{"id":12327,"date":"2012-08-09T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/?p=12327"},"modified":"2017-10-24T13:54:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T20:54:24","slug":"best-bible-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/best-bible-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is the Best Bible Teacher?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"DanThis is a guest post by Dan Pedersen.\u00a0He is passionate about helping people break-free from religious oppression by writing about the true character of God, love. Dan lives in Canada with his wife and daughter. You can find his blog at www.livingwithconfidence.net<\/a><\/p>\n

If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, check out the guidelines here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I recently received an email from a lady questioning me about my last blog post, ‘Life Is But A Dream, But Love Is Real<\/a>.’ She said that some of the things I wrote were not “biblical,” and warned me to be careful about “adding to Scripture.”<\/p>\n

She also questioned me about who my “teachers” are, and what church I go to. And she stated that God does not reveal things to people which are not written in the bible, nor can you understand the bible without a teacher; she mentioned that her teacher (“pastor”) was “top of the line.”<\/p>\n

This lady was not attacking me, she merely wanted to better understand what I was trying to say in my post, and essentially, what qualifies me to say it. I replied with a lengthy email, which has since inspired me to write about the issue of spiritual teachers (some of the following was taken from the said email).<\/p>\n

\"best<\/p>\n

When I was a youth I regularly attended a Pentecostal church. I went to Sunday school, I listened to sermons, I participated in a bible study group, I went to a Christian youth camp one summer, and I sometimes read the bible at home. Over the years I’ve also been to services at Baptist, Catholic, United, and “Non-Denominational” churches.<\/p>\n

From about age 18 to 28 I fell away from the Christian “religion” altogether, but still harbored a belief in God and Jesus. But a little over 5 years ago I started reading the bible again, listening to preachers online, and reading books by Christian authors. During this time I experienced a radical change in my beliefs about God.<\/p>\n

In short, I no longer saw God as a rule-based authoritarian, and began to see him as a loving Creator. Nowadays, I listen to a couple of pastors online once in awhile, and many of the books I read are by former “church pastors,” who had the same type of revelation about the character of God that I had.<\/p>\n

\"DanThe lady who emailed me was right that we need a “top of the line teacher,” but there is no such person as a top of the line “pastor,” only those who teach truth. The greatest teacher is God Himself. One of the descriptions in the bible for the Holy Spirit is “the Counselor,” and Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Spirit to them, who would teach them all things (John 14:26).<\/p>\n

The lady in the email said that she learns through “the Word,” and that you need a good teacher (pastor) to show you what the Word is saying. By “the Word,” she was referring to the bible. I also learn by reading the bible; one of the things I learned is that the bible is not the Word. When the Apostle John wrote, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), he wasn’t talking about a book, he was talking about Jesus. He referred to Jesus as “the Word made flesh” (John 1:14). As far as the bible goes, John was adding to it by penning those very words about Jesus – the living Word. The bible was written in order to point us toward Jesus, who as the Apostle Paul said, lives in us (Colossians 1:27, Galatians 2:20).<\/p>\n

The bible is not the Word, it is the written word. It was written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is the very Spirit of Christ (scripture says that the Father, Son & Holy Spirit are One). The bible is not just stories about Jesus, but an actual connection with Him in our spirit; as Paul said, “the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17, emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

You can’t read the bible and understand it without a good teacher, it’s true; that teacher is “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27). He reveals the meaning to us in our spirit, otherwise it’s just words on a page, or the learning of facts with no real life in them. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for doing this when he said, “you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39). The Pharisees memorized large portions of scripture, but didn’t understand that they were about Jesus.<\/p>\n

We listen to human teachers, such as pastors, for the same reason we read the bible – the pastor is supposed to lead us toward Christ’s presence within us, through his own experience of Christ in him. Having said that, we don’t “need” a pastor or bible teacher, we don’t even “need” the bible, we only need Christ’s Holy Spirit; as John said, “the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things.” (1 John 2:27, emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

But John still “taught” anyway, why? Because he was teaching that the real “teacher” is in us. And what is it that the Teacher wants to teach us?<\/p>\n

It’s all about love, because God “is love” (1 John 4:8).<\/p>\n

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You cannot understand the bible without a good bible teacher. And while we need human teachers, the best bible teacher is Christ in you (Col 1:27). 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