Thursday: The Mastery of Special Privilege and Standing
WEEK 7
THURSDAY
THE MASTERY OF SPECIAL PRIVILEGE AND STANDING
Colossians 3:10-11
This mastery we have just been considering—the mastery of looking to God to do everything instead of standing on our own two feet and playing our part—leads to another mastery, akin to it: the mastery of special privilege before God and humanity.
In this epoch-making event of the coming of the Holy Spirit, who were the recipients, a special group with special privilege and standing before God and hence before humanity? No, there were one hundred twenty in that group who received the “promise of the Lord.” Suppose it had been the twelve only who received the Holy Spirit, as one Bible teacher maintained. It would have changed the very nature of the Christian faith. It would have introduced into the Christian faith a group with special privileges and special standing before God and hence before people. The Christian faith would have put its stamp of special approval on the various Brahmanisms through the structure of human society, and Christianity would have been just one more glorified caste system. On the contrary, when the 0 was added to the 12, making it the 120 instead of the 12, that was the most important addition in human history. It meant that before God no one person was higher or lower than any other person; the highest gift of God, the Holy Spirit, was open to a person as a person.
It showed that God wasn’t dealing with apostles but with persons. The Holy Spirit was given, not to a priest, a prophet, or a pope, but to a person. There is no more important event in history than just that. It is a seed event—the future of humanity in the womb of that event. For if God treats with humanity as humanity, then people must treat with people as people. If there is no special privilege before God, then there must be no special privilege before people. That lays the foundation of democracy in a conception of God, and hence of humanity, and makes it rest, not on a written constitution made by people, but written into the very constitution of the universe. That gives democracy a foundation in the nature of things. Before God we are equal; therefore before people we must be equal.
O Lord, I thank you that I can stand before you, neither above nor below any other person. Help me to take that privilege and give it to every other person. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Since I stand equal before God, then every person shall be treated equally by me.