A few short thoughts from Thomas Oden’s book Classic Christianity.
As we continue our exploration of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount on Monday nights, we’ll keep coming back to the idea of discipleship. While Jesus knew the crowds around him were overhearing this teaching, he directed it primarily at his disciples–those who followed him closely in order to learn and practice his teachings.
We don’t literally walk behind him anymore, but if we would be disciples, we will certainly be his students of his life:
I may be saved by Grace through faith without passing an examination on Christology.
But his life compels some explanation. When he tells me that my eternal destiny depends upon trusting in him, what am I to say? His life and death remain the central point of interest of Christian discipleship and education.
He is not fully studied as if only a man, though he was a man.
This is a man for whom studying him means following him in his way.
He cannot be studied in a book alone but on a long road.