Wednesday: Our Spiritual Roots Are in Antioch
WEEK 19
WEDNESDAY
OUR SPIRITUAL ROOTS ARE IN ANTIOCH
Acts 13:1-3
We saw yesterday that Christianity came to its own not in Jerusalem but in Antioch, that names were given according to characteristics, that the Spirit of Christ had come to embodiment in a group and they were thus called Christians. The name was rightly given, for as we examine this society, we find the fellowship producing a church—a real Christian church.
This is important for us because the roots of our spiritual lives are in Antioch, not in Jerusalem. The missionary journeys Paul and Barnabas took were begun in and continued to be centered in Antioch. Those journeys took them into Europe and laid the foundation of the Christian faith there, and from there we got it. Antioch is the mother of our spirits. We can well be proud of our spiritual heritage, for the marks of Christ were truly on this church. We must see ourselves in the light of it. As someone has said, “It is the depravity of institutions and movements that, given in the beginning to express life, they often end in throttling that very life, so they need recurrent criticism, constant readjustment, and a perpetual bringing back to original purposes and spirit.” This is particularly true of the Christian movement and more particularly of the Christian church. We must see what the pattern of the New Testament church really is before we can make our churches into its image.
Let us go back and look at the real thing. Someone has written a book titled The Heresy of Antioch, but it was not a heresy; it was Jerusalem with its racialisms and its authoritarianisms that had become a heresy. Antioch was the real thing. This was orthodoxy because it was orthopraxy. In Jerusalem, the word of the kingdom was tending to become words, but in Antioch it became flesh. Therefore it became power. The center of spiritual power and evangelism shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch. One scholar remarks on the “relative ineffectiveness” of the apostles after the first few years. They drop out of the story.
The story centers on Antioch, Paul, and Barnabas as the effective centers of power. That is important, for it shows what God approves. We must catch God’s mind.
O Lord, you are putting your approval upon those movements that express the mind of your Son. Help us to study his approvals and thus catch his mind. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Nothing shall hinder my effectiveness as an illustration of the Christian Way.