Sep 12
14
Were the Saducees right about Jesus’ disciples?
From ChristianGovernance eletter, Sept. 11, 2012
I am still benefiting a great deal from my readings through the first few chapters of Acts. I hope to provide more reflections in the days ahead. One passage I have come to understand in a new and better way is Acts 4:13: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”
I’ve always taken that passage to mean that the disciples really were unschooled men, and that’s the way I’ve always heard others talk about it. But in my recent reading, and perhaps with the first few chapters of I Corinthians drilled into me from recent Men’s Fellowship studies, it struck me that this is not true at all.
This declaration that the disciples are unschooled is the determination of the Jewish religious leaders, in this case priests and Saducees (v.1). But they also say, they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Exactly! So, are you trying to tell me that being with Jesus doesn’t qualify as receiving an education or schooling?
It makes me think of today’s status quo people who say, “you’ve been homeschooled, so you don’t have a real education.” Or society’s elites who say, “You can’t get a real education at a Christian private school or Christian college. They teach the creation myth there, don’t they?”
What the religious leaders meant was that the disciples hadn’t been schooled in THEIR schools. But we know from I Corinthians (and many other Bible passages) that there is a wisdom that is not of this world: that there is a spiritual wisdom and a worldly wisdom – true wisdom and a foolishness dressed up to look like a form of wisdom.
The disciples had been with Jesus – for three years – and they received intense, exceptional, intensive schooling in truth, in wisdom during those three years. They received better schooling in those three years than the Jewish leaders of the day received from their many years in school.
There is nothing spiritual or godly about being uneducated or illiterate or anti-intellectual, and the disciples weren’t. They were extremely well educated – because they had been with Jesus. But, in the eyes of the worldly, unconverted Jewish leaders, they were unschooled men.
One application of this observation is that you should never, ever let the heathen Establishment’s judgment on your approach to schooling make you doubt or feel inferior. If you are training your children in the fear of the Lord – if you are a child being trained in the wisdom of God – then stay your course. When AD 68-70 came along, would you have rather been a priest or a Sadducee or a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ?