Lifelong learner
The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. –Luke 6:40 (NIV)
The question, I suppose, is what qualifies as “fully trained”. I have this bad habit of conforming Christ to my image. There’s this picture of Jesus in my mind that looks remarkably like me. Oh sure, He’s a better version of me – wiser, kinder, more patient and forgiving, a little taller with less back fat. But He likes the things I like and He hates the things I hate and He’s really annoyed at the things that annoy me. If He was here again in the flesh, He’d rail against the things I rail against, and curse the people I curse. Wouldn’t He?
But Jesus is not a prop. He isn’t a cardboard cutout that I get to take selfies with. He isn’t the “buddy” who smiles and winks and gives me a thumbs up when my circle of influencers is re-defining sin. And He isn’t the kick-butt-take-names strongman calling me to turn my culture into a theocracy. One day when the Father gives the green light, Jesus will return to execute His perfect judgment (Matthew 24:36). In the meantime, He isn’t there to provide cover for my ideology, whether it leans left or right. He isn’t even all that concerned with whether I agree with His methods.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. –1 Corinthians 13:11-12 (NIV)
His designs are bigger than that. His approach was, and is, radical, counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, and out of step with human wisdom. He calls me to follow, to love, to sacrifice, to be salt and light. What does that look like? “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
The objective of Christ in my life is not that I would find a version of Him that I’m comfortable with. It is that, as His student, His disciple, His apprentice, I would be conformed to HIS image. How long does it take to become “fully trained”? I’ll let you know when I get there. At the rate I’m going, I’m hoping to have it sorted out by the time my assignment here is done.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. –Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV)