Sunday: Mastery Must Begin with Moral Mastery
WEEK 2
SUNDAY
MASTERY MUST BEGIN WITH MORAL MASTERY
Romans 3:22-26
We saw yesterday that the Word became revelation. And that revelation was Realism. But suppose it had stopped there. Is a revelation all that we need, even though that revelation be perfect and final? Hardly. For the revelation would leave us with light on the mystery of life, but would not give us Life for the mastery of life. It is not enough to see; we must be able to make operative within us what we see. But what is within us? Those who know themselves and others best know that within them is a dark, ugly thing called sin. And this dark, ugly thing is not an occasional, exceptional something here and there—in some people and not in others—it is universal. Something stands between us and God and between us and ourselves and between us and our fellow people and between us and living. It is a life block. And it is something for which we seem to be responsible. The thought of it brings a sense of guilt.
Obviously until that dark, ugly something is removed, we are incapacitated for mastery. For sin makes us feel not merely wicked but weak. It lays a paralyzing hand on all we think and do and are. This sin seems anti-life as well as anti-God—it is anti-us. It seems alien and makes us estranged from God, ourselves, our brothers and sisters, and from life.
Any revelation therefore that would pass from light on the mystery of life to Life for the mastery of life must deal with this tragic fact of sin. To skirt this fact and try to solve mastery would bring us not mastery but misery, not fruitfulness but frustration. All attempts at mastery without being saved from sin have ended, and will end, in disillusionment and despair. If we are not saved from sin, we are not saved from anything; we are not saved. Therefore the first word about Jesus was: “you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). The Savior was to save—from sin. But how? Would he fence us off from sin by a law? Would he force us to be good by compulsion? Or would he bear our sins in his own body on a cross?
O Lord, we have come to the very heart of the mystery of Love. Give us eyes to see, really see. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I am not saved from sin, I am just not saved.