Jesus made no complaint that Nicodemus, and those for whom he might be speaking, regarded Him as a Teacher. He who spent more time in training twelve disciples than in any other task was not likely to demur when any man came to Him for instruction. He is the greatest Teacher who has ever come from God, and His invitation to all men is, “Come and learn of me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” It is His purpose to impart to men an education such as cannot be received in any school or college or university of secular knowledge-to make them wise unto salvation. To His chosen disciples He said at the end of their three years' curriculum, “All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you”; and He promised that after He was gone, the Spirit of truth-His own Spirit-would come to guide them into all truth. Verily a Teacher come from God! But also more than a Teacher. For the risen Christ who allowed Mary Magdalene to address Him as “Rabboni,” “my Teacher,” welcomed also the adoring words of the doubting but at last believing disciple, “My Lord and my God.”
“We know that thou art a teacher come from God.” Perhaps this confession expresses not amiss the feeling both of the world and of the Church toward Christ still. He is a teacher come from God. Those who profess to believe in Him have scarcely got further; for at what problem are all earnest minds so hard at work as at this problem of Christ? And what is called the world no longer cares to dispute the truth of these words in one sense or another. He is a teacher come from God. There is a feeling now among men, the majority of men, that Christ is the Highest Being the world can ever see; and that His teaching is from God, in some higher sense than that of any other. This is the feeling even among men whom we do not call believing. I do not stop to speculate whether there may not be some genuine faith under this apparently rather negative confession; or whether this position, which men of thought are now taking up with regard to Christ, be really a gain or a loss to religion. On the one hand, it may seem a gain that they concede so much, even though their concessions do not amount to faith in Him. On the other hand, half a truth is sometimes more dangerous than a whole lie. That which is plainly false will deceive no one; that which is false at heart, but glittering with a gilding of truth, may draw and seduce many.1 [Note: A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, 251.]
The mode of Christ's teaching is not the ratiocinative but the intuitional-not philosophical but spiritual-in this having more affinity to the woman's side of human nature than the man's. But so also does the Jewish, as distinct from the Greek, form of thought appeal to the deep, inmost nature, not to the reasoning power. Therefore may we look on the Jewish mode of presenting truth in Psalms and Prophets as formed beforehand to be preparatory for Christ's own mode of teaching. It was the forecasting shadow of what He chose as best; best, as suiting the great mass of mankind, simple as well as learned, young as well as old; best, as being adapted to the great principle of salvation by faith, by trust, which mere human reason spurns, and suited also to His descent as the woman's seed, keeping predominant that side of the nature which fell first, and is to be first in recovery.1 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 213.]
