Discussion Guide
Discussion Guide
E. Stanley Jones wrote fifty-two weeks of daily devotionals on John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh.” From his lifetime as a missionary in India and working with people of many religions, and every class and walk of life, he explored the difference between Christianity (God reaching down to us) and other religions (humans reaching up to God).
Week One: If Christianity is “God reaching down to us,” how is God revealed today? To the world? To you? Where do you find God? The record of God’s works in our world has been preserved in the Holy Bible. Why does Jones say that God cannot be perfectly revealed in a book? Why is God appearing in human form a better revelation?
Week Two: How does philosophy or moralism direct you to God? God created us with brains, with minds that can seek answers, that can study and learn truths. Why is it not enough to search and find God with our intelligence? Why did God find it necessary to send a Son to teach us?
Week Three: God’s love shone out brightly in Jesus’ life. Remember the old saying, “Your actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying”? God’s principles, God’s law, God’s words from the prophets were only that: principles, law, words. How do we today discern God’s love? Do our principles, laws, books give us descriptions of God’s love? Is it enough? How is God’s love more perfectly found?
Week Four: God’s revelation was in the incarnation of Jesus. Why did God stop with one Incarnation? How would more than one Incarnation “blur” the picture of God for you? If God appeared in each generation, how would that affect how we understand God and God’s love?
Week Five: What do you want to know about God? What are some questions you would ask God? How is Jesus “the way” to God for you?
Week Six: Too often we are tempted to neglect our present world because our treasure lies in heaven. What responsibilities do we have for our physical world and body because of what Jesus did and taught? How can we bring the kingdom of God to earth?
Week Seven: Do science and Christianity point in two different directions? How? Does science deal with a part of the universe not touched by God? How can we find God in science? How can science and Christianity work together to find God?
Week Eight: Isn’t it exciting that Jones discovered how intricately Christian faith and morals are enmeshed in good practices in our everyday life! How do you apply your faith in your business life? In your family life? In your political life? What do we need to do to promote Christian morals in your community life?
Week Nine: “The Christian faith and the soul and body are not alien but affinities.” How, in your life, have you found this statement to be true? How has following Christ brought good things to you? How does following Christian morals improve one’s business success? Or does it?
Week Ten: “Conversion is the fulfillment of that basic urge toward wholeness, toward health, toward salvation.” Look at the eight steps of conversion listed in Tuesday’s devotional. Do you agree with Jones’s list? When have you taken any of these steps? Are they always consecutive? How can Christ help us through these steps?
Week Eleven: “Love is the supreme value in the Christian faith.” Love of God and love of neighbor. What responsibility do Christians have to love others? How can we show that love? What do Jones’s examples about the power of love do to direct your showing love to others?
Week Twelve: If the nature of life is love, as defined in the secular, scientific world, what does this say about Jesus’ teaching that God is love? Is love of others, all others, a part of your life? How can you increase this love? What rewards do you receive for your love of others?
Week Thirteen: Love comes in more than one form—as in eros and agape, two Greek words that describe two kinds of love. Describe how you use these forms of love in your life. Is one more appropriate in certain cases? How are you changed by the kind of love you practice?
Week Fourteen: The cross was a symbol of shame and suffering. Jesus’ death on the cross transformed that shame into sacrificial love and glory. How can we discern the “unseen cross on the heart of God”? How can we help show others this unseen cross?
Week Fifteen: Creation needs our help? Christians can become partners with God in completing the unfinished world. What part will you play? What hard tasks are there for you to accomplish?
Week Sixteen: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,” so Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19. So Jesus’ resurrection becomes available to us also. How can we claim this promise? What kind of evil do you experience in your life? How can it be overcome with God’s help?
Week Seventeen: Jesus is God’s sign in the world. The sign of love made manifest in a person. Do you look for signs? What kind of signs do you want to see? Can you be an eyewitness for Jesus?
Week Eighteen: Read again the four suggestions made by Gandhi on making Christianity more universal. Are these relevant today? How can you put them into practice? How can your deeds reveal Jesus?
Week Nineteen: Jesus’ first sermon, preached in the synagogue in Nazareth, set the tone for his ministry. He spoke from intimate knowledge of God. How can our preaching include such knowledge? How can our preachers learn to preach “with power”? What can we do to enable them? How can our witnessing become more powerful?
Week Twenty: Which of the “seven steps down” that Jesus took in becoming human can we take? If we identify with those in our world who do not know Jesus, what can we do to witness to them? How do we “put our arms around their neck”?
Week Twenty-One: The Sermon on the Mount is the largest collection of Jesus’ teachings. How can one be poor in spirit and receptive, ready to receive Jesus’ words? How can one be scientific and Christian at the same time?
Week Twenty-Two: Jesus’ words stress right relationships as well as correct “attitudes.” What do you learn this week that will help you in your personal relationships? In your business relationships? How do you learn to love with “love unlimited”? Can you find examples in Jesus’ life?
Week Twenty-Three: Why can one not serve God and mammon (wealth)? Is there something wrong with becoming rich? How can wealth affect you? What burdens come with owning a lot of money? What obligations do you have for your money, no matter how much you have? Does everyone have to tithe?
Week Twenty-Four: Where do you find reality? Is it only in the physical world we inhabit? How hard is it to focus on the “higher set” of reality? What benefits does looking on the higher set of reality bring? Have you observed a healing—physical, emotional, mental—when someone is prayed for? What effect can depression, lack of hope in the future have on a person’s physical health? What would Jesus do to help that person?
Week Twenty-Five: “Your creed is what you believe in enough to act upon.” Doing or believing—which is more important for your spiritual life? Can you separate them? Jesus often directed people he had contact with to take some action—pick up your bed and walk, go and do likewise, go and do not sin again. How do your actions reflect your beliefs?
Week Twenty-Six: Is Jesus contagious? Are we to follow as part of the “continuing incarnation” of God? Since God’s last word is not the cross but Resurrection, we have a living example to follow. Where are you in following Jesus? How can you become contagious with Christianity?
Week Twenty-Seven: Reread the eight elements in the Divine Impact—presented in Wednesday’s devotional. Jones found these elements described in the first chapter of Acts. How can they be instructive to us in our Christian journey? How does it help to name the steps of Jesus’ Divine Impact on the world? What can we learn about Jesus that will help our faith?
Week Twenty-Eight: What kind of divisions do you see in today’s Christian community? Lay and clergy? Women and men? Race against race? Rich and poor? Young and old? Are any of these evident in your congregation? What can you do to heal these divisions? How did the early Christians find answers to these divisions?
Week Twenty-Nine: The early Christians were excited about Christ. They found that the people they preached the good news to were excited too and wanted to hear more. What excitement do you find in your worship? In your testifying? In your witnessing? How can we recover that excitement? Look for it today, not in the past or future.
Week Thirty: Race relations loomed large in early Christian life. The Jews saw themselves as God’s chosen people and thought anyone had to become a Jew before becoming Christian. The Samaritans and Gentiles were despised and avoided as much as possible. When the Holy Spirit came to these very people, how did the Christians react? What are we doing today to foster good race relations, to be sure that everyone is welcome in our congregation? We must be intentional in our welcome.
Week Thirty-One: “Jesus Christ is in this place, anything can happen here.” Does your church have this sign posted in its halls? Do you believe this sentence? What could happen in a congregation that believed it? How can you develop the stamina to do God’s work every day, in every way?
Week Thirty-Two: An antichrist bypasses God for its own ends. What are some antichrists in today’s world? Jones suggests existentialism; human wisdom; principles instead of person; criticism, not conversion. How can you protect against being influenced by such antichrists?
Week Thirty-Three: Christian authority rests in three spheres: the Bible, Christian experience, and the church, according to Jones. What correctives do we use to discover truth in these three spheres? How do we find our “fruits of the Spirit”? Are we loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind? If not, how do we achieve these fruits of the Spirit?
Week Thirty-Four: “Preaching is for the few. Witnessing is open to all.” Where do you give your witness for Jesus? One doesn’t have to be a preacher to witness. Who has given their witness to you? List some possible venues for witnessing in your life.
Week Thirty-Five: Jones discusses ten marks of a Christian church. How does your church measure up to these marks? Are the laity of your church strong? How can you encourage them? Is your congregation a caring congregation? How can your spirituality function materially and socially?
Week Thirty-Six: What are the barriers that the Christian Ashrams [retreats] “put down” in order to form koinonia? Are these barriers present in your church? What can you do to “put them down”?
Week Thirty-Seven: Has Christianity broken with Christ? How has the Christian faith become the Word become word instead of the Word become flesh? What can you do to restore Christ to Christianity?
Week Thirty-Eight: How can Christians use modern education, psychiatry, religious education, and counseling to witness to Jesus? What is the weakness of these directives when they don’t use Jesus as their starting point? How can you find truth in your life?
Week Thirty-Nine: Where do we find the Universal-in-the-Particular today? Is it something we can do in our lives? Where have you seen it in others? What examples can you give of persons who have demonstrated the Universal-in-the Particular.
Week Forty: God wants all of us, body and soul, physically and spiritually. How do we get around giving ourselves to God by spiritualizing our gifts? What can you think of that is spiritualized in your worship life? In your community service activities? In your witnessing for Jesus?
Week Forty-One: Are you “holding to crusts,” old beliefs, dead Bibles, dead doctrines, instead of looking for gifts from the living Christ? God’s “Yesness” is always available if we ask and stand ready to receive. How can we learn to let go of our crusts and open our hands, arms, and hearts to receive all God’s good gifts?
Week Forty-Two: Who would have thought of going to the Beatitudes to improve one’s physical health? Who have you known that suffered from some illness caused by a bad attitude? How can you help someone whose outlook on life is totally soured and has developed physical ailments because of this? Will the Beatitudes help?
Week Forty-Three: Lay witnessing is a powerful tool for God. And we all can be empowered for witnessing to our faith. What can you do to enhance this part of your Christian life? Some churches offer training to lay speakers/witnesses. Take advantage of the training; hone your skills. God is calling you.
Week Forty-Four: “Neither command, nor need, nor money, nor anything is a motive for missions.” Only what God has done could give motive for our mission and our evangelism. Have you found God’s motive for your evangelism? What does it take to be in mission for God?
Week Forty-Five: God’s new world order (the kingdom of God on earth) would touch all life: the economic, the social and political, the physical, the moral and spiritual, and the collective. How can we aid the coming of this new world order? List some specific ways you can help bring God’s kingdom to earth “as it is in heaven.”
Week Forty-Six: “The church is not a divine institution, but it is a divine-human institution.” How can the church become the body of Christ? Does being the body of Christ imply suffering as Jesus suffered? What kind of suffering is the church called on to do?
Week Forty-Seven: What do you gain by surrendering your self to God? Who do you know that has surrendered his or her self to God? Are they happier? More successful? Less anxious about daily activities? Calmer? Surrendering yourself to God can bring these qualities. How can it be done?
Week Forty-Eight: Discuss the objections to Jesus raised by “many of the best brains in India”: Jesus’ virgin birth, the Transfiguration, Jesus got angry, he called the Pharisees hypocrites, he used a racial epithet and called the Canaanite woman a “dog,” he used force on the people [in cleansing the Temple], he condemned a fig tree, he called for his followers to “sell [their] mantle and buy” a sword, and Jesus exhibited a fear of death in his prayer on Gethsemane. Look closer at these stories. What is really happening?
Week Forty-Nine: Look at Hebrews 1:1-4 and the “seven vital things in the Incarnation” described there: God spoke through a Son; Jesus was made heir to the universe; God created “all orders of existence” through Jesus; Jesus has “the stamp of God’s very being”; Jesus “sustains the universe by his word of power”; Jesus has “brought about the purgation of sins,” is our Savior; and then he “took his seat at the right hand of Majesty on high.” What a glorious description of Jesus! What difference can these things make in your life?
Week Fifty: Do you agree that Jesus embodies the “fundamental tendencies of the universe”? Look at them, one by one, and see if you agree: (1) “the greatest of all must be the servant of all”; (2) you must “love your neighbor as you love yourself”; (3) self-surrender to Something Higher; (4) the need to belong; (5) the need to forgive and be forgiven; (6) the tendency toward a new birth, a new beginning; (7) the tendency to make character the basis of leadership and survival; and (8) the tendency to transfer the basis of authority from the without to the within—from compulsion to impulsion.
Week Fifty-One: Jones calls Jesus the “Concrete Christ,” illustrating how Jesus used his actions as his teaching method. How does this description give us guidance for living out our Christianity? What resources are available to us to help us in our Christian life?
Week Fifty-Two: In this week, Jones presents what Jesus means to him personally: redemption, resources, guidance, adequacy, education, health, character, kingdom of God, eternal life, a divine-human fellowship in the church, and self-surrender. What does Jesus mean to you? What effect has Jesus had on your life? If someone observed your day-to-day life, would your Christianity be evident?