Week 44—Tuesday 2 Corinthians 9:9-12
2 Corinthians 9:9-12
JOHN 3:16 AND 1 JOHN 3:16
Note the last command, “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). It is the greatest missionary verse. But great as it is, listen to this one: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, KJV). That verse is “our marching orders.” If God did that, we must do this. But we take this John 3:16 and forget this 1 John 3:16: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” But why do we remember the first and forget the second? The answer is simple: In the first we see what God did for us, and in the second we see what we ought to do for others—lay down our lives. We have no right to the first to make it our own unless we take the second to make that our own. The second is the first become flesh in us.
In the early church there were two breakings of bread—one, the bread of the Communion, and the other, the bread of the love feast. The first symbolized our sharing his broken body, the second symbolized the sharing of our bread with our brothers and sisters—Communion with God and communion with people. The last dropped out of church practice, the first remained. It was easier to accept what God did than to accept what we must do. This is a symptom of the whole tendency to make the Word become word instead of the Word become flesh.
That shift from the Word become flesh to the Word become word is the most disastrous and fatal shift within the Christian faith. Beside that shift all shifts are marginal—this is central. For if the Word doesn’t become flesh, it doesn’t become anything. It is a word.
Note this 1 John 3:16: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.” “By this we know love”—how? By description, by philosophizing, by moralizing? No: “that he laid down his life for us.” The Word of love became flesh. Only then could we know what love is. It is the Way. The only Way!
Blessed Savior, how could we know love except we had seen it in you, had seen it in your laying down your life for us? Only there at the cross do we know it. And what we see sets our hearts aflame to tell it to everybody, everywhere. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “He gives seed to the sower” and only to the sower. If I do not sow, I’ll have nothing to sow.