Learning from Jesus?

They had seen the Risen Lord, yet their faces still carried both awe and uncertainty. Matthew tells us they worship — and they doubt. If you and I could slip quietly onto that Galilean hillside, we would find ourselves standing among a small, nervous circle of friends.

And Jesus meets them exactly there.

And He simply says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me… therefore, as you go, make disciples… and surely I am with you always.”

That moment exposes a tension most of us know far too well. We have tasted forgiveness; we sing of grace. But when Monday arrives, we discover that fear still rattles in our chests, anger flashes in traffic, secret compromises tug at the seams of our integrity. We believe Jesus rescued us for eternity, yet we wonder if His salvation truly reaches into our everyday struggles. We question whether His love can penetrate the chaos of our lives, calming the storms of doubt and insecurity that arise with each new challenge. In the quiet moments, we grapple with the reality that while we are redeemed, we still wrestle with our humanity, longing for the full realization of His promises amidst our imperfections.

I have met that person in the mirror more times than I care to admit, and I have shepherded enough hearts to know I am not alone. We crave the comfort of being saved, while quietly negotiating a truce with the very habits and hurts that keep us spiritually stagnant.

Yet the King who claimed all authority did not commission us to settle for survival until heaven. He invited us into apprenticeship — a life so immersed in His presence that our outward actions begin to flow naturally from an inward, Spirit-shaped core.

All Authority?

When the risen Christ declares, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matthew 28:18), He is not offering a comforting slogan but unveiling the true map of reality. Every system—cosmic and cellular, public and private—lies within His jurisdiction. If gravity remains constant and galaxies hold their course, it is because His word sustains them; if forgiveness is possible for our deepest failures, it is because His cross carries absolute judicial weight.

“You cannot trust Jesus for forgiveness while withholding confidence that He is right about everything.” - Dallas Willard

In other words, partial trust is practical unbelief. Either Jesus speaks with the competence of the One who designed life, or we are left to improvise meaning on our own.

Recognizing His sweeping authority is the hinge on which discipleship turns. Until we believe Jesus has the final say over anxiety, ambition, sexuality, finances, and reputations, discipleship will feel optional—helpful advice for the religiously inclined. But once we grasp that the one who conquered death now superintends every breath and boardroom, obedience to him becomes sanity, not sacrifice. To submit our calendars, fears, and hidden motives to Him is not fanaticism; it is intelligent alignment with the universe’s true center. If Christ really rules everything, then keeping even one area cordoned off from His voice is like boarding a ship yet refusing the captain’s course—an act both futile and perilous. Trusting His total authority, by contrast, sets every corner of life in its proper orbit and frees us to live the way life actually works.

Students for life?

Contrary to the popular notion that we can postpone learning from Jesus how to live our lives indefinitely while banking on heaven, Jesus never offered an à-la-carte salvation where we sip His blood for pardon yet reserve the right to chart our own course. Jesus never extended a “forgiveness-only” deal. The Bible simply doesn’t recognize such a bargain.

From the opening, “Follow Me,” to the closing, “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded,” the New Testament treats learning from Jesus as the very substance of saving faith. To claim Him as Saviour while declining His tutelage is like asking a surgeon for anesthetic but refusing the operation. “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?” He asks (Luke 6 :46).

Forgiveness and Apprenticeship Are One Gospel, Not Two.

To entrust Jesus with our eternal destiny is to acknowledge that He is right about everything now; following Him to learn from Him is the logical extension of believing Him.

Most of us intend to be good, yet find ourselves rehearsing the same apologies. Good intentions buckle under pressure because willpower can restrain behaviour only briefly; it cannot re-wire the heart. “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin,” Jesus warns (John 8:34), and will-power alone never breaks those chains. Only by becoming students of Jesus, for life, breaks the cycle by learning how to cooperate with God, walking in step with the Spirit (Gal 5:16–25). As we abide in His Word, learn His rhythms, the truth begins to set us free (John 8 :31–36).

Training, not trying, is the answer to the ache for consistent integrity.

Because more than behaviour management is at stake; without ongoing tutelage we cannot become the kind of people God can trust with His resources for a broken world. Apprenticeship—steady, practical training under the Master—is the only path that replaces repeated failure with growing freedom.

As we learn from Jesus, we discover that He entrusts us with kingdom power—granting us wisdom for challenging workplaces, courage to stand against injustice, and prayers that heal—without allowing that power to harm us or others. The world Christ died to redeem will not be reached by spectators who applaud His sacrifice from a distance; it requires apprentices who, through intimate learning, mirror His character and extend His authority where darkness still reigns. For our own wholeness and for the life of the world, sitting at Jesus’ feet, to learn from Him, is not an optional extra—it is at the very core of redemption.

Learning from Jesus is a lifelong journey that permeates every dimension of existence.

• First, we sit under His explicit commands—“Love your enemies,” “Bless those who curse you”—until, through Spirit-guided practice, those words become reflex rather than rhetoric.

• Second, we carry His character into the ordinary arenas where we spend most of our time: caring for toddlers, closing sales, drafting legislation. Because His Kingdom is “at hand,” the mundane becomes holy ground where the Lordship of Jesus is on public display.

• Third, He trains us to exercise Kingdom power, so that prayer is more than consolation; it is partnership with the One who heals bodies, reconciles enemies and rights every wrong in love.

In these three spheres—obedience, vocation, and Spirit-empowered service—the disciple’s life turns into a preview of the world God intends. "Make disciples," then, is more than an instruction to do something for Jesus. It is an invitation to do life with Jesus, to continue learn from Him and "find rest for our souls".

That wholeness, however, grows only as we consent to an inner transformation no self-help regimen can achieve. Grace, writes Dallas Willard, is God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot; yet grace meets us in the training ground of spiritual disciplines where the Spirit rewires motives and desires as we learn to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" . The result is an integrated self, transparent and free, no longer compelled to manage appearances. From that healed interior flows a love sturdy enough to bear the sorrows of neighbours and confront the systems that wound them.

Learning from Jesus is where personal vitality and societal renewal converge.

Our willingness to be his yoke bearing and our cross carrying, students of Jesus for life is foundational to how our souls flourish, and the world receives tangible evidence that a better Kingdom is already breaking in.

Church: His Tangible Presence.

Jesus’ promise, “I am with you always,” was addressed to a company of disciples, students who would keep meeting, praying, eating, and obeying together, as Christ’s tangible presence.

The Church is the boat in which we learn His calm while the waves still slap the hull. It is where the fruit of the Spirit flourishes in a context of regular communal exercise of the gifts of the Spirit.

In other words, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control ripen only when practiced amid real people whose rough edges invite their use, and the Spirit’s gifts—Prophecy; Teaching; Wisdom; Knowledge; Faith; Miraculous Powers; Healing; Distinguishing between Spirits; Speaking in Tongues; Interpretation of Tongues; Helps; Service; Administration; Encouragement; Giving; Leadership; Mercy and Celibacy—exercised as Apostles; Prophets; Evangelists, and Pastor-Teachers, require a shared table where they can be tested and trusted.

The congregation becomes a living workshop where spiritual disciplines move from theory to muscle memory and where Christ, the true Disciple-Maker, shapes us through one another. From that workshop the church walks into the neighborhood as an embassy of reconciliation. Paul’s language is unmistakable: “God is making His appeal through us.” When a congregation forgives quicker than it gossips, budgets for the broken, and prays with the expectation that cancer and cynicism alike can bow to Jesus, the city catches a whiff of another Kingdom.

Picture again that hillside in Galilee. The disciples still carry questions, but the risen King entrusts them with His mission and His presence. Sunday’s gathered worship fuels Monday’s scattered witness; immersing people in the Triune reality of God continues around dinner tables and office coffee machines. Far from being a club for the already convinced, the church is the visible overlap between heaven and earth—a place where anyone can step in and discover that the risen Lord still keeps His word: Surely, I am with you.