By Doug Redford
Now is the time of year that children are returning to school. They’ll have to adjust to getting up earlier. Parents will need to make sure their kids are in bed at a decent time and see to it that they do their homework.
As far as we know, Jesus never attended the formal schools—the rabbinical schools—of his day. Yet even at age 12, he was impressing the teachers and scholars at the temple in Jerusalem with his wisdom and insight.
Later, as an adult, he was scorned and criticized by those teachers and scholars because the people would hang on his every word and wouldn’t give the educated folks so much as the time of day. On one occasion they asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” (John 7:15). Jesus replied, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me” (v. 16). When you are sent by God and when you are God who became flesh (John 1:14), you have all the education you need. Or do you?
There was a special school Jesus had to attend and a unique education he had to receive. Scripture says Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Someone may say, “I thought Jesus was perfect; he never sinned. How did he have to learn obedience?” Jesus had to enroll in the classroom of the cross to become our Savior. The cross demanded that Jesus obey his Father and suffer to a degree that neither he nor any human being ever experienced.
The education and training that a doctor receives is extremely demanding and rigorous—and expensive! Medical students usually run up significant debt by the time they finish their program. But no program—no training—was more rigorous or demanding than what Jesus endured so he could become our Great Physician, and in doing so, pay our debt of sin at the cross.
Communion is the time when we remember the sacrifice Jesus made for each of us and the debt he paid. Whenever you take it, think of it as a prescription from the Great Physician. Think of Jesus offering it to you and saying, “You look like you’ve had a hard week. It’s been tough, hasn’t it? Here, take this; you’ll feel better. And call me anytime, night or day.”
Doug Redford has served in the preaching ministry, as an editor of adult Sunday school curriculum, and as a Bible college professor. Currently he is the minister at Highview Christian Church in Cincinnati.
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