Christ's teachings to open the truth to others only when he could say." Lo, now speakest Thou plainly ... Now we are sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee. By this we believe that Thou camest forth from God." (John 16:29, 30) With the multitudes He did a work similar to that with the disciples; but because they were coming and going, He could not do the same thorough work. His teaching, however, was always practical, and the farmer went to his field a better man, seeing God in the growing grain; the fisherman returned to his nets with the thought ringing in his mind that he should be a fisher of men; the mother returned to her home recognizing her children as younger members of God's family, and with a strong desire to teach as He taught. The tendency always in all His teaching was to arouse thought, to awaken soul-longings, and cause hearts to beat with a new life fed from above. Standing between heaven and earth of the musical scale, His life vibrated in unison with those higher notes of the universes circling round His Father's throne, and with His human arm He encircled the world, imparting to beings here the same life, striving always to bring them into tune with the Infinite. "I, if I be lifted up," He said, "will draw all men unto Me."
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