day no. 17,328: education and the end of everything as we know it

“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” ― Robert E. Lee

Education is the nourishment and instruction of the Lord and its aim is to conform us to the image of Christ. As such, it is completed only when we become like Him in death. As long as we are alive, it continues. We are never done learning. We are always being conformed to the image of Christ. That is the end for which we were made and saved.

Romans 8:29-32

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

We get the English word “education” from the Latin “educere.” (eh-DOO-kay-ray) The etymology of this word is the Latin prefix “e” meaning “of” or “from,” and the word “ducere” meaning “to lead” or “to draw out.” So putting it all together, education is leading or drawing someone out of something. An education, therefore, always presupposes a start and a finish or to frame it in more theological terms, an origin and an eschatology. An education assumes certain things about where we came from as well as about where we should be going. So, where does a Christian education begin? With the end in mind.

Which is to say that education begins and ends with Christ. Anything less is not Christian. It is antichrist. We are being led somewhere by someone and the where and one are the same: Christ.

Q: What is the chief end of man?

A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

― Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 1

We are being led to the right hand of the Father. That is where Christ is and that is where endless joy abounds.

Psalm 16:11

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: 

in Thy presence is fulness of joy; 

at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

This is the end. In Christ, our education is completed. We do not graduate beyond grace. We continue on to greater degrees as we become more like.

2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit.

Onward and upward, to Narnia and the North. Further up and further in forever and ever, world without end, and amen.