Spiritual Formation, Day 12

As we consider Jesus to be not only our Savior and our Lord but also our Teacher, we need to realize that Jesus knew what he was talking about.
Let that sink in for a moment. We can learn how to live from the person who knows best. He came to earth and lived down here as one of us.

I want to share with you some words of Dallas Willard's. Dallas has made this point so well that I can't possibly improve upon his words, and I think they're worthy of your consideration. So here they are. I do hope you'll read them.

Our commitment to Jesus can stand on no other foundation than a recognition that he is the one who knows the truth about our lives and our universe. It is not possible to trust Jesus, or anyone else, in matters where we do not believe him to be competent. We cannot pray for help and rely on his collaboration in dealing with real-life matters we suspect might defeat his knowledge or abilities.
And can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed? Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what we take him to be in all other respects and not be the best-informed and most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived (emphasis mine)?
That is exactly how his earliest apprentices in kingdom living thought of him. He was not regarded as, perhaps, a magician, who only knew "the right words" to get results without understanding or who could effectively manipulate appearances. Rather, he was accepted as the ultimate scientist, craftsman, and artist.
The biblical and continuing vision of Jesus was of one who made all of created reality and kept it working, literally "holding it together" (Colossians 1:17). And today we think people are smart who can make light bulbs and computer chips and rockets out of "stuff" already provided. He made "the stuff"!
Small wonder, then, that the first Christians thought he held within himself "all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). This confidence in his intellectual greatness is the basis of the radicalism of Christ-following in relation to the human order. It sees Jesus now living beyond death as "the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth. . .the first and the last, the living One," the one who can say "I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more, the master of death and the world of the dead" (Revelation 1:5, 18).

The Divine Conspiracy, p. 94

**Have you ever thought about Jesus as the smartest person who ever lived?**

This post is part of a 31-day series on spiritual formation. To see all posts in this series, click here. Or click here to see all the bloggers participating in the 31-day challenge!