"You shall be My witnesses..."

Those who wrote the Gospels were not primarily teachers, but witnesses.  They wanted only to testify to what they had seen and heard, as John says in his first letter.  It took Paul, who was well-schooled in the Book of the Law, to draw out the implications of what the Apostles had experienced.  He did this not by reasoning, but by the illumination of the Spirit, after meeting face to face with the living Christ.  Paul was a witness to his experience with the Resurrected Jesus, but he was also the first teacher of the new sect, the followers of the Living Christ.  The spirit of God illumined his mind to understand the Scriptures he had known from his youth.

Once we, like Paul, actually meet the Living Christ, we also become witnesses to His power in our lives.  There is a famous Greek icon which depicts Jesus holding either a closed or an open book---both versions of the icon "teach" the same lesson; the book is closed to us until He opens it to us.  We might read the Scriptures, but they remain obscure until the light of Christ illumines them.

Paul says in I Corinthians that the Spirit searches the deep things of God in order to reveal them to us (I Cor. 2:13 ff.).  We cannot understand "teaching" until we have the experience---after that, we ourselves become witnesses to the Truth.  St. John says, "we write about what we ourselves have seen and heard and touched, that your faith may be sure."  If we have not "seen and heard and touched" for ourselves, we remain unconvinced.  If we have had an experience with Christ, then we ourselves become witnesses to what we know to be true.