Thursday: The Mastery of the Lack of a Mystical Temperament
WEEK 48
THURSDAY
THE MASTERY OF THE LACK OF A MYSTICAL TEMPERAMENT
Acts 5:31-32
This leads us to consider another mastery—the mastery of the lack of an especially mystical temperament.
There are many who would shrug off all I have been saying with the words, “Yes, all this is beautiful but beyond me. It’s for some people—people with mystical natures— but I’m not mystical and I suppose that shuts me out.” They say this with a sigh.
But that distinction is foreign to the Acts of the Apostles. This highest gift of God was not given to especially mystically endowed people; it was given to the garden variety of humanity and given to them equally. There is no artificial distinction between the mystically endowed person and the non-mystically endowed person in the Acts. That distinction was never thought of or planned for. A person as a person could and did receive the highest gift of God—the Holy Spirit—and could and did receive the Spirit equally, according to the degree of surrender and obedience. There were no other conditions except surrender and obedience. The blocks came by choice—by will—not by any inherent incapacity to receive the Highest.
The old “election” was based on the will of God. God elected some to salvation, and others God rejected. This has faded out; it was killed by the kind of God seen in Jesus. It was impossible to believe that the God and Lord of the Lord Jesus Christ could or would do that. This election of some and rejection of others apart from anything except the arbitrary will of God was largely founded on three chapters of Romans, 9–11. But these three chapters are almost entirely concerned with the Old Testament. It was an attempt of Paul to fit in his Christianity with the Old Testament conception of God. It just didn’t fit in; “I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau” (Rom 9:13), and this before they were born! “Mary” remarked, “Jesus wouldn’t have said that.” No, this was the old speaking. Paul leaves off his Christianity at the end of the eighth chapter and resumes it with the twelfth. These three chapters were a digression and have caused infinite confusion.
O Lord, I thank you that your love takes us all in and takes us all in equally. The only thing that blocks is our response. Help me to have no blocks anywhere at any time. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: As a person I am elected by grace to receive the highest God has for any person.