Tuesday: The Lamb Was on the Throne
WEEK 33
TUESDAY
THE LAMB WAS ON THE THRONE
Matthew 5:43-48
Jesus said to his disciples, “Go! Be warned, though, that I’m sending you out as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). Of all the helpless pictures this is the most helpless and most hopeless: “lambs among wolves.” They haven’t a ghost of a chance to survive, for they weren’t even grown sheep that might run away, but lambs that could give neither fight nor flight—a symbol of complete helplessness. Yet when the book of Revelation closes, it depicts the Lamb upon the throne. The lambs had conquered the wolves! The Lamb was on the throne, the ruler! How did that happen?
It wasn’t chance. It was the manifestation of a superior force, the power of love. Not a passive love but a positive, outgoing love that took the offensive. When Jesus said that, when smitten on one cheek we are to turn the other, that was not a wet-rag type of passivity; it was a daring moral boldness. For when a person hits you on one cheek, you seize the moral offensive, turn the other cheek, and say to that person, “This too, please.” The person smites you on the cheek, and you smite that person in the heart by your daring moral courage. You knock the weapons out of his or her hands and use your weapon of love. You do what “Mary” suggests, “There is nothing that I can do for them but love them with love unlimited.” The disciples loved with love unlimited. And to the degree that they loved with love unlimited, they conquered with conquest unlimited. A new power had been loosed in the world—love unlimited.
This love unlimited broke down barriers between classes and races and between personal and corporate enemies. It was the great solvent. There is neither a whisper of prayer or desire for revenge on enemies nor the slightest sign of resentment. Is this their attitude, “Now, Lord, take note of their threats”—and punish them and protect us? No!—“and enable your servants to speak your word with complete confidence” (Acts 4:29). They asked not for revenge but for the power to preach and to love. No wonder such love won the multitudes, for it was new, a brand new thing in that love-absent world. They coined a new name for it: agape, a divine love.
O Lord, give me in this generation the power to love everybody and everything and help me to love and keep on loving though the objects of the love do not receive. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall love everybody today with love unlimited, the loveless, the unlovely.