Friday: We Have Heard for Ourselves
WEEK 34
FRIDAY
WE HAVE HEARD FOR OURSELVES
John 4:39-42
We continue to look at the mastery of the secondhand.
Many preachers are in line of the succession of the sons of Sceva, “By the name of the Jesus whom Fosdick preaches, the Jesus whom McCartney preaches”; this is religion in quotation marks. It was said of one minister that when he began to preach, he turned to one side and made a gesture with his two hands about a foot apart and then turned to the other side and made the same gesture. When somebody asked him why he did this, he replied: “I am doing this because what I am about to say is in quotation marks”; the sermon was someone else’s sermon! It was secondhand preaching and of course produced secondhand Christians—Christians groping amid the half-lights, ready to be pushed here and there with the more impressive quotation.
When years ago I asked Sarojini Naidu, the poetess and patriot of India, about socialism in India, she replied, “Well, socialism is still in quotation marks in India.” It was ideas imported from abroad; it wasn’t firsthand and indigenous. That was years ago. Now socialism is no longer in quotation marks in India; it is rooted in the soil and soul of India. Nothing is power that is not personal and firsthand.
The people of the Samaritan village passed from the secondhand to the firsthand in these words, “They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is truly the savior of the world’” (John 4:42). It was no longer a mediated faith; it was an immediated faith, nothing between.
The greatest necessity of the church today is the conversion of secondhand Christians into firsthand Christians, the conversion of people who are walking in half-lights to people who walk in full light. “Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness,” said Jesus (John 8:12); and he might have added, “nor in half-lights either.” They can be “in the light in the same way as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7).
O Jesus, you are the light of the world, not the half-light of half the world. Help me this day to break through halfwayness into full light and full life. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall walk in the light as he is in the light and have perfect fellowship with him.