Week 3—Thursday John 21:18-19
Week 3—THURSDAY
A PERSON TO BE FOLLOWED
We are pondering on “full of grace and truth.” We insisted yesterday that the order was right—first grace, then truth. A great many people think Jesus was a moralist imposing a moral code upon humanity—a code for which humanity is badly made. It is an impossible code which humanity, being what it is, cannot fulfill. But Jesus was not a moralist in that sense at all. He was a revealer of the nature of reality. First of God—he said if you want to know what God is like look at me. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” We see the Father in the face of the Son. God is like Jesus in character. Transfer every characteristic of character from Jesus to God, and you do not lower your estimate of God—you heighten it. For there is nothing higher for God or a person than to be Christlike. Jesus is God simplified, God approachable, God understandable, God lovable. When I say God, I think Jesus. And nothing higher can be thought or said! Jesus is the last word that can be said about God.
Then Jesus was a revealer of the laws which underlie the universe. He seldom used the imperative, almost never the subjunctive, almost entirely the indicative. “This is,” he said, “and you must come to terms with it, or get hurt.” When Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29). The scribes quoted authorities, secondhand teaching—Jesus spoke with authority, firsthand teaching. The term “with authority” could be translated “according to the nature of things.” Jesus revealed the nature of things. He was a revealer of the nature of Reality.
So the Christian faith is not a set of propositions to be accepted—it is a Person to be followed. That Person is manifest reality, so to follow Jesus is to follow Reality—manifested as the Word become flesh. So to follow Jesus is not assent to truths, but the acceptance of Truth, embodied in a Person and reembodied in my person.
O Jesus, when Truth walks up to me in you, my attitude is assent, not to that truth, but the acceptance of you in every portion of my life and with the consent of all my being. It is a life acceptance. Your Truth is warm, tender, and compelling. I follow—singing. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My code is now a Character, forever beyond me, forever beside me and within me.