As individual followers of Christ, we grow spiritually just as children grow physically, intellectually and emotionally. Little children are on the steepest part of the learning curve but at the same time they are the most limited in terms of participating in their own education. They learn primarily by observation. So also do we learn Christ. When we commit our lives to Him, we begin the life of the new creation. We are like infants toward Him. We learn who He is by spending time with Him and His people—people who display His life. That’s how we get to know His Father, too. As Jesus pointed out to Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
You might object, saying that we are learning by experience in addition to observation. It seems to me, however, that experience is observation, as we live with the aftermath of a decision. There is a saying among surgeons: “Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.” Of course, the sooner the consequence follows on the decision, the easier it is for us to make the connection between the two.
For my own part, I am coming to see how little I know Jesus Christ and His ways. I try to walk, only to stumble and fall. I recognize in myself a lack of His characteristics. But I keep getting up and going back to Him. I have decided that I want to know Him, and not merely know about Him. The knowledge that counts is the knowledge that enlarges and solidifies His life in me.
This fragment of a verse from Isaiah 30:15 has been before me: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” These are the words of the Lord, originally addressed to the people of Israel, but now applicable to us. He asks us to keep turning to Him, to rest in Him, to calmly place our trust in Him—exclusively. These are the conditions under which we learn Christ. Then His life can grow in us in an organic way. Not all at once, but as a process that requires only our continuing consent.
I am coming to understand that I can’t know Him apart from Him. That is, I can’t know Him apart from spending time in His presence, following Him and paying attention to Him. He alone has the words that give life. The work that He wants to do, in me and in you, is His work and the objective also is His. He is the end of the work of transformation, when His life is fully formed in us.
&&&