Which is more durable, power based on force, or power based on spiritual coherence?
Fourth Day: A Mental Transformation
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.—Rom. 12:1, 2.
In the first century the Christians were a new social group, confronting the social order of the Roman Empire with a new religious faith, a revolutionary hope, and a powerful impulse of fraternity. Those who had come out of pagan society still felt the pull of its loose pleasures and moral maxims, and of its idolatry. Paul here challenges them to submit fully to the social assimilation of the new group. It involved an intellectual renewal, a new spiritual orientation, which must have been searching and painful. It involved the loss of many social pleasures, of business profit and civic honor, and it might at any time mean banishment, torture, and death. The altar symbol of sacrifice might become a scarlet reality. Yet see with what triumphant joy and assurance Paul speaks.
If a student should dedicate himself to the creation of a Christian social order today, would it still require an intellectual renewing?
Would it cramp him or enlarge him?
Fifth Day: The Distinctive Contribution of Christ
There was the true light, even the light which [pg 188] lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.—John 1:9-14, 17.
Here is the tragedy of the Gospel story, seen from a long perspective and stated in terms of Greek philosophy. The Light which lighteth every man, the Logos through whom God had created the kosmos, had come to this world in human form, and been rejected. But some had received him, and these had received a new life through him, which made them children of God. They had discovered in him a new kind of spiritual splendor, characterized by “grace and truth.” Even Moses had contributed only law to humanity; Christ was identified with grace and truth.
How would you paraphrase the statements of John to express the attitude of nineteen centuries to Christ?