Acts 4:13 – Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus…
We hear a lot about education these days. How important it is and how everyone needs a good education. We even have religious schools to teach us from a Christian viewpoint, and schools to teach us how to minister, how to preach, how to prophesy and use our gifts. What will they come up with next?
The thing that this verse points out to me is that education is really not necessary when it comes to our spiritual lives.
I’m not against education. It is important in our world today, and if you want to get a decent job to provide for your family, you had better get a good education. Many people have earned a good education and use it in great ways to better humanity and help their families. There is certainly nothing wrong with education. Although in ‘spiritual terms’, education is way overdone.
In this article I am talking about spiritual education, we do not need to be educated to live for God, or to be used by Him. That is what stood out so much to the rulers that Peter and John were in front of, that they were uneducated and untrained. Imagine that, no education, no training. BUT, they had been with Jesus.
That is the difference when we are talking spiritually. Education cannot teach us how to live in the Spirit. We can get all the head knowledge about God, about living for Him, about service, but if we aren’t saved by faith in Christ, all the education in the world really won’t help us. If we aren’t allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us and lead us into truth, no amount of man-made education can help us in our daily Christian walk.
I am thankful that God does not require us all to be scholars or highly educated. Any and all of us can come to salvation by grace through Christ. It makes no difference if we are educated or not. He loves us and wants a relationship with each one of us.
The difference in us as Christians should be that we have been with Jesus. A life under His guidance and love is one that will stand out and make a difference. A difference, spiritually speaking, that education cannot make.
Done with Religion 
Good comment Michael. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks, my brother! Yes, the world system that is led by the prince of this world (the kosmos) has a pattern of top down authority that is of his design (see Daniel 10:20 and Luke 4:5-7) and all the systems in this world that adhere to that design are still under his control. But Jesus told the disciples, “It shall not be so among you!”(see Mark 10: 42-24). The whole visible church system is based on hierarchy that excludes the leadership of the Holy Spirit and as a result it is into the world system of leadership and education hook, line and sinker. In that system all “knowledge” is approached by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (education through Sunday school, Bible colleges, seminaries, conferences, books, tapes, videos, etc) and not from where TRUE knowing comes from, an intimate relationship with the Tree of Life, Jesus Christ.
This same unlearned Peter you wrote about was constantly being drawn away by the judaizers (the party of the circumcision) in the church at Jerusalem and Jesus was constantly having to bring him back on coarse. Paul had to rebuke him to his face! Paul listened to the Spirit of Christ and was taught by Him and Peter as long as he was listening to the Spirit was doing okay, but when he listened to men he was a danger to the church. Paul counted all his education by the Jewish hierarchy as dung compared to the excellent knowledge he gained in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. After 13 years from the time of his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, Paul went up to Jerusalem to talk with a few of the apostles and he said of this visit, “they added nothing to me” and these were men that walked with Jesus! Why, because Paul’s knowledge of Christ was based on his intimate relationship with Jesus, not on second hand heard knowledge. Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has sought permission to sift you like wheat, and I have prayed for you. When you are converted, strengthen your brethren.” Peter was not converted fully to Christ and the the full meaning of the New Covenant for many years after Pentecost. But by Acts 15 he finally rises up against the judaizers in the church in Jerusalem and sides with Paul.
Today, God has the same problem with Christians. It takes many years for those who start out in the church systems of men to break free of a head knowledge that Christianity instills in them with all its false teachings, to them counting all those teachings as dung and fully giving themselves over to following the voice and wind of the Spirit of Christ.
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I agree. The religious system seems to follow the worlds way over the Spirit. Thanks for the comment.
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” We even have… schools to teach us how to minister, how to preach, how to prophesy and use our gifts.”
I wonder if that’s just another manifestation of the way the ‘church’ simply copies the ways of the ‘world’. Jesus told us to make disciples, which implies relationship, not lecturing.
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