Week 10—Saturday Philippians 3:12-14
Philippians 3:12-14
“THE BASIC DIRECTION OF THE ORGANISM IS FORWARD”
“Man is made for conversion.” “Personality tends toward the state we call mental health, handicaps by way of acculturation notwithstanding. The basic direction of the organism is forward.” Here Dr. Albert C. Outler says two things about the human personality: it tends toward health and its basic direction is forward. This fits exactly with the statement that “man is made for conversion.”
For conversion is a change from sickness to health. The personality in sin is guilty and is unhealthy because of that guilt. So the guilty soul, and consequently the sick soul, tends toward, longs for health, longs for conversion—conversion back to health. So conversion is the fulfillment of that basic urge toward wholeness, toward health, toward salvation.
If the first tendency is toward health, the second tendency is “forward.” If we tend toward ill health and toward retrogression, this is unnatural. So sin is unnatural. Conversion is a movement “forward.” The soul gets on by a series of crises. The greatest of the crises is conversion, when the soul rises out of the unnatural ill health and retrogression of sin to the supernaturally natural goodness.
Take the case of a paramount chief in Africa. He had seven wives and could not be baptized because of it. We arranged, with his agreement, that he live with one wife and support the rest, so he was baptized on Easter. His tribe of 1,500,000 was about to go to war with another tribe in the Congo. As a token of reconciliation, the chief sent his best leopard skin to the chief of the other tribe by a missionary. Then he said to his own tribesmen, “If you go to war I will take off my crown and my chieftain robes and will be no longer your chief.” It brought peace. Conversion brought total health and a forward urge to his total life.
O Jesus Lord, we thank you for this urge within us toward “health” and toward the “forward.” We thank you for this “upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” this something that will not rest this side of being a changed person. We respond to that pull. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Sin is the backward look; goodness is the forward look.