Week 10 Sunday
Week 10 Sunday
The Order and the Person
Acts 8:12; 28:23, 31
We must pause to gather up our definition of the Way. Just what is the Way? Is it the Person—Christ? Or is it the Order—the kingdom of God? In one place Jesus makes loyalty to himself the supreme loyalty, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate [love less] his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, aye and his own life, he cannot be a disciple of mine” (Luke 14:26 Moffatt). Here he made loyalty to himself supreme and absolute. But in another place he said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33). In one place the Person—Christ—was first. In the other place the Order—the kingdom—was first. Which is first?
We must now state what to my mind is one of the most important, and one of the most overlooked, facts in the New Testament. Jesus began with the kingdom of God. He went out “preaching the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23). But before he was through, he began to preach the gospel of himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). “Come to me, . . . and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11 :28). He made “for the sake of the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:29) and “for my sake” synonymous. He made himself and the kingdom synonymous. The Person and the Order were one.
The Way, then, is impersonal—an Order. It is personal—a Person. If it were impersonal only, it would be unsatisfactory. I can be loyal to an Order, but I cannot love it; I can love only a Person. But if it were a Person only, then religion would be reduced to personal relationships with a Person, good but not good enough. Religion would lack total and corporate meanings. But when it is both the Order and the Person combined into a living whole, then it satisfies the need for the intimate—the Personal—and it also satisfies the need for the ultimate—the Order. It makes religion, by its very nature, at once individual and social. For in having relationships with the Person we have relationships with the new Order embodied in the Person, and that Order is completely totalitarian.
The Way, then, can be defined as Christ, the Person, embodying the kingdom, the Order. The Way thus becomes the Way for all life—individual, collective—for God and humanity and things.
O Christ, at last I have come out to your feet. I know in my heart of hearts that you are the Way. My inmost being witnesses to it, and in doing so sings. I am satisfied. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Way is the way for God, for all people and for me.
Week 10 Monday
The Five Stages
Luke 15:3-4, 8; I John 4:19
We ended yesterday with a definition of the Way: The Way is Christ, the Person, embodying the kingdom of God, the Order. The Way is the Person-Order. The end is not a definition, however, but a decision. Christ is not to be reviewed but to be received and followed. The end is not to see but to seek. It demands that we cease other unworkable ways of life and give ourselves to the Way.
The stages through which we pass in getting from our ways to the Way are: (1) contact, (2) conflict, (3) conversion, (4) cultivation, and (5) contribution.
The first is contact. The contact comes from the side of the Divine. God takes the initiative. “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19 CEB). God has come to us through a Divine invasion: an Incarnation, an atoning death, a resurrection, and a coming into our hearts by the Spirit. To get contact with us was not easy, for our sins stood in the way of fellowship. So God had to come to us wearing our sins in his own heart in atoning love. The cross is the price God pays to get to us in spite of our sins. But he made the contact. Result?
Conflict! There is an instinctive reaction against any seeming intruder. The instinct of self-preservation rises up to oppose any invasion of our personal selves. So we erect barriers. There is conflict. Jesus always brings initial trouble, for we know that he will demand change. And we don’t want to change, even though it is a change from chaos to cosmos, from our present hell to a heaven of release. We hold to the securities of the old, even though they may be in shreds. We fear “lest having him I must have naught beside.”*
When Jesus appeared, it was said that “the news of this troubled King Herod and all Jerusalem as well” (Matt. 2:3 Moffatt). Jesus brought trouble in the beginning! He always does. But it is the same trouble that comes to us when on a journey we are told that we are on the wrong road. There is initial trouble in having to retrace our steps, but it saves us from an infinite amount of complicated trouble later on if we don’t retrace them. Jesus upsets us to set us right.
O Christ, troubler of human hearts, O Christ, healer of troubled human hearts, I come to you. Trouble me, trouble me until I face the last sore spot; then heal me. For I would be whole. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”**
*Francis Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven,” 1893.
**Ibid.
Week 10 Tuesday
What Is Conversion?
John 3:3-8
We saw yesterday that the first two steps were contact and conflict. The impact of Christ produces initial upset; there is convulsion before expulsion. Things always get worse before they get better. The gospel is disturbance before deliverance. The contact and the consequent conflict do not end there. The end is conversion.
What do we mean by conversion? Conversion is that change, gradual or sudden, by which we pass from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God by the grace and power of Christ. Note that the center of the old life is the self. A self-centered person is in the old life no matter how religious he or she may be. An upright Pharisee talked earnestly with Jesus at midnight, and Jesus said, “You must all be born from above” (John 3:7 Moffatt). The “all” may mean “all persons,” but it also may mean “all of the person.” You may be righteous and moral, and yet the center may be all wrong. You may be doing good things from a bad motive, a motive of self.
In Jesus’ view, the Pharisee needed conversion as much as the publican and the harlot, and needed it especially. For the Pharisee sins in his disposition—pride, prejudice, censoriousness, self-righteousness. These are respectable sins; Brahmin sins. They are not easy to repent. They are “elder brother” sins. The younger brother sinned in his flesh through lust and appetite. These sins are not respectable; they are outcast sins. It is easier to repent of these sins of the flesh; hence, as Jesus said, the publican and the harlot get into the kingdom of God before the Pharisee. Both need to be converted, to change the center from self to God. English prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845), before she was converted, saw that she was a Pharisee, “I have been in a worldly state . . . all outside, no inside. I feel I am a contemptible fine lady.”* The converted Pharisee became a marvelous Christian.
A pastor left one of our Ashrams and called his family circle together and said to them, “Let us have a family in which we decide things together. You elect someone to preside over our meetings.” He thought, of course, that they would elect him. Instead they elected the eldest daughter. It shocked the pastor. He went to his knees and surrendered his hurt self to God and arose a new man.
O God, I see that if I am centered in myself, I cannot be centered in you. And I want to be centered in you. For when I am centered in myself, I am off-center, out of adjustment, unhappy. In you, I know adjustment and joy. So I come with all my heart. You have me. Forever. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am converted, for God is my center—not I.
*Susanna Corder, Life of Elizabeth Fry (Philadelphia: H. Longstreth, 1872), 30.
Week 10 Wednesday
The New Heredity
1 Peter 1:3-4; 2 Peter 1:4
Yesterday we saw that both the “down and out” and the “up and out” need conversion. Some say that you cannot change human nature. A minister said to me, “My father had a temper, and I have a temper too. Heredity determines it, and that is all there is to it.” I replied, “But you have a heavenly Father and therefore the possibility of a new heredity. Surrender to him, and you will have a new heredity with the temper left out.” Human nature is the most changeable thing on earth. They tell me that peaches were once used by Persians to poison the arrow tips. If so, then peach nature has been changed from poison to luscious food. The wild fowls of the Himalayas are the progenitors of all the chickens of the world. Then chicken nature is convertible, from the little brown fowls into Rhode Island Reds, Wyandottes, Brahmas, into endless varieties. But human nature can be converted more radically. The worst can become the best.
Take two contrasts: When a young man, I preached in a Kentucky town on court day in the public square. A drunk stood near the box on which I stood and kept commenting to the crowd about my preaching. “That young fellow makes me feel like crying.” He had a long stick on which he leaned. At the close of the address, I asked those who wanted to be converted to come to the mission. Among others, he came. I asked him if he wanted to be converted, and he replied. “I’m drunk.” “I know you are drunk,” I replied, “but God can change you.” “If you say so, it must be so,” he replied, and we bowed in prayer. As I was praying, he opened his eyes with a surprised look in them and said, “Why he has saved me! And I am drunk too!” He arose and handed me his whisky bottle, saying, “I don’t want that.” I threw it out of the window. He handed me his stick, upon which he leaned for support, and said, “I don’t need that either.” And he walked out of there perfectly straight. God had not only saved him; he had sobered him as well. A highly cultured woman, a student of philosophy, underwent a spiritual change and described it thus, “I feel like a newborn babe.” Both were profoundly remade.
O God, I see the untold possibilities for change when I come to you. For in you I can have a new heredity; a new Blood can flow within my blood; a new Life can take the place of my old life. I arise with new expectancy and joy. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a part of a new heredity, a new lineage; I can do nothing this day beneath the dignity of my birth.
Week 10 Thursday
Wanted—A New Philosophy of Life
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
Yesterday we saw contrasting types of conversion. We must pursue this until our faith grows into certainty that anyone can be changed.
A man with a hard and dirty face went to an altar of prayer and prayed in desperation, “O God, if you can save a sinner like me, why in hell don’t you do it quicker?” Then his face melted into tenderness, and upon it came the smile of heaven, and the happy man said, “Boys, he’s done it.” And he had!
The head of a large manufacturing plant was fighting with himself and at loggerheads with his workmen. He was nervous and upset. He went to an outstanding doctor, who gave him a thorough checkup and, finding nothing physically wrong, said, “What you need is a new philosophy of life. Go home and get one.” And he handed him a bill for three thousand dollars. He knew that if he charged anything less the man wouldn’t be impressed. The businessman went home furious, called up his pastor, and made the air black and blue with these words, “What do you think that blankety-blank doctor said? ‘You need a new philosophy of life.’ And what do you think he charged me? Three thousand dollars for that!” The pastor quietly said, “He’s right, that’s what you need.” The businessman quieted down and abruptly asked, “What shall I do?” The pastor recommended certain books, among them Abundant Living. The man is now completely changed. He no longer fights with himself or with his men. He has found God and therefore is in right relation to himself and others. He thinks the three-thousand-dollar fee was cheap! He is putting his new philosophy of life into the industrial situation in America.
Someone arose in one of our meetings and said, “I’ve had a wonderful healing, a healing of attitude.” Conversion from wrong attitudes is just as necessary as conversion from wrong acts, perhaps more so. A missionary to China said to us, “I’ve been a missionary for eleven years, and I’ve been a part of the disease rather than the cure.” Another said, “I can be perfectly ethical and know nothing of being a Christian.” A businessman put it this way, “I gave my best for these young people, and my best was not good enough.” They all needed conversion.
O God, my Lord, I am coming to your feet. I need to be healed at the heart, healed from every sore of resentment, fear, and pride. My being is open; heal me to the depths. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am healed in actuality, in attitude, and in act. I belong to the healed.
Week 10 Friday
Religion an Irritant
Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 5:16-17
We have been insisting that conversion is necessary equally for those whose sins of the flesh and for those whose sins of the disposition disclose that the center of life is unchanged. A minister said in one of our meetings, “I see clearly, and I see the cross, and I don’t like it.” The cross confronted his essential self-centeredness, and he reacted in opposition to it. It challenged the basis on which he was living. He was religious, but not Christian, for Christ did not control the center.
A great many have introduced just enough Christianity into their lives to set up a conflict. There isn’t enough Christianity to produce control, but just enough to produce conflict. Christianity then becomes an irritant. It upsets instead of sets up. A businessman sat down in a hotel room with me, and the first thing he said was, “I’m trying to live the Christian life, and I’m having a hell of a time at it.” Why was the Christian life issuing in a hell of a time instead of in a heaven of a time? He disclosed the reason, “Twenty times a day the self will be ready to do anything as a compromise, provided it be allowed to stay at the center, on the throne.” The Way was operative in the minor issues of life, but the way of self was operative in the major issue, the issue as to who makes the decisions. The self made them, in the interests of the self. Result? A hell of a time! The center needed conversion. Christ needed to take over at the center.
We often appeal to outsiders with the text, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock” (Rev. 3:20). But that was not spoken to outsiders; it was spoken to insiders, to the church. Christ was trying to get inside the church! “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You declare, ‘I am rich, I am well off, I lack nothing!’ ” (Rev. 3:16-17 Moffatt)—Nothing but Christ! Self was at the center, and Christ was at the door, knocking. The center of life needed to be redeemed.
It was said of Joseph of Arimathaea that he was “a disciple of Jesus but a secret disciple—for fear of the Jews” (John 19:38 Moffatt). Fear held the center. Result? He found a dead Christ instead of a living one. Fear, not Christ, was operative. He needed conversion.
O Christ, I do not want a dead Christ, for there is no such thing. You are alive! I want you to live in me. I give you the center, that Life may be in every part. I do it now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “I give you an undivided heart; Oh, never may I stray from thy control” (Ps. 119:10 Moffatt).
Week 10 Saturday
“A Big Smile Inside”
1 John 3:1-2, 14
Whatever our sins or our goodness, if anything other than Christ is the center and spring of our lives, we need conversion. I know of an Anglican archbishop who was converted at seventy-two. For him, he said, “ ‘life’ began at seventy-two”! It did! Contrast that highly moral religious leader who needed conversion with this, “I was drunk when I got hold of your Christ of the Indian Road. It converted me.”
Contrast again the coming of the drunk with this coming of a child, “I heard a knock at the door, and I saw it was Jesus, and I asked him to come in. He did. I heard another knock, and I said, ‘Jesus, you go to the door.’ He did, and Satan was there. When he saw Jesus he said, ‘Oh, I’ve made a mistake. I’m at the wrong place.’ ” The conversion of the archbishop, the drunk, and the child were all authentic, but different—different and yet the same—Christ was at the center of life. When that happens, there is conversion.
The psalmist says, “Awake, my soul! awake, my lute and lyre!” (Ps. 57:8 Moffatt). When the soul was awake, then the lute and lyre were awake. When the soul centrally and fundamentally sings, then the instruments of the Soul sing with it. But you can’t make life sing at the edges until you make it sing at the center.
A person radically changed said to us, “The dogs that have dogged my footsteps for years are all dead and buried. I’m free!” Another one put it this way, “I have a song in my heart and wings to my feet.” You can never have wings to your feet unless you have a song in your heart.
Still another said, “I have a big smile inside.” When Christ is at the center of life, then life has “a big smile inside.” When something else is at the center, there is a big frown inside. A college girl put it this way, “I felt as though I had swallowed sunshine.” A lot of people look as though they have swallowed gloom.
Some people were looking at a sunrise, and a little girl, a lovely Christian, exclaimed, “That’s just how I feel inside.” Christ is a sunrise. The old life is a sunset. One is heaven, and the other is hell. You’ll have to take your choice: the heaven Way or the hell way?
O Christ, I am tired of wearing hell within my bosom. I turn all this inner hell over to you. You have it. Bury it—bury it at the foot of the cross. I henceforth belong to heaven, not to hell. I’m free! Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “O thou Eternal, thou wilt light my lamp, my God, thou wilt make my darkness shine” (Ps. 18:28 Moffatt).