The Teacher's Role in God's Mission of Transformation

I deal with all kinds of reminders that I need major changes in my life to become what God wants me to be – like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18). The required changes aren’t incremental, but total like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Transformation involves radical, permanent change although the changes may be so slow that they aren’t easily detectable as they happen. Painful experience has confirmed that my efforts at self-improvement are doomed because without Christ, I can do nothing (John 15:5) to make myself like Him. However, one tool that Christ chooses to use to bring about change is teachers.

I haven’t been able to get out of my head Jesus’ words, “Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40 ESV). As I’ve considered what Jesus was saying about how students change from what they are now into what they will be in the future, the teacher is central.

The Encouragement
The promise in Jesus’ words isn’t that students will ultimately know what the teacher knows, although that is often the focus of our lesson plans and evaluations. Students will become like their teachers in their diligence, desire to learn, creativity, helpfulness, or lack thereof. Character is the hidden curriculum that has priority even though the written curriculum is what often absorbs our attention. Like virtually everyone I’ve talked to, as I think back to my favorite—and “unfavorite”—teachers, I can’t remember any of the lessons they taught, but I have very strong memories of the way they taught and their interactions with me. Some teachers I’ve consciously tried to be like, but when I am honest, I find that I’m a lot more like some of the teachers I didn’t like than I want to admit.

There is a caveat in Jesus’ statement—when students are fully trained the change will be noticeable. I like to see immediate change, but Jesus understands that change takes time. He was often frustrated by His disciples’ lack of understanding (Mark 4:13, 8:17, 21; Luke 24:25), but He patiently worked with them because He was looking forward to what they would become. After His ascension, the undeniable characteristic of the disciples was that they “had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

In my classroom, I tend to assume that I’m the only teacher that students have even though they are constantly being shaped by their parents, peers, media, and others in the school. I can’t take credit or responsibility for all that my students become because they are also becoming like all their other teachers. One of the great benefits of a Christ-centered education system is the alignment of the various teachers’ influence, but eliminating all negative influences is impossible. Because every teacher is made in God’s image and their presence in a student’s life is the result of God’s sovereign work in the life of each individual, we can anticipate God using for good purposes even those teachers who intend evil (Genesis 50:20). However, when teachers are in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, He is the divine teacher (John 14:26, 1 John 2:27) working through them. He is the perfect teacher able to work from the inside out unlike all other teachers who “make many mistakes” (James 3:1-2 NLT).

The Warning
Jesus’ words have also often served as a warning. There were far too many days when the last thing I wanted was for my students to become as ill-prepared, impatient, inconsiderate, and self-centered as I was. But even when we fail, we have an opportunity to shape students by demonstrating how to deal with sin. How do we want students to respond when they have failed, when they are inattentive, unmotivated, unprepared? Perhaps they are simply becoming like I was yesterday. I can try to hide my need for transformation and pretend that I’m perfect or attempt to justify myself, or I can demonstrate how to confess sin and ask for forgiveness. Denial and excuses by those we seek to disciple are often all too similar to our own responses. In fact, I’ve discovered that my students’ immature and sinful responses bother me most when they are most like my own untransformed responses.

So what can I as a teacher do to cooperate with the transforming work of God?

God’s Word
Another passage that God has focused my attention on regarding teaching is Romans 12:1-2, “let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think” (NLT). Unless I expose myself regularly to what God has revealed about Himself and His world, my thinking will remain my thinking without the transformative impact of His very different view of everything (Isaiah 55:8). Reading and studying the Bible can easily be neglected under the pressure of the urgent daily demands upon a teacher. When God’s word is transforming me, even the most difficult situations will provide opportunities to share how my thinking is being changed by it. It may require me to be more intentional and discerning in how the truth of God’s world and word are brought together, but the overflow of my mind and heart will be available for God to use (Luke 6:45). Even in a school that seeks to be Christ-centered, it is easy to segregate God’s word from the study of His world, creating secular, godless lessons that are indistinguishable from what the people without God produce.

Prayer
The more I understand that God is the ultimate Teacher even while He uses people who are not yet “fully trained” to be like Him, the more I realize the importance of prayer. I need to cooperate with Him, asking Him to give me both “the desire and power to do what pleases Him” (Philippians 2:13, NLT). I need to pray for my students. All too often my preparation focuses on what I will say and do instead of what God needs to do. I need to pray for all the other teachers whether working with them or against the ideas they teach by instruction and example. I need to be reminded that I’m not struggling against people but against unseen, ungodly influences that resist the kind of transformation that God intends (Ephesians 6:18). Prayer before, during, and after every teaching interaction transforms me as well as my students.

God will complete the transforming work that He has begun in each of His children (Philippians 1:6), using teachers immersed in His word and continually talking to Him (1 Samuel 12:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:17). I need to choose well the teachers that I invite into my life whether in person, in books, or online. It is dangerous to thoughtlessly expose myself to formal or informal teachers who aren’t also becoming like Christ. However, as a teacher it is also dangerous to ignore the influence I have. Transformation is inevitable but I want it to be change into Christ’s likeness, not mine.

Harold Klassen
Harold is an international educational consultant who has worked with teachers in over 20 countries. He completed undergraduate degrees in Chemical Physics and Theology and a graduate degree in Education. He was involved for 23 years in secondary education as a teacher and administrator. He has been with TeachBeyond since 1977 in Germany and now in Canada. He is excited by the change that occurs when teachers and their students begin to see how all of life and learning are related to God and His word.