Tuesday: The Great Simplification
WEEK 5
TUESDAY
THE GREAT SIMPLIFICATION
Romans 10:6-13
We have seen that there was a mastery of religious paraphernalia in that, when these people received the Holy Spirit, God’s highest gift, they were undergoing no rite, no ceremony, no laying on of hands on anyone, and they were not joining any religious body. There was nothing and no one between. There was one mediator—and only one mediator—between God and humanity, and that was Jesus. It was he who gave the Holy Spirit: “This Jesus, God raised up. We are all witnesses to that fact. He was exalted to God’s right side and received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit. He poured out this Spirit, and you are seeing and hearing the results of his having done so” (Acts 2:32-33). That forever fixed the source from which we receive the Spirit; we receive the Spirit from Jesus and him alone, or we do not receive the Spirit. This gift comes from a nail-pierced hand or not at all.
To interpose a church, a rite, a ceremony, a worked-out creed, a line of specially qualified mediators of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands is to interpose people and things between the soul and God; and that is idolatry. For when a relative thing becomes an absolute thing, then that is idolatry. And there was no idolatry here.
Jesus was the Way. Humanity couldn’t get to God, so God came to humanity—came in Jesus. This coming of the Holy Spirit was like a cleansing wind from heaven, cleansing the fetid atmosphere of religion from a thousand controversies and claims. Everything was simplified. The vast complications of law and ritual and rite and creed were all swept away before the vast simplification.
This group of one hundred twenty were doing what when the Holy Spirit came? Nothing but praying and surrendering to Jesus and through him to God. Nothing was needed except the open, surrendered, receptive heart. When that took place, then the Holy Spirit was given without measure. There was no special religious posture—they were not even kneeling—they were “sitting” (Acts 2:2).
This simple happening has rendered irrelevant and absurd all the controversies of the centuries as to what is essential or not essential. No “thing” is essential. But someone is—and only he. The air is cleared.
O Lord, your hand has brushed aside everything by this seed happening. We now see no man save Jesus only. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I need nothing except to be in right attitudes to him—nothing.