Week 35—Monday Acts 17:24-27
Acts 17:24-27
NEXT GREAT SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
WILL COME THROUGH THE LAITY
We are examining the Christian church as seen in the New Testament. It was a lay church. The word laos in Greek, from which the word “laity” comes, means literally, “the chosen people of God”—the laity were “the chosen people of God,” not only by language derivation but by divine appointment and intention. And this conception and practice held there till the Council of Nicea when the church authorities made it into a church of bishops and clergy, and laypeople were relegated to the margin; being a layperson was a concession to human frailty, tolerated as second-class. This was perhaps the greatest tragedy that ever struck the church. Revival will only come when the New Testament emphasis is rediscovered. The next great spiritual awakening will come through the laity. The ministers will be the guides and spiritualizers of an essentially lay movement.
Second, the New Testament church had the marks of the cross upon it. It was established by a lay group which had suffered for its faith—“those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen.” Their faith had cost them something, so it was worth something. It was precious as gold tried in the fire. If the lay group is to be the center again of the Christian movement it will again cost them something to be Christian. Then and then only it will be worth something.
Third, the church at Antioch was founded by people who made it interracial. The Jewish laymen from Jerusalem preached only to the Jews, but laymen from Cyrene and Cyprus, with larger racial contacts and sympathies, preached the Word among the Greeks. So the church was made up of Jews and Greeks. And blacks. “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger”—literally “the black,” the word from which we get the word “Negro.” Simeon was not on the margin, tolerated—he was a “prophet” or “teacher” and laid his hands on Barnabas and Paul. So Barnabas and Paul were commissioned or ordained by a black man to preach the gospel to white Europe (Acts 13:1).
O Father, help me to be a good member of a fellowship which knows no boundaries of race and class. Help me to see beyond the extraneous to the real persons. And help me to treat people as though they were what we expect them to be. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to a Kingdom that knows no frontiers of race and class. I will demonstrate that today.