KB Asante: Voice From Afar column

Every believer is an ambassador of Christ in the community or workplace in which he or she is placed. Consequently, the Christian teacher is God’s ambassador to the school world.

When the Bible says the believer is Christ’s Ambassador in the world, what does this mean? What does it mean for the Christian teacher to be Christ’s Ambassador in his or her school world?

Let’s look briefly at 2 Corinthians 5: 11 -21. Christ’s Ambassador and his Christian witness in his world:

His motivation: vs. 14 & 15 “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that  one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

His mission or task: vs. 18 & 20 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.

His message: vs. 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

John Ruskin, a philosopher, says “Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It means, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly managing of their bodies and souls.”

So who is properly educated? “A professor in Chicago is reported to have given the following test to his pupils.

 He told them they were not really educated unless they could say Yes to all these questions: 

Has your education given you sympathy with all good causes and made you espouse them?

Has it made you public-spirited?

Has it made you a brother to the weak?

Have you learned how to make friends and to keep them?

Do you know what it is to be a friend yourself?

Can you see anything to love in a little child?

Can you be high-minded and happy in the meaner work and chores of life?

Do you think washing dishes and hoeing corn just as compatible with high thinking, piano playing or golf?

Can you look into the sky at night and see beyond the stars?

Can your soul claim relationship with the Creator? 

Ruskin says, administering real education “is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept and by praise. But above all by example.”

Paul exhorts Timothy “But set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity” (1Timothy 4:12b). 

We conclude this piece with a poem from Edgar A. Guest, a poet, states:

“I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day,

I’d rather one should walk with me than merely show the way,

The eye is a better pupil and more willing than the ear;

Fine counsel is confusing, but example is always clear

For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give,

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live”. 

Christian teachers must seek to be effective ambassadors of Christ in the School World.

The author is a Leadership Development and Cross-cultural Ministries Consultant, an International, conference speaker and formerly General Director / CEO of Scripture Union Ghana. Email: ghanajesuscrusade@gmail.com / sughanaho@gmail.com