Week 22—Wednesday 1 Corinthians 10:31; 11:1
Week 22—WEDNESDAY
GOD IS NOT A COSMIC SIGNPOST
This whole fifth chapter of Matthew is not a collection of sayings, but a connected and organic whole, beginning at the sounding of the standard note, “Blessed are the pure [or undivided] in heart, for they shall see God,” and ending in the final crescendo, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” If you are undivided in heart, then you not only see God, you become like God, perfect in character and life as a child of God, as God is perfect as God. Nothing could be more ethically and spiritually sound than this. Our code of conduct is not based on ethical principles—the Word become word—nor upon the will of God—again the Word become word—but upon the very character and conduct of God—the Word become flesh. The universe is not only a physical universe, or a multiverse, but a moral and spiritual universe—a consistent whole. There is not one set of principles for God and another for us. The Head of the Universe acts basically on the same principles God requires of us. God is not a cosmic signpost pointing the way to live—God is the Way. That Way had to be revealed through an act—Jesus, the Act of God.
By all that God requires of me,
I know that He himself must be.
In one Christian group, Jesus is called “the Way-shower”—he shows the way. But he not only shows the way—he is the Way. Through the trackless jungles of human life there is no abstract way, a cosmic map; there is the glorious fact of the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe as the Way—the Way revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ!
And the central point of that revelation is God’s perfection in love—“God is Love,” and the central point of our maturity in character—we must be loving. We are mature or perfect as we are mature or perfect in love.
O Jesus, Revealer and Redeemer, you have thrown back the curtain from the Character of God the Father and what we see in just yourself, universalized. And what we see sends us on a quest to be like you. We thank you, thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall not be a signpost pointing the way; I shall be a shepherd—showing the way.