WE PAUSE TO look at our passage again: “For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). Note the phrase: “through the gospel.” If we preach a philosophy—ideas about life, or a moralism—principles and practices upon which life can be lived, or religious practices—techniques of religious life, we do not become a “father in Christ Jesus”—we do not beget spiritual children. It is only “through the gospel” that we become creative.
To illustrate: a little girl knocked at a popular pastor’s door. She was obviously from the slums, and she said, “My mother has sent me to come and ask you to get her in.” To get her in? The pastor was intrigued, so the little girl took him by the hand into a slum section, they climbed the stairs, and entered the room of a prostitute dying of consumption. He sat down beside her and talked of Jesus as a teacher, but she shook her head and said, “That isn’t for the likes of me.” Then he told her of Jesus as our example, how He went about doing good, but again she shook her head and said, “That isn’t for the likes of me.” Then out of desperation he reached back into his past and brought out something he had almost forgotten; he talked of Jesus dying on the cross for sinners. Her face began to light up, and she nodded her head and said, “Yes, yes, that’s for the likes of me.” The pastor, telling about it later, said, “We got her in—and I got in too!” As long as he presented a philosophy, a moralism, a religious ritualism, he was ineffectual and spiritually uncreative. The moment he gave her the gospel—the crucified and risen Savior—he became creative, the father of a newborn soul; he “got her in.” And got himself in! The gospel is the redemptively creative activity of God. And Jesus Himself is that gospel.
O Master of my heart, I thank Thee that in Thee I too can become creative. All I have to do is to surrender myself fully, wholly, utterly, to Thee and have no blocks to Thy creative love, and I too can be a father of new hopes, new life, newborn souls. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Only through the gospel can I change others—through other ways I may modify here and there, but only through Christ can I create.
