Week 17—Thursday 1 Corinthians 1:22-24
Week 17—THURSDAY
A SIGN? THE WORD BECOME FLESH!
As we begin to study the solid mass of evidence that the New Testament is primarily and basically the Word became flesh, we are confronted with this: “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe” (Luke 2:12). The “sign” of the Christian faith was a Babe, an Incarnate Fact. Not a teacher teaching religious truth, a philosophy of life, the Word become word. In China, a missionary interpreted for me to help a Chinese woman get rid of a resentment. In her eagerness to get the Chinese woman to shed her resentment, she uncovered one of her own—a resentment against an older missionary. Both of them got rid of their resentment—a double cure. The sign was not a schoolroom dealing with questions—they were on a quest.
This turning from speculation to fact, as represented in the Babe, is now becoming a world trend. The intellectual climate of the world is no longer philosophical—it is scientific. India has been the home of philosophy, and yet the students are deserting courses on philosophy and turning to science. Philosophy is based on speculations; science is based on specifications. The Christian faith is based on the specific, on the Word become flesh. So it is at home in the world of science. It is its native air. It brings the spiritual out of the hazy into the happenings, out of mystery into mastery.
The Jews of Jesus’ day asked him for a “sign.” And Jesus replied, “This is a wicked generation. It demands a sign, and the only sign that will be given it is the sign of Jonah. . . . And what is here is greater than Solomon . . . and what is here is greater than Jonah” (Luke 11:29-32, NEB). He was there! And he was the Sign. The Babe had now become the world’s Redeemer. And there is no other “sign.” The signs of table rappings, the signs of unintelligible sounds, the signs of non-decaying bodies after death have claimed followers of Hindu swamis—all these and others are the Word become magic. The Word that is the Word is the Word become flesh.
O Jesus Lord, we ask for no “sign” but you. For we see in you the beauty and redemption of the Lord our God. We see in your face the Divine Everything. In you we have seen the Father and it suffices us. We ask no more. Our hearts are at rest. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The sign of my being a Christian will be the sign written in my acts and attitudes.