Week 52 Sunday
Week 52 Sunday
“Amid All These Things”
John 17:10, 15-18; Acts 26:28-29; Philippians 4:11-13
If I were to choose a verse that would sum up what I have been trying to say during this study quest, it would be “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us” (Rom. 8:37 Weymouth). This statement combines an intense realism with an amazing assertion of victorious optimism. I say realism, for there is no blinking to the difficulties confronting such living. Look at the context. This is not moony, lotus-eating that says all is well and there are no problems; this is an open-eyed frankness that says, “Yes, I see the difficulties that come from distress, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger of the sword, from death, from life, from things present, from the future—and yet—and yet, amid all these things we are more than conquerors.” It takes in all the facts and yet asserts the central fact of victory.
Note that word amid. The test of any system is not what it does with the spiritual life but with the material. “All these things”—what is the system’s relationship with things? Does its spirituality include the material? That is the test. The Vedantist saying is “Beyond all these things”; the Muslim saying is “Accommodation to all things”; the Buddhist saying is “Disillusionment with all these things”; the ordinary Hindu saying is “Maya (illusion) of all these things”; the Communist saying is “Through all these things”; the materialist saying is “By all these things.”
The Christian saying is “Amid all these things.” That word amid depicts relationship to, and yet not identification with, all these things. It shows realistic contact, and yet inward transcendence. And that is exactly the relationship we need. We must not blink at “these things,” nor must we be blinded by them. For while we are dependent every moment on matter—the spiritual life must function through matter or fail to function at all—nevertheless “life is more than food” (Luke 12:23).
O Christ, make me more than conqueror amid all these things. May I know how to be at once at home in the world and yet not at home—as you were. Amen.
Week 52 Monday
“Conquerors”
2 Corinthians 6:4-10; Ephesians 6:13-20
Our battle is embodied, so the victory must be embodied. Our spirituality must be shown in relationship to material things or fail to be spirituality. That person is more spiritual who is spiritual through matter than the one who tries to be spiritual apart from matter. So “amid all these things” (Rom. 8:37 Weymouth), we must be conquerors.
But how can we be conquerors when so many of our social problems have not yet been solved, and we cannot solve them personally? We can acknowledge that the full victory is not here, but that it is here as far as we are concerned, for our faces and our powers are set in the direction of solutions and dedicated to that end.
In the meantime, we can start in motion against every evil a counter-good. When evils came upon Jesus, he did not dodge them, or bear them; he started a counter-good. Through his crucifixion, he started the counter-good of redemption. When evil came upon him, he loosed forces for the very destruction of that evil. When hate becomes bitter against us, we can start the counter-good of reconciling love. If poverty is our lot, we can start the counter-good of a regal spirit amid rags. If death takes our loved ones, we can start the counter-good of a deathless joy and hope amid it all. We thus help to conquer death in ourselves and the world.
If we live amid turmoil and clash, we can start the counter-good of a peaceful mind, an unperturbed calm. If we live in an unwelcoming world, we can start the counter-good of community spirit. “Why, these Christians love each other even before they are acquainted,” complained an early enemy of Christianity. They had started the counter-good of class-transcending, reconciling love. Every evil that comes upon Christians can thus make them produce a counter-offensive of victorious love.
O Christ, you turn our hearts to the mighty offensive. Help us this day in every situation to whisper to ourselves and you, “More than conquerors.” Amen.
Week 52 Tuesday
“More”
Matthew 5:45-47; Luke 11:10-13; Philemon 16-17
“We are more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37). The word more stands out in this passage with peculiar force: “more than conquerors.” That word is a window that lets us see into the inexhaustible nature of our resources and the unlimited development before us. It is the more that really counts. It is this that turns the tide toward victory. This more or plus is characteristic of the gospel. It allows us to emerge beyond the ordinary level in goodness, in achievement, in joy, in radiant living. It is that which gives “survival value” to the Christian. In the struggle of life in lower nature, it is the extra ounce of strength, the extra power of endurance that makes the fit animal survive when the others fall out, beaten in the struggle.
In this higher struggle, it is this extra power that Christians have at our disposal that keeps us from breaking when everything is breaking around us. It keeps us hopeful amid hopelessness, radiant amid the shadows, morally able amid surrounding moral collapse. In the race of life, the extra resources that Christians find in Christ make us moral winners. Since these extra resources were at their disposal, Jesus expected his followers to do “more.” “What more are you doing than others?” (Matt. 5:47). Jesus expected them to do more because they had more.
The first testimony I ever gave in public after conversion was this: “There is only one thing better than religion, and that is more religion, and I want more.” One touch, and my soul was afire for more. That inward passion for more should be an eternal thing. Not dissatisfied, but forever unsatisfied! And because this inward cry for more is met by God’s offer of a perpetual “more,” there is no limit to what the Christian might be and do. Professor William James says, “The potentialities of development in human souls are unfathomable.”* They are, if one is in contact with unfathomable Resources.
O Christ of limitless love, take away the limitations from my love. Put me under the spell of the “more.” Amen.
* The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1936), 285.
Week 52 Wednesday
Perpetual Parentage
John 15:5; Galatians 5:22-23; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5
Remember the statement of William Ernest Hocking, that “the work of religion is a perpetual parentage. . . . All the arts of common life owe their present status and vitality to some sojourn within the historic body of religion; there is little that we call culture which was not at some time a purely religious function.”*
Henry P. Van Deusen says:
Christianity has borne one after another of the arts—not only music and painting and sculpture and drama and architecture, but also dancing, legislation, science, philosophy, moral control. Then, as they attained maturity and sufficient strength to exist independently, religion has sent them forth to continue their development as secular enterprises, often not without the struggle and hard feeling so characteristic of adolescence’s break from home. Hospitals, schools, colleges, institutions for the unfortunate and the outcast, general philanthropy—all had their birth within the life of the church.**
These and many other things, such as prison reforms, abolition of slavery, improved conditions of labor, movements for world peace, were the result of that perpetual parentage characteristic of Christianity. A spiritual fecundity is within the gospel of Christ.
And now victorious living is under a new test. Has it enough power to give birth to a new social order? This is the demand for parentage that is now laid on religion. If it can show a spiritual fecundity here, it will become the mother of a new world. And we who are launching out into victorious living must be so alive that new movements, new initiatives, new impulses, new lives shall follow as a manifestation of the spirit of perpetual parentage within us. We are more than conquerors because we not only conquer in our own battle; we also bring forth movements that help other people to conquer. More than conquerors because conqueror-producing.
O Christ, may your power produce in me today some life-giving movement, however small. Amen.
* The Meaning of God in Human Experience (New Haven: Yale Press, 1912), 23, 14, 13.
** God in These Times (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935), 145.
Week 52 Thursday
“More Than Conquerors”
2 Corinthians 9:15; Ephesians 6:13; Philippians 3:6-7; Revelation 21:1
It would have been adequate if, in his Letter to the Romans, Paul had said that we are conquerors through him that loved us, but he put in the added emphasis, “more than conquerors.” Exaggeration? No, plain statement of fact.
It is interesting to see how language had to bear a new weight of meaning with the coming of Jesus into the world. It had been adequate to express human meanings, but now it was called on to express divine-human meanings. The divine was breaking through into the human; and language, called on to express that fact, sometimes broke down. The early Christians had to lay hold of superlatives, coin new words, and often it all became so overwhelming that “the Holy Spirit disorganized their grammar.” The rules couldn’t bear the pressure of this new, glorious, effervescent life. The new wine had to be put, not only into the new wineskins of new organizations and institutions but also into the new wineskins of a new vocabulary. For here was a fresh, new set of facts.
“More than conquerors”—what does it mean? Some African tribes believe that when a man conquers another, the strength of the conquered passes into the conqueror. That is what happens spiritually. When you conquer an evil through the power of Christ, the strength of that conquered evil passes into you in two ways. First, it establishes the habit of victory within you and makes the next battle easier. This means that the more you conquer, the more you can conquer. Goodness becomes habituated and hence the normal attitude toward life. The grooves are cut within our nerve tissues so that life flows naturally in the direction of victory. Second, by the conquering you are able to pass on to others that victory. But in passing it on, it becomes more fixed within yourself. So in a double way we are more than conquerors.
O Christ, we thank you that we are bursting into freedom—freedom from fear of failure and from the fear of future contingencies. For you are getting into our blood and into our nerve tissue. Amen.
Week 52 Friday
The Basis of Being More Than Conquerors
Matthew 22:37; Ephesians 3:14-19; Colossians 2:10; 1 John 5:4-5
The basis of this conquest of life by Life must be examined to see if it is sound and sure. For this purpose, 2 Timothy 1:7 becomes luminous: “For the Spirit which God has given us is not a spirit of cowardice, but one of power and of love and of sound judgment” (Weymouth).
Here is the basis of the overcoming; the whole organism is strengthened. The personality made up of will, emotion, and mind is renewed. There is “power” for the will, “love” for the emotion, and “sound judgment” for the mind. By the renewing of the total life, the spirit of fear is cast out.
You cannot get rid of fear by bidding the fears depart. They will not depart. They will depart only as they are cast out by some positive influence that possesses you, thereby making these fears absurd. This positive influence is the spirit of power, of love, and of sound judgment, in other words, the Spirit of Christ working in the depths of your being.
The reasons for fear are rooted in one or more of these: (1) A sense of being weak in the will, a feeling that we are morally inadequate for life. Life is too much for us. It demands more than we have to give. (2) A lack of love. We do not love people, so we are afraid of them; we do not love God supremely, so we are uncomfortable at the thought of God; we do not love God’s will, so we are afraid of what God will ask us to do; we do not love life, so we are afraid of it. (3) We feel helpless and confused, for our minds lack a sound, unified judgment. We have no key in our hands that fits the problem of human living, so we fear because of intellectual inadequacy.
But now the whole being is brought under a unified control—the Spirit of Christ. That means power for the will, love for the emotions, and sound judgment for the mind. It is the answer of Life to inadequate life.
O Christ, I can overcome anything outside of me if you possess everything inside of me. Take it all. Amen.
Week 52 Saturday
The Basis of Our Certainty
Isaiah 12:2, 3; Luke 1:1-4; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 John 3:24
I trust that there has grown up a deep spiritual certainty as we have gone on day after day in our quest. We must now say a final word about that certainty and its basis. In Hebrews 2:3-4 we read,
This, after having first of all been announced by the Lord Himself, had its truth made sure to us by those who heard Him, while God corroborated their testimony by . . . gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed in accordance with His own will. (Weymouth)
There are three things in this passage: (1) the historic—“announced by the Lord himself”; (2) the experimental—“corroborated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit”; (3) the collective witness—“made sure to us by those who heard.” It is interesting that the Christian church has fastened on one or the other of these factors as the basis of certainty, as the place of authority in Christianity. Many Protestants have said the place of authority is the infallible Bible—the historical. Other Protestants have made the basis of authority an infallible Christian experience—the experimental. Roman Catholics have made the infallible church the basis of authority—the collective witness.
Each of these taken by itself is inadequate. But all of them coming together contribute to the final certainty. The basis of authority is at the junction of the three. (1) The historical—in Jesus, a norm has been established in history that becomes the touchstone of all life. We have seen Life revealed in a life. (2) But that Life passes from the historical into the experimental—the Jesus of history becomes the Christ of experience. We do not merely remember Christ, we realize him. (3) But, alone, that personal experience may be a hallucination. It must be corroborated by the collective witness. It must be tried on a widespread scale and corroborated. It is. People of all ages and all climes give a unanimity of witness that it works.
The coming together of the historical, the experimental, and the collective witness, all saying the same thing, gives a certainty far beyond the certainty coming out of one taken alone. The highest certainty the human mind is capable of knowing on any subject is ours!
O Christ, I rejoice in this certainty. Help me to live worthy of it. Amen.