THAT I MAY KNOW HIM

LIBERTY AND LOVE #45

In the School of Christ, we are the students and Christ is the master teacher. To be his disciple is to sit at his feet and learn from him. “Come unto me all of you that labor and are burdened. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Notice he instructed us to “learn of him.” Christ is the master teacher because no man ever taught the way that he did. The crowds were “astonished at his teaching” on a regular basis because “he taught them as one having authority.” And no teacher ever cared more about the well-being of his students than Jesus does.

His authority came from the Father. Because of his perfect life and perfect death, he was raised from the dead by the Father and “given all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). His right to teach and to lead us comes from the authority that he received from the Father. He gives the direction that we need for our lives. And he gives the instruction.

The goal and desire of Christ’s disciple is presented marvelously by Paul in these words: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death” (Philippians 3:10). Hardly anything Paul wrote could demonstrate with more clarity the consuming obsession that Jesus was in this man’s life. Christ had taken hold of him and the context of this statement is simply his expressed desire to know him more and serve him better. It is all summed up—his life, his passion, his mission—in a brief half sentence: “That I may know him.”

Dewayne Dunaway