Week 27—Thursday Acts 17:4-8
Week 27—THURSDAY
“A RESOLUTIONARY CONFERENCE”
We have seen Luke’s amazing summing up of the essential elements in the Word become flesh Impact and we now turn to implementation of that Impact. It is revealed in the Acts of the Apostles.
Note that is called “The Acts of the Apostles.” Had the gospel been a philosophy or a moralism, the title would have been “The Teaching of the Apostles.” It would have been the Word became word. But because the gospel is the Word become flesh, the transition of the gospel from Jesus to them is by its very nature, “The Acts of the Apostles.” Because the gospel was a Deed in him, it became deeds in them. They interpreted the Deed in him and the deeds in themselves, and the result was not merely a revelation but a revolution. They turned that ancient “world upside down.”
But the tendency was then, and is now, to turn the gospel of the Word become flesh into a Word become word. So in the third century there appeared “A Teaching of the Twelve.” The “Acts” had become a “Teaching”—a dogma instead of a deed. This substitution of the creed for the deed has turned Christianity into something to be believed instead of something to be acted on.
I have come to believe that the excoriation of the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 was the most cleansing wind that ever blew through the pages of any Scripture. It blew away the chaff of outwardism and left the wheat—which was little. It was redemptive—very. Someone describing a religious conference said, “It was a very resolutionary conference,” but he meant “revolutionary”! Our conferences are resolutionary because they are based on verbal answers to verbal questions. So they are resolutionary and not revolutionary—the Word become word and not the Word become flesh. A little girl said, “I tell you, Dorothy, that the Bible does not end in Timothy, it ends in Revolutions.” It does. And the Acts of the Apostles was the opening chapter of that Revolution. It is a continuing world Revolution.
O God, our Father, we thank you for this Revolution. It is revolutionizing us from darkness to light, from defeat to victory, from our self-idolatry to bowing the knee to you. We thank you for your Son. In his name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The gospel within me is one continuing revolution.