THIS VERSE REVEALS much: “in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him” (Eph. 3:12). We are so used to this possibility of access that we take it for granted. Outside of Jesus Christ, however, there is no feeling of access to anything except our own resources.
Eric Fromm gives us the verdict of modern pagan psychiatry about the dilemma of modern man:
There is only one solution to his problem: to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve his problem for him. If he faces the truth without panic he will recognize that there is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers, by living productively.
Albert C. Outler sums up Fromm’s position: “Man is alone in a morally neutral universe. Man is, finally, his own and only moral referent” ( Psychotherapy and the Christian Message,124, 126). Man has no access to God or nature—he is shut up to himself. Bleak prospect!
Nothing could be further from the Christian position, for in it “we have boldness and confidence of access” to the highest—God—and to that highest in its most available form—Jesus. In Jesus, everything is open. The way is open out of prison into freedom, out of defeat into victory, out of loneliness into fellowship, out of sin into forgiveness and reconciliation, out of determinism into open freedom, out of misery into mastery, out of oneself into God. In Jesus you are out of nothingness and into everything. No wonder Fromm speaks of panic, and no wonder Paul speaks of boldness and confidence! One ends in panic and the other in possibility. One points to an open door and the other to an open door into the bleak dungeon of yourself.
O Jesus, how can I thank Thee enough for this access to Thy everything. It turns my panic into Thy possibilities. I can be more than I can be in Thee. My hell becomes Thy heaven and only a step out of one into the other. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong not to panic, but to possibility—I have full access to God and His resources.
