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One of my coworkers recently shared with me a funny quip from his two-year-old son. The son said to his dad, “Daddy, Mommy is a person, but you’re an engineer!” While it is usually true that engineers are a special type of people (I am one so I can say that), it struck my coworker and me as quite hilarious that his young son even made that observation!

We are often identified by our titles in life. I am an engineer, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a seminary graduate, a teacher, a blog writer, a preacher, etc. One of the titles that was often used to describe Jesus is this week’s word - rabbi.

One verse where this title is used is John 3:2 which says, “[Nicodemus] came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.’” Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish ruling council, so he had already made it pretty far up the ladder of Jewish society. But yet, he called Jesus “Rabbi.” Nicodemus wanted to follow Jesus, and we see in this verse and later in this passage that he was seeking Jesus and recognized that He was from God.

Literally, the word rabbi is Hebrew for “my teacher.” When a person following Jesus called him Rabbi, they were identifying him as their teacher. But in that culture, a rabbi was so much more than how we see teachers today. Many men back then dropped out of school at the modern equivalent of 8th grade, but those who wanted to go to be scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures would find a rabbi. When they found a rabbi to follow and learn from, they didn’t just meet with them for a few hours each day or week like we think of schooling today. No; they followed their rabbi around everywhere! They tried to imitate the rabbi exactly in all that he did, from the places he went to the foods he ate, even to all of his mannerisms and knowledge. They did everything humanly possible to be exactly like their rabbi.

The question I challenge you with today is this: is Jesus your rabbi in this sense? Do you recognize, like Nicodemus, that Jesus comes from God? Do you not only want to learn from Him, but do you follow Jesus so closely and so intimately that you want every little thing about you to be like Him?

Keep seeking to look to Jesus as your Rabbi. Learn everything you can from Him, and strive to imitate His every action, based on the example He gives us in the Bible.