Thursday: God’s Totalitarianism and Humanity’s
WEEK 2
THURSDAY
GOD’S TOTALITARIANISM AND HUMANITY’S
Colossians 3:16-17
We have seen that the fifth pillar upon which the Christian faith rests is the Word become final. That is assuring, but not fully assuring. For the question arises, can all this be projected back into life as a total way of life? Or must it all rest in Jesus but incapable of being transferred into us as our way of life now? The answer to these queries is given in the sixth pillar: the Word become a total way of life—the kingdom of God. “He appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking to them about God’s kingdom” (Acts 1:3).
Fortunately the account tells us what he talked about during the forty days he stayed with them after his resurrection. He talked about the thing that was most upon his heart in his preaching ministry and now was most upon his heart as he prepared to leave them: the kingdom of God. He seemed to be saying, “Get this straight, for if you go wrong here, all the ages will go wrong with you. Get this right, and all the coming ages will go right with you.” The future of humanity was bound up with his being able to get them to see this. If this whole scheme, worked out by redemptive love, could not be projected back into life as a total way of life, then it failed at the place where it counted—namely, at the place of life itself. If it cannot function there, it cannot function.
So the kingdom was God’s head-on and sweeping answer to humanity’s total need, individual and collective. It was God’s totalitarianism, offering and demanding a total obedience in the total life, but which, when totally obeyed, gives total freedom. Here is an essential difference between human totalitarianism and God’s: When we totally obey human totalitarianism, we find total bondage; but when we totally obey God’s totalitarianism, we find total freedom. Only God could have thought out the idea of giving total bondage and total freedom at one and the same time. It seems incredible, but the fact is that it works. If I seek first the kingdom of God, then I find my freedom—yea, my very self—being added to me. But if I seek something else first, then I find my freedom—yea, my very self—being subtracted from me. The laws of the kingdom are the very laws of my being, the thing for which I am made.
O Lord, I thank you that the kingdom and I are not alien but affinities to each other, the very homeland of my soul. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Nothing above the kingdom, nothing outside the kingdom, everything within the kingdom.