The call to show up in life as students, not experts, begins with children and backpacks, but it reaches everybody. The question is not only whether students will learn at school, but whether followers of Jesus will move through life asking, “What is there here that can be learned?” instead of assuming everything is already figured out.
Curiosity becomes one of the most undervalued Christian virtues. A disciple is not first of all an expert with all the right answers. A disciple is a learner, an apprentice, someone who follows a teacher and says, “Teach how life is supposed to be lived.” In the world of Jesus, learning was not just filling the mind with ideas. Learning meant watching the rabbi’s life and being shaped into that same way of living.
Luke gives a picture of Jesus himself as a learner. At twelve years old, Jesus is found in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions. The story could have been read only as a story about Jesus amazing the teachers, but Luke also shows Jesus receiving wisdom, growing, developing, and increasing “in wisdom and in stature and in divine and human favor.” Jesus did not appear as a fully grown, fully mature adult. Jesus grew up. Jesus learned wisdom. Jesus became.
That picture opens an invitation. If Jesus was a learner and a pursuer of wisdom, then followers of Jesus are not called to prance around the world as experts. Children naturally ask “why,” but somewhere along the way adults stop asking questions and start acting certain about spouses, children, neighbors, politics, church, motives, and even medicine after a few minutes online. Certainty can become spiritually dangerous because when a person thinks everything is already known, listening stops, questions stop, curiosity stops, and growth stops.
Faith is not the same as having absolute certainty about all the right answers. Faith is learning to trust God when the answers are not clear. A person can know a lot about God and still not trust God, hold correct doctrines and still struggle to love a neighbor, win an argument and lose a relationship, or be certain and miss what God is doing. God is bigger than the boxes of human answers.
All of life becomes a classroom where the bell never rings. A difficult conversation, an argument, a frustrated moment with a child, a mistake, a disappointment, or a changed friendship can become a place to ask Jesus what can be learned. Discipleship does not mean dressing like a first-century rabbi. It means asking how Jesus would live this life, in this place, with these responsibilities, relationships, hopes, fears, and dreams. Whether someone is six, sixteen, sixty-eight, or eighty-six, there is still some growing to do.
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Key Takeaways
- 1. Curiosity belongs inside Christian faith. [47:44] Curiosity is not a lack of conviction. Curiosity is the posture of someone humble enough to admit that God, neighbor, and self have not been fully mastered. A follower of Jesus who can still ask questions can still be surprised, corrected, and taught. [47:44]
- 2. Jesus himself learned wisdom. [51:56] Luke shows Jesus sitting, listening, and asking questions before he shows him as the fully public teacher. That picture matters because growth is not beneath holiness. The Son of God entered human development deeply enough to receive, mature, and increase in wisdom. [51:56]
- 3. Certainty can become control. [55:08] Certainty feels safe because it gives the appearance of having God and life managed. Yet faith is not the same as possessing airtight answers. Trust begins where control ends, where a person can say that something is mysterious and still turn toward God rather than away. [55:08]
- 4. Every situation can teach something. [57:32] Life is not a classroom because everything that happens is good. Life is a classroom because even painful, confusing, or frustrating moments can reveal what was hidden. A hard conversation can expose pride, fear, tenderness, misunderstanding, or an invitation to love more truthfully. [57:32]
- 5. Discipleship asks a better question. [59:41] Being a student of Jesus is not pretending to live in the first century. Discipleship asks how Jesus would live this actual life, in this actual place, with these actual people and responsibilities. That question moves faith from costume and theory into ordinary decisions.
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