Week 33—Thursday Hebrews 12:1-3
Week 33—THURSDAY
THE PLACE OF AUTHORITY: AT THE JUNCTION WHERE
THE HISTORICAL BECOMES THE EXPERIMENTAL
AND IS CORROBORATED BY THE COLLECTIVE
We have been insisting on the fact of Christian experience. It is a fact—a corroborated fact among all races—I’ve found it so. I’ve heard the people of all languages speaking the same language—the language of a common experience. This is the corroborating witness of the church. So the individual does not stand alone in a sole and unique experience—one shares it with every real Christian of every age.
This impressive collective verification of individual experience seals the individual experience as true. It works whenever tried and is as well verified as any verified scientific fact.
So the threefold strands come together—the historical, the experimental, and the collective—and they verify the same thing. Where then is the place of authority in the Christian faith? It is at the junction where the historical becomes the experimental and is verified by the collective experience. That junction is the Place of Authority.
So the Christian faith does not rest on the historical alone, nor the experimental alone, nor the collective alone. Each one alone would be weak. But all coming together and witnessing to the same thing brings the highest certainty that the human being can know. It is a Threefold Cord that cannot be broken; all other authority compared to this is weak.
And this authority is the Word become flesh at all three stages—the historical is the Word become flesh, the experimental is the Word become flesh, and the collective is the Word become flesh. The place of authority is not an impersonal junction, for at that junction is “Jesus is Lord”—the Word become flesh. So he is the Word become flesh, verified by experiments in making the Word become flesh in personal and collective experience. So the place of authority is not in councils, or popes, or conventions—it is in the Person—the Word become flesh—and verified by persons in whom that Word has become flesh in experience.
O Lord Jesus, my Redeemer and my Authority, I rest in you, for you are the manifested God. I can let my full weight down knowing that I cannot and I will not be let down. And this blessed Authority is written within me—I want to obey it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am held by a threefold Cord which cannot be broken.