Week 33—Friday Hebrews 13:20-21
Hebrews 13:20-21
FRUIT OF THE INNER LIFE NOT MAGICAL BUT MORAL
If the place of authority is the experimentally corroborated Word become flesh, then the center of our propagating of this gospel must be the Word become flesh in us. The center of the propagation is not a proposition—it is a Person, or persons, in whom the Word has become flesh. One of the parables speaks of the seed as “when anyone hears the word of the kingdom,” and then adds, “The good seed means the sons of the kingdom” (Matt. 13:19, 38). So “the Word of the Kingdom is “the sons of the kingdom”—the Word of the Kingdom made flesh. Propaganda must be through a Person, or persons.
This determines whether some methods are in line with the Christian faith and whether some have departed from it—the Word become flesh is in line, and the Word become word is a departure. Take these two accounts of what constitutes the outcome of the Holy Spirit within. One passage says: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17). Now note these “signs” of the believer in Christ. Not one of them is a moral quality embodied in the character and life of the believer—every one a magical power exerted apart from his character and life. If these had been the signs of a Christian, we would never have heard of Christianity—it would have died along with the wonder cults. People filled out this list, for all the translations say that the Gospel of Mark was lost after 16:8 and these verses are a second- or third-century attempt to fill it out. And when persons, unaided in inspiration, make out a list of qualities of a Christian, they almost invariably endow humans with magical rather than moral qualities—as here. It is the Word become magic rather than the Word become flesh. It tries to coerce the minds of people by signs and wonders instead of converting the minds of people by moral and spiritual living.
O Jesus my Lord, I thank you that your revelation was moral not magical—out of life, not imposed on life. We gaze at you and see not a desire to impress us but a desire to redeem us. Save us from twisting that revelation into our image, not yours. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I am always trying to impress people by my powers, it leaves me self-conscious.