A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
– Luke 6:40-41
The gospel of Luke carefully records truth from eyewitness accounts of numerous historical citizens of the first century.
The following is a fictional representation, part one of the conclusion to seven previous episodes of eyewitness by one of Jesus’ first disciples.
As I have said, when we came among the first disciples of Jesus and followed our Lord to Capernaum, into the hills of Galilee and eventually on His teaching journeys though Samaria and Judea, I knew with all of my heart that He IS the Messiah of God.
Yet it took us many years of difficult witness to understand the many sayings of Jesus to the crowds. Although we understood His words, we had doubts of how we might apply our Lord’s teaching to our daily lives.
Luke 6:27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
For all those years even after Jesus’ resurrection it seemed like everyone was an enemy of the Messiah Jesus. They made it most difficult for us to love them even a little. All I could see was that the difficulty our former friends and neighbors had put us through had probably caused my wife to lose our baby. They nearly starved us to death, had it not been for the generosity of some of our new friends, followers of Christ – total strangers.
30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Jesus’ sayings to us (back when we were His early disciples) were difficult for us. We could in no way be like our Teacher, as our Lord would command us.
36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you.
Jesus was our teacher, our rabbi. We followed Him at first by faith, before we had certainty that Jesus IS the Messiah of God – the Christ – the Promised One.
Teachers or rabbis taught; disciples of these wise rabbis followed and sought to be like these highly trained teachers.
A friend of ours, a brother in the Lord, later gave us a better insight of our position as new followers of Jesus, a look in the mirror of our own immaturity we could not have understood at the time. In fact, he later included it in a letter to the church:
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. – Hebrews 5:12
Jesus was teaching us a basic principle in one of His shortest parables. (A parable was a common way for rabbis to tell a story to illustrate a point.) We thought it was funny at the time, but we came to learn the truth of it. For we were disciples who would have led many a teacher astray. We were nothing like Jesus.
39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?
It was a great picture. Was Jesus speaking of other rabbis who were misleading us?
He then challenged us, though we didn’t know it at the time. Jesus said we must become more than just disciples – more than just followers of some teaching.
40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
I’m still not fully trained, but after all these years I have finally become more like our teacher than like a blind follower.
How about you? Who do you follow blindly? (See what I mean?)
To be continued
Sure, we were hungry many times. In later months we were rejected by our towns and villages, just as Jesus had been nearly thrown off a cliff in Nazareth. We were banished into the mountains or driven out toward unfriendly sea shores to fend for ourselves. Work was all but impossible to find. Food became scarce.
hat did He mean?