Saturday: Applications of Fulfillment
WEEK 36
SATURDAY
APPLICATIONS OF FULFILLMENT
Revelation 21:22-27
We pause another day on the mastery of the old by the new. The old outwardness in praying became the inwardness of the closed doors, praying to the Lord who is in secret. The praying was thus not aimed outward toward people to be seen of them; it was aimed upward toward God and resulted in spiritual communion with God, a spiritual act.
Fasting was not outward to be seen by people; it was inward of the spirit, fasting not merely from the demands of the flesh for food but from all its pressing desires—from sex cravings and sex thinking—fasting!
The old aggressive attitude toward other nations, resulting in periodic wars, was now fulfilled and became a loving aggression, carrying the good news to every tongue and people. The aggression of hate became the aggression of love. The aggressive spirit was redeemed to higher ends; it was fulfilled.
Fierce allegiance to the nation was now lifted and fastened upon the kingdom of God, a new Society of the Redeemed. These people were enlarged in the enlargement of the unit of loyalty, universalized, in fact.
Their allegiance to a Book became an attachment to a Person. For the early Christians had no Book as yet. But they had a Person. That made religion, not obedience to a Law, but the living out of a Life from the letter to the spirit. When they did get the Book, these words took them by the hand and led them beyond the words to the Word made flesh, the Person.
All the old died out like a seed dies—dies to live as flower and fruit—not destroyed but fulfilled.
What Jesus did for the Jewish system, he does for every system. He doesn’t destroy it; he fulfills it by gathering up its good and letting the old drop away, irrelevant and unwanted. The New is the Creative New.
O Jesus, my Lord, you are not only the Savior of our souls but the Savior of the good found anywhere, making it into the better and the best. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall not sigh over the passing old; I shall sing over the coming New.