The LORD God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the learned (or: instructed).

(Isaiah 50, 4)

Speaking here through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, the Spirit of God looks ahead to our Lord Jesus Christ. In the glory of heaven the Son of God needed only to command. All things were created by and for Him. Everything was thus at His disposal and for His service.

In this verse, however, we see Him as a Man on earth. He veiled His glory under the apparel of a servant (cf. Isaiah 42, 1; 52, 13). He became similar to those who were being instructed, although His whole life was in agreement with His God and Father: He had "no need that anyone should question" Him (John 16, 30).

In His great stoop He entered the conditions surrounding our life. He was sinless, yet in John's baptism He identified Himself with the penitent remnant of His people. He needed no instruction, yet He took the place of dependence as One who shows obedience. His perfection was revealed to such an extent that God testified from heaven concerning Him: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased " (Matthew 3,17), even before He was tempted by the devil.

We humans have to be brought up in the school of God, where we learn a lot, often by painful means. But when we read that He "learned obedience" (Hebrews 5, 8), it concerns simply His learning the experience of a Man on earth, since He had not been Man before. We should never entertain the thought that the Lord had to undergo a form of education in the school of God.

Good Seed Calendar, September 13, 2006