“You are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe; as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.” — 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12
Paul discusses the support and guidance of the father; he exhorts, comforts, and charges (or calls) his child to maturity. Important here is that the first two verbs “exhort” and “comfort” begin with the Greek prefix para, which means in the presence of, alongside or beside. The idea is that the father does not stand face-to-face with the child, point the finger and merely instruct the child as to how the child should behave. Instead, the father enters the process of walking out the instruction that he communicates to the child in how he relates to him. Just as the Spirit of God never condemns or forsakes the children of God, so too the good father places his arm around the child and exhorts the child as he, by the grace of the Spirit, walks and experiences each step the child takes along with him.
As a babe in the faith, I was graced by a model discipler worth imitation. The Pauline example of a condescending mother and paracletic father can be seen via my personal testimony. First, this man taught me systematics and yet did so with the language of the Scriptures and not the wisdom of men. It was not until I took my first systematics classes that I realized what he had done; he met me where I was, aware of what I needed to begin following Christ.
Second, upon a return from seminary after my first Greek classes, my spiritual father met me and began to discuss his own current studies in the Scriptures. He invited me into his own journey, and this time he was asking me about Peter’s choice of words in the Greek (he was in 1 Peter). Prior to this moment, it had never dawned on me that he studied the Scriptures in Greek — he never mentioned it. For the first year that we studied the Scriptures together, his knowledge of Greek and systematics was not part of the conversation.
It may have increased my understanding, but it also could have two other effects: discouragement at my own lack of knowledge, and a misappropriation of him as the one with all the answers. His training was never to promote himself but always to exalt Christ and be merely a living witness to him — a fellow pilgrim scraping along the way with his sister with whom Christ had granted him the privilege of sharing the gospel. There were many times when he would leave my questions unanswered, trusting in the Spirit and not his own wisdom that I would seek those answers in the biblical text, and Christ, in his faithfulness, would be found.