Week 4—Tuesday Ephesians 5:20-21
Ephesians 5:20-21
THE REAL CHRISTIAN
THE MOST UNIVERSALIZED PERSON
We saw yesterday that the fixed ultimate becomes the beginning point of progress. Until something is fixed, you can never have the progressive. Uncertainty as to the goal means uncertainty as to the way.
So when you become broad and liberal on essentials in the name of universality, you do not become universal; you become hazy and mixed and call it universality. You exchange clarity for fog. In an institution training men and women to go out for Christian service in foreign lands, the question of Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” was explained by one of the teachers as being “an oriental metaphor, for there are many ways.” And the head of the institution said: “Jesus has many names—Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, Confucius.” This is the moral and spiritual fog into which we get when we lose the Norm. The emphasis of the institution was that the representative should go out and love people. But you cannot love people unless you love truth and reality.
Besides, we do not know what love is unless we see it in him who was love. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). “By this we know love”—we know love when we see it in the cross and that cross inspires us to lay down our lives for one another. When we exchange the Word become flesh for the Word become word, it becomes a very sentimental word and fades under realities.
You are not universal when you are less Christian. For the real Christian is the most universalized person on earth. Loving Christ, a Christian loves everybody, for Christians love everybody in Christ. When it was said of the early Christians: “Behold how those Christians love one another,” it was only partly true. They did not only love one another, they also loved their enemies and they loved the unlovely. When we lose Love, we will lose love. And the more you know Love the more you will know love. Without the Word become flesh you will soon have nothing but the Word become word.
O Love that will not let us go into the vague and marginal, save us from the verbal and make us vital with a love that is your Love. Let us kindle the flame of our love at the flame of the Love that became flesh. For we know Love only as we see it in you. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I am less Christian I am less universal; when I am more Christian I am more universal.