Week 49—Tuesday Colossians 1:12-14
Colossians 1:12-14
Week 49—TUESDAY
“A NOVEL WAY TO END A STRIKE?”
We come to the third item in the Incarnation. Third, “Through whom He created all orders of existence.” This verse is the basis of the preceding verse—Jesus Christ is the heir of all things because all things were made by him and for him. If so, then the touch of Christ is upon all creation, and everything is made in its inner structure to work in his way. And when it works in his way it works well, and when it works some other way it works its own destruction.
Here in Delhi where I am writing there was a strike on against a newspaper, lasting a year. It was settled by a Christian labor officer. When it was settled, the newspaper came out with this headline: “A Novel Way to Settle a Strike.” But it was not “novel.” The employers dismissed a man for rudeness and refused to reinstate him. The employees went on strike. The settlement: The offending employee would confess that he had done wrong, and the newspaper would forgive him and reinstate him. That settlement wasn’t “novel”—it was sense, inherent sense, because it was Christian. The hate, the bitterness, the stubbornness, the self-assertion—they were “novel” and got them nowhere—deadlocked. With the emphasis on the “dead “and on the “locked”—locked in death. But when you are in Jesus and take his way you are life-loosed. Life is free—free to live.
Sin is “novel,” goodness is natural. The truly Christian person is the truly natural person. That person is not living against the grain of the universe, but with it. Christians do not bark their shins on the system of things. They know their way about in a universe of this kind—they know how to live. I know exactly how I feel when I sin—I am orphaned, estranged, and everything within me cries, “This is not the way.” I also know exactly how I feel when I live the Christian way—I am universalized, at home. Everything within me cries, “This is the way!” His way is my way.
O Jesus, we have been so habituated to the unnaturalness of sin that we think it natural. We are afraid of your divine naturalness. Help us to see you as the supernaturally natural. And live by your joy and our joy will be full. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: On everything I have and am is this written: “Jesus Christ is the heir of this.”