THE ESSENTIAL LAY character of the Christian faith is further seen in the choosing of the seventy. Though the disciples were laymen, they soon became possessive of the Christian movement. Individually they quarreled over first places; they told the man who cast out devils in the name of Jesus to stop it “because he does not follow with us” (Luke 9:49); they wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans when they didn’t receive Jesus and His disciples. Altogether they began to show an exclusive, possessive mentality—they were “special” in the kingdom.
Jesus had to correct this tendency in the direction of making His movement more essentially “lay.” “After this [the account of the quarreling, the forbidding of others to cast out devils, and the calling down fire] the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come” (Luke 10:1). These seventy, of course, were laymen and yet they received exactly the same commission as the Twelve. The same important sentence is found in both: “He who hears you hears me,” except that in the case of the seventy this is added: “and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (v. 16).
This is important, for it means that the direct authority of Jesus was behind the seventy—to receive them was to receive Him, to reject them was to reject Him. There was no going through the apostles to Jesus—no mediation—it was firsthand authority and equal authority. When they returned with joy saying the devils were subject to them in His name (the Twelve couldn’t get them out)! Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” and said: “I thank thee. Father . . . that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (v. 21)—to the lay seventy. They were simple and effective.
O God, our Father, I too thank Thee that Thou hast revealed these things to the simple-hearted who seek only Thee and Thy glory. The highest is open to the lowest. The kingdom belongs to the childlike. That opens the door to us all. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: May I be so identified with Christ that to reject or receive me is to reject or receive Him. That means, not pride, but surrender.
