Life-Long Learning (1 Cor. 4:1-2)

I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.
(1 Corinthians 4:1-2, NASB)

We need to be taught. None of us learns by osmosis. We’re taught by our parents to speak, to behave properly, to understand values (or so we hope). Then we go to school, and we’re taught math, history, and science.

We go off to work, and we’re taught the essential duties of our jobs.

And if we’re really, really fortunate, we have good teachers who have hearts for helping us learn what we need to learn.

It’s the same with our faith. We need good, godly teachers to help us understand what it means to be followers of Christ. We need people who have spent countless hours studying God’s word, investigating it, looking at each word’s meaning in Greek or Hebrew. We need men and women whose passion is to teach believers about God, about faith.

And we learn from each other as well. That’s one of the things I love best about group Bible studies: learning from each other. The Holy Spirit speaks to each of us as we prayerfully study God’s word. And oftentimes, He’ll give me an insight that differs slightly from the insight He’s given you—and we can both be inspired.

Learning should be life-long, and this is even more so for followers of Christ. We’ll never learn, this side of heaven, all the Bible offers: encouragement, affirmation, exhortation, conviction. But as long as we’re on this earth, we should seek out godly men and women who love God’s word and learn from them.

And then, perhaps one day, we can teach others.