Week 7—Saturday Acts 4:8-12
Week 7—SATURDAY
IS THE CHRISTIAN WAY THE WAY?
We repeat—we do not apologize for working from Revelation down. Jesus is God’s authentic self-revelation. “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) “the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3, KJV). In Jesus we have the Key, the Master-Key that unlocks everything in the universe—God, persons, life, material, spiritual, individual, and the collective. So we work from God down to life. In Jesus’ Life we see life.
But what about this unfolding revelation that comes through science as it works its way through the facts to conclusions? Are these unfolding facts pointing us in a direction different from the Christian direction? Or are these two approaches coming out at the feet of Jesus Christ? The deepest conviction of my life is that if you go far enough with these two approaches you will come out at his feet; that life is rendering a verdict and that verdict is a Christian verdict.
In the Acts of the Apostles the Christian way is called “the Way.” “So that if he [Saul] found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:2). “When some were stubborn and disbelieved, speaking evil of the Way . . .” (Acts 19:9). “About that time there arose no little stir concerning the Way” (Acts 19:23). “According to the Way, which they call a sect . . .” (Acts 24:14). “But Felix, having a rather accurate knowledge of the Way . . .” (Acts 24:22). We usually make “the Way” the way of salvation. It is, but it doesn’t say so. It says “the Way”—unqualified. Is the Christian way the Way—the way to do everything? To think, to act, to be in every conceivable circumstance, for God and man, in the individual and the collective? Are these just two things in life—the Way and not the way? And is the Christian way always the Way and the unchristian way always not the way? And are there no exceptions? If that is true, then it is the truth of truths.
O Father, we ask that you will hold us steady as we come to our conclusions. We do not want to be in a paradise if it turns out to be a fool’s paradise. We want Reality and only Reality. For there is no refuge save in Reality. Guide us. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If the Christian Way is the Way, then it must be the Way for me in everything.