Week 9 Sunday
Week 9 Sunday
Destined to Possess All Things?
Ephesians 1:10; 2:10; Colossians 1:15-18
We have seen that One greater than the temple is here, also One greater than the Bible, the commandments, the creeds, rites and ceremonies, faith, the cross, the resurrection, the church. Jesus not only towers “o’er the wrecks of time”; he also towers o’er the good things of time. He is the Best to which all lesser good points. He is the Absolute from which all relativisms get their worth and meaning.
If the objection is made that you cannot call the limited Jesus an absolute—look at the limitations of his birth and surroundings and the fact of his own humanity—the answer must be that there are relativisms in Jesus, but rising out of those relativisms is an Absolute. When he speaks, finality speaks. When he says, “Full authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18 Moffatt), we feel that this is not a pompous claim, but the statement of an inherent fact. Everything not only “in heaven” but “on earth” is made in its inner structure by him and for him, and works only when it works in his way. If it tries to work in some other way, it works its own ruin. Again, “That all things in heaven and earth alike should be gathered up in Christ” (Eph. 1:10 Moffatt). “All things” in heaven and on earth have a Christian destiny in them; they will be gathered up in Christ. Out of him they go to pieces, disintegrate. He is the Way unqualified, for heaven and for earth. The moral universe is one.
Further, when he says, “No one knows the Son except the Father” (Matt. 11:27 Moffatt), we know that the Way is an infinite Way. Only God knows it in its entirety. The Way will have no end. It will be eternally explored, and it will be an eternal surprise. We have hold of something that cannot be exhausted.
Again, when it says, “Whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2), we know this is not an arbitrary predestination; he is destined to possess all things, for all things that do not obey his will and work in his way will perish. Those things that survive will be his, inherently so. By the very nature of things he will possess all things. For all things know their Master’s voice.
O living Christ, by whose hands all things were made, and into whose hands all things will return, I gladly render up to you what is your own. I am yours, for I know that apart from you I wither and perish. In you I live and live abundantly and fully and freely. You are my fulfillment and my fullness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Christ is destined to possess all things. I am in Christ; therefore in him I possess all things.
Week 9 Monday
Is the Kingdom Our Good?
Acts 19:8-9; Colossians 1:13
We have been studying the fact that loyalty to Christ is to be sought first, last, and always; for when supreme loyalty is fastened on him, then there is complete life fulfillment. But, strangely, Jesus did not begin with himself as the center of loyalty. He said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God . . . ; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33 KJV). He made the kingdom the center of loyalty.
Philosophers have said that we must have a Weltanschauung, worldview, a cosmic framework in which we live and work and think. That cosmic framework must give validity and meaning to all we do. That world frame of reference gives a sense of moral security. The breakdown of that world frame of reference in the minds of people is the cause of the sense of loneliness and homesickness in modern humanity. People live a hand-to-mouth existence day by day, and what they do and think does not seem to be related to the Whole. This has made life empty and jittery because it is insecure.
The Chinese have a saying, “In a broken nest there are no whole eggs.” The nest, the world in which we live and think and create, has been broken up; our central life unity is gone. As a consequence of the broken nest, there are no whole eggs; the individual’s unity and security have broken down. This can be seen on a small scale when the home is broken. Nearly all the boys in a reformatory at Plainfield, Indiana, are from broken homes. Nearly all the problem children in high schools also come from broken homes. Why? The framework in which they have lived has broken down and left them inwardly homeless and confused. As a consequence, morals break down. People need a new home, a cosmic Home.
That cosmic Home is the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Seek God’s Realm [kingdom] and his goodness, and all that will be yours over and above” (Matt. 6:33 Moffatt). He makes the kingdom and goodness synonymous. His rule is our good—our physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, economic, social, political, and international good. God’s rule is good for us, is our highest interest. Any other rule is bad for us. Self-rule equals self-ruin. God-rule equals good rule. The kingdom is our cosmic Homeland—our total Security.
O Christ, I am so grateful that I do have a Homeland, a land in which I live and move and have my being. I feel the sense of belonging and that at the heart of things is utter security. I am grateful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The kingdom is my Homeland; therefore I am at home in all lands.
Week 9 Tuesday
The Kingdom of God Is Our Fatherland
Ephesians 2:11-15
Yesterday we saw that humanity needs a sense of a Cosmic framework, a cosmic Home, cosmic approval. That cosmic Home, we said, is the kingdom of God. Begin there, and everything will come out all right. Begin some other place, and everything will come out all wrong. On a sales bulletin board were these words, “Get the idea, and all else follows.” But the idea must be the Idea; all else follows.
Someone has said, “The most basic problem in community organization and leadership is formulation of the central idea to be achieved.” Get the center right, and the circumference takes care of itself.
Among the friezes in the Nebraska capitol are these words, attributed to Aristotle, “He who would duly inquire about the best form of the State ought first to determine which is the most eligible life.” Jesus defined “the most eligible life” as the life that seeks the kingdom first, last, and always. When you do, then everything you need will be added. And if you don’t, then everything will be subtracted. As Henry Drummond, the evangelist, is reported to have said, “If you seek first the kingdom of God you will have that problem, but if you don’t seek first the kingdom of God then you will have nothing but problems.”
For instance, Jesus says, “So do not seek food and drink and be worried” (Luke 12:29 Moffatt). Note the sequence: if you seek something less than the kingdom, for example, food and drink, you will be worried; you will have the sense of missing the mark, of being insecure, of out-of-gearness. Why? For the reason that the mind is worried, feeling a sense of nonfulfillment and frustration until it seeks first its natural Home, the kingdom of God. When it finds the kingdom, worry and insecurity drop away. This is It!
Prominently displayed in a seminary were these words, “Harmony of sound is music; harmony of line is sculpture or architecture; harmony of color is art; harmony of truth is poetry; harmony of life and goodness is fellowship with God and man.” And we may add: Harmony of the total life is the kingdom of God.
Hebrews 11:14 (Moffatt) speaks of those “in search of a fatherland.” The Fatherland is the kingdom. We are alien to all else, and all else is alien to us.
O God, I know that when I find your kingdom I find myself and all I want to be. For here I can breathe freely and feel a sense of at-homeness. Here I can become a child again, unafraid and spontaneous. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The kingdom is harmony. I am in the kingdom; therefore harmony is in me.
Week 9 Wednesday
An Unshakable Kingdom
1 Timothy 6:13-16; 1 Peter 5:10-11
Yesterday we ended by emphasizing the necessity of living in harmony with the kingdom. Revelation 1:9 (Moffatt) speaks of “your companion in the distress and realm and patient endurance which Jesus brings.” If the word realm is read as meaning the kingdom, then on each side of the “kingdom” is “distress” and “patient endurance.” If the kingdom is at the center, then you have an unshakable center even though it is flanked by “distress” and “patient endurance.”
No wonder the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28). I am grateful with every fiber of my being that we have an unshakable kingdom. For the kingdoms of this world and the rotten civilizations they have built up are going down in blood and ruin. They are shakable. Paul speaks of “the dethroned Powers who rule this world” (1 Cor. 2:6 Moffatt). These Powers still rule, though they are dethroned. Life has passed judgment on them, but they still rule on under the law of decay.
Jesus spoke of “the so-called rulers of the Gentiles” (Mark 10:42 Moffatt). Think of saying that—“the so-called rulers” of the mighty Roman Empire! But the years and the centuries have spoken against the hours, and the so-called rulers and their empires have perished. And note that he contrasted a group of disciples with the so-called rulers, “The so-called rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; . . . not so with you.” He implies, “You are rulers, but you are different, they are so-called, you are real rulers.” It is literally true. Those disciples rule our thoughts and conduct; the principles and teachings they passed on have molded, and still mold, a civilization.
Now our confidence is being shaken in our own kingdoms even at the moment of our victory in war. Listen to these words of Drew Pearson, “Maybe we will wake up to the futility of old-fashioned diplomacy and the hopelessness of big armies and put our faith in friendship. . . . In other words, everything else having failed, we might finally come around to practicing the Sermon on the Mount.”* Then—and then only—will we come to an unshakable kingdom.
O Christ, I know in my heart of hearts that your reign is It. It has the feel of the real and the eternal upon it. It will never grow stale or wear out. It is eternally fresh and eternally creative and new. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to an unshakable kingdom; therefore passing events cannot shake me.
*Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column in The Daily Illini, no. 9 (October 13, 1945): 2.
Week 9 Thursday
The Kingdom of God Is Totalitarian
1 Corinthians 15:24-28
We have seen that the kingdom is the worldview of the Christian. It can be summed up in these words, “May your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Three things here: (1) The kingdom is. It is a kingdom that is in operation, and its operation produces heaven. Where it is not in operation, that is hell.
(2) The kingdom that is, nevertheless, comes on earth as earth is willing to accept it and submit to it.
(3) The kingdom comes in a total way. The coming of the kingdom means the doing of the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. How is the will of God done in heaven? In the individual will? Yes. In the collective will? Yes. In the total social arrangements in heaven? Yes. Then may the kingdom come in this total way on earth as it is in a total way in heaven.
The kingdom of God is a completely totalitarian order, demanding a total obedience in the total life. It was presented to the individual will; it was presented to the collective will, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43). “But,” cries my reader, “we are getting rid of one totalitarianism, and you are introducing us to another, even more thoroughgoing and absolute.” True. But there is this profound difference: when you obey the kingdom of God, you find perfect freedom. When you obey other totalitarianisms, you find perfect bondage, for they are not the way you are made to live. When you obey the kingdom of God, you find perfect self-fulfillment.
As the stomach and poison are not made for each other, and when brought together produce disruption and death, so life and other-than-kingdom ways are not made for each other and produce disruption and death. As the stomach and food are made for each other and when brought together bring health and life, so life and the kingdom are made for each other and when brought together produce health and life and fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is release, is salvation. “Now it has come, the salvation and power, the reign of our God and the authority of his Christ!” (Rev. 12:10 Moffatt). The reign of God brought salvation—release and power—fulfillment.
O God, your reign is my realization. My rule is my ruin; your Rule is my release. I submit to your Rule, for to me it is life, and life abundant. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The kingdom demands my all and offers its all. The demand and the offer are not equal.
Week 9 Friday
“The Open Secret”
1 Corinthians 2:6-10
We emphasized yesterday that obedience to the kingdom is the fulfillment of life. Why? The reason is that the Author of the kingdom and the Author of us is one and the same, and we and the kingdom are made for each other. “Come into your inheritance in the realm prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34 Moffatt). When the world and we were founded, the kingdom was built into its very nature, into its very foundations. The laws of the kingdom are the very laws of our being. They are not a set of laws imposed from without; they are written in us as the nature of our being.
A man said in one of our Ashrams, “I have always followed the line of least resistance. I have always found it harder to do wrong than to do right.” As the flowers have a sun bent within them, so we have a kingdom bent within us. We are made for it.
If we and the kingdom are not made for each other, then religion is hopelessly handicapped. It becomes an unnatural imposition. A laborer put the matter thus, “You can pass all the laws you want, but what is in the seed will come out in the plant.” But if the kingdom is “within you,” as Jesus said, then the very nature of our being demands that we accept it; freely choose it; or end in self-frustration.
If it is all as simple as that, then why do we not see it more easily and live by it? Jesus speaks of things “hidden since the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13:35 Moffatt). These things are hidden in the nature of reality. Jesus disclosed them in parables. We are discovering them as laws, as facts. Jesus again speaks of “the open secrets of the Realm of heaven” (Matt. 13:11 Moffatt). It is all secret, but it is an “open secret”; anyone can discover them who will. This runs true to everything else hidden in nature. Electricity was a secret but an “open secret,” and those who paid the price of discovery unearthed it. The wireless was a secret but an “open secret,” open to the humble, obedient, inquiring mind. So the kingdom is secret, but it is an “open secret”; ready to be revealed to the humble, the obedient, the responsive person.
O God, you are so intimately near, in my very being. I have reached up to heaven to bring you down, and lo, your kingdom is within me. Help me humbly to obey it, that it may be revealed to me as life of my life and being of my being. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall know as much of the “all” of the offer as I am willing to obey the “all” of the demand.
Week 9 Saturday
The Kingdom Invades and Pervades
Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:26-29
We close our week’s inquiry by recapitulating what we have been saying. If we walk against the lights, we’re going to get hurt. These “lights” are seen supremely and finally in Christ; he is “the light of the world.” But these “lights” are also in us, the very laws of our being. I find ten laws written into our beings, and as we study them, they turn out to be the very laws of the kingdom of God.
(1) The universe is a universe of moral consequence. (2) The morally and spiritually fit survive. (3) The Christian way is written in the structure of the universe. (4) Humility and obedience are the secret of knowledge and power. (5) An organism expends as much as it receives and no more; therefore receptivity is the first law of life. (6) The second law of life is that you must lose your life to find it again.
(7) Greatness comes through service. (8) Love is the fundamental law of human relationships. (9) Life is an eternal growth. (10) All life is lifted by self-sacrifice, by a cross. Wipe, then, the gospel of Jesus from the pages of the New Testament, and you will find intimations of it in yourself.
Ours is a cut-flower civilization. We are living without roots. Our morality has no roots in the cosmic order, but only in changing customs, and hence they fade. Our happiness has no cosmic backing, and hence it too easily withers and dies.
The kingdom of God both invades you and pervades you. It invades you from without and pervades you from within. It descends and it ascends. We are made for it; therefore its coming is like a homecoming, a naturalizing, a finding of one’s self.
“Why aren’t Christian students as enthusiastic over Christianity as Nazi and Fascist and Communist students over their systems?” was asked of a Christian student a few years ago. He thoughtfully replied, “These systems are looked on as realism, while Christianity is looked on as idealism; you can’t get enthusiastic over idealism.” True! But if the kingdom is the only realism, since it is written in the nature of reality, then we can be enthusiastic to the depths.
O satisfying Christ, I give you my all with the consent of all my being, for I know that you have the keys to everything. You are unlocking God, myself, and life. I see in you just what I want. Beyond you I cannot go, for anything. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The kingdom of God is above me; the kingdom of God is around me; the kingdom of God is within me.