Friday: This
WEEK 25
FRIDAY
THIS
Revelation 1:8, 17-18
We have been meditating upon the way the disciples walked out of confusion into clarity when they repeated the great clarification: “Jesus is Lord.” The emphasis in the Acts is upon “this Jesus.”
In Acts 2, the word this is used seven times in the Revised Standard Version. There was a “thisness” about the whole thing, not a “thatness.” Peter used “this Jesus” three times at Pentecost (Acts 2:23, 32, 36). It was not “that Jesus,” pointing to a dead person, but “this Jesus”—alive, present, vital, redemptive, available. And this Jesus was producing “this”: “this is what” (v. 16); “he has poured out this which you see and hear” (v. 33); “when they heard this they were cut to the heart” (v. 37) [italics added]. It was the thisness of the message that produced the thisness of response in repentance and new life. In history, if we preach “that” instead of “this,” we produce “that” instead of “this” in experience.
They repeated “Jesus is Lord”—not “Jesus will be Lord.” He is Lord now of everything. They found him Lord of the past. One of the most helpless feelings one can have is to feel that the past is not past for it invades the present as guilt. Nothing we do can lift that guilt. Only the Divine can lift it and make us as though we had not sinned. Jesus did that. His nailed-pierced hand goes over the past, and lo, it is gone as guilt. It remains only as gratitude for such amazing grace that can, and does, lift the burden of guilt. That guilt belongs to a person that was and is not. “So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!” (2 Cor 5:17).
Then they found Jesus was Lord of the present. They could walk up to sin and temptation and sorrow and opposition, look them straight in the eye, and in the name of Jesus walk through them without the smell of fire upon them. Then they found Jesus was Lord of the future. At the center of that future was death, but Jesus had pulled the sting of death, so the future was free of terrors. They could say, “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know Who holds the future. Jesus is Lord!”
O Jesus, you are Lord! All things are under your blessed feet. If we will accept that blessed fact and identify ourselves with you, then all things are under our feet. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I face past, present, and future in Jesus; he has mastered all three, so I’m unafraid.