Teachers All?

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. Hebrews 5.12

 

All believers are called to teach others the grace and truth of God. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, after sufficient time being instructed in the Word of God, all believers “ought to be teachers” of others.

This does not require that all believers should hold courses or be instructors in the formal sense. But God expects us to teach others the things that have become so precious to us, and that are essential for the salvation and strengthening of the soul. We must learn the great truths of our faith so well, that we are able to “teach others also” (2 Tim. 2.2), and thus keep handing the faith around and down to succeeding generations.

God’s people cannot do this, however, as long as they are merely sipping the infant’s milk of the Gospel and not being fortified by the solid food of doctrine. We have not even understood the most basic teachings of the faith, if we fail to see in them exhortations to grow and improve in Christ, and instructions to seek the deeper and more transformative truth of God in all His Word. Believers who do not aspire to teach others also should sincerely consider whether they have even so much as tasted of the Lord and His saving goodness.

Our calling, as ministers of both the milk and solid food of God’s Word, is to cast the vision for all to become teachers of grace – beginning in their Personal Mission Field – and then to equip the people of God to fulfill this high and glorious calling. It is a measure of our faithfulness, that those we teach are able to teach others also.