Meditation 17: A Fully Trained Disciple

In Luke 6:40, Jesus gives a clear, concise and practical metric for determining when someone has been fully trained and well-discipled.  He says, “The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.”  In other words, when I look at someone I have been discipling and can honestly say that the person’s life and character remind me a lot of Jesus, then I know the individual has been fully trained. The key, however, is to remember that I am not trying to make people look like me, but rather like Jesus in me. It can be easy to confuse wanting people to look like me with wanting their lives to reflect the life of Jesus in me.

Of course, no one is going to look exactly like Jesus on this side of eternity.  But when someone has grown to look more like Jesus than not, it probably is safe to say that s/he has been fully trained. This is not to say the person has nothing left to learn, but rather that s/he is ready to be launched in much the same way that Jesus sent out His disciples before He ascended into heaven.  Even though His disciples still had much to learn, Jesus considered them fully trained by that point.  Otherwise, He would not have commissioned them as His messengers!  He would send His Holy Spirit to continue instructing and counseling them. But their training was complete!

Are you fully trained? Can you point to anyone in your life who you personally have fully trained such that s/he looks like our Teacher, our Rabonni, Jesus?  You and I look the most like Jesus when we help others (by our words and by our example) to live as He did.