The High Calling of Christian Education
Welcome to a new calendar year! As we enter 2024 together, I want to thank you for your commitment to providing a classical Christian education for your children and encourage you to stay the course.
It’s mid-year, and that means we are deep in the winter when the days are short and the newness of the school year has worn off. We’re entering a season that calls for endurance and determination. It’s time to think ahead and re-enroll for next school year. As we do so, please let me urge you to persevere and to stand strong, trusting God’s promises with fresh vigor.
In recent weeks, I’ve read a number of Scripture passages that have impressed me afresh with their message and power, especially as they relate to the high calling of Christian education. I thought I would share several with you, along with a few thoughts they brought to my mind. There is no real order to these passages, but I let me encourage you to meditate on them and to go back to the Bible to read them in context.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
God’s grace is truly amazing. The incarnation – the gracious gift of God’s Son – is not something just for the Christmas season. It’s for all year long. God is so gracious, abounding in His kindness and forgiveness to a broken sinner like me. Everything is grace from His hand, and everything I do is a response to His grace and made possible by grace. Showing and sharing the grace of God in Christ is what Providence Classical Christian School is about. Period.
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. (Luke 6:41)
This statement by our Lord underlies the primary job description of a teacher in a Christian school: Christian teachers teach not just what they know but who they are. As one author wrote, “The teacher is the primary text.”
Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. (Psalm 119:73)
I can only understand myself and the purpose of my life by first understanding who God is, what He made, and why He created it. This is to say that unless I know that God is Creator, that He made me and the world I inhabit, I can never truly know why I am here and what I am supposed to do. So the first task of true education is to teach students that their first task is to know God. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
Jesus is Lord of all. He is Lord over civilizations and cultures, kings and rulers, peoples and powers, both visible and invisible things. He is Lord over thoughts and worldviews, philosophies and loyalties, both those things that are devoted to Him and those things that are not. Our job is to line up our thinking, our loyalties, our loves, and our lives with Him and His will. And God has given us mighty weapons to use when we enter into the combat it takes to do this. Our little ones – the children God gives us – are the key weapons God has prepared for us. Education is our work of arming, sharpening, and training our children for battle in the service of Christ. The battle is always there, and we are always called to be faithful to the One who is Lord of all.
But the fruit of the Spirit is . . . kindness. (Galatians 5:22)
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)
God has not called us to be nice, but to be kind. Niceness is not enough; it is an all-too-superficial trait that lacks the fullness of kindness, which is a Christian virtue. We are kind in imitation of Jesus Christ, who is the very incarnation of love. It matters to God that we are kind to our neighbor.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)
The word for “discipline” in this passage is paideia, the important, all-encompassing New Testament term for education. God has given parents the responsibility to educate their children in Christ the Lord, and this is a duty that will not go away. Christian parents have the duty, under God, to provide their children with a distinctly and thoroughly Christian education.
The promises and challenges of God’s Word are clear. Now God is calling you and me to be faithful to trust and obey. I feel very privileged to be walking alongside the families of Providence as we seek to obey and honor our great God.