life. In each it is the cry for life.
O Christ, you are creative Life moving upon lesser life and awakening it. Make me into a new person, with a new goal and a new power to move toward that goal. Amen.
Week 7 Friday
Do Conversions Conform to One Pattern?
Matthew 18:3; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11
This has bothered a great many souls, for they have seen a type of conversion that greatly moves them, and they are dissatisfied because they cannot find that pattern in their own lives. This is a mistake. No two conversions are exactly alike, for no two persons are exactly alike, and no two persons come up under exactly the same circumstances. After God made you, God broke the pattern. You are unique. Your conversion will therefore be unique.
Nevertheless, conversions do fall into two great categories—the gradual and the sudden—with shades between. After questioning groups of Christian workers in many lands, I find the usual proportion is about 60 percent gradual and 40 percent sudden.
The gradual types usually come out of the home, where from childhood they are taught to know and love Christ. They cannot tell where they crossed the line, for they have seen no line. It has always been so. They have opened like a flower to the sun. That they do belong to Christ they are sure. When they began to belong to him they are not sure. But their lives are different from the life around them. They belong to the converted.
Then there are others—and I am among them—to whom conversion came all of a sudden. I had come up through a religious childhood with constant attendance at Sunday school and church, but like some vaccinations, it didn’t “take.” Then there came the Great Change. Nothing after that was the same, except perhaps my name. My wandering planet had swung itself into a new orbit, forever caught by a Love that would not let it go.
Which of these is the valid type? Either one may be. It is not the phenomena that surround conversion, but the facts that underlie it and the fruits that come from it make it valid.
O Christ, who calls to the child in its innocence and the older ones in their iniquities, we all come to you. To whom else can we go, for you have the words of eternal life? So we come and find you satisfying, because you are saving. Amen.
Week 7 Saturday
The Central Thing in Conversion
Matthew 11:29-30; 23:10; John 13:13-14; Romans 14:4
Psychology tells us that there is a master sentiment* around which life is organized. It may fasten itself to one of the instinctive urges: self, sex, or the herd. If the master sentiment is fastened on the self-urge, then life is egotistical and self-centered. Or it may fasten itself upon the sex-urge, and the whole of life becomes sex-centered. Or it may fasten itself upon the herd, and life may be lived out under the dominance of what people will say and do; fear of the herd will be the deciding factor. There may be a mixture of all three, but in the end the master sentiment decides and dominates.
Modern psychology tells us that in curing a patient of inward conflict or complex it is necessary to have a patient transfer sentiment from oneself to someone outside, usually to the psychoanalyst. This is called transference. The patient is thus loosed from problems by the expulsive power of a new affection.
Now, the central thing in conversion is just that—transference. Conversion involves breaking with this sin, that habit, this relationship, that attitude; yet all these things are the negative side. The real thing that happens is the transference of the master sentiment from self to Christ. It is the conversion of the master sentiment. Life is no longer self-centric, sex-centric, or herd-centric, but Christ-centric. He is the master of the master sentiment.
Jesus quietly said to men long ago, “Follow me”—not a set of doctrines, however true; or a rite or ceremony, however helpful; or an organization, however beneficial—but “Follow me.” The disciples did it. The transference was made. A strange new word came to their lips, “Savior,” for he was saving them from their complexes, their gloom, their despair, their sins—yes, from their very selves. Conversion was a fact, made so by the conversion of the master sentiment.
O Christ, you have our master sentiment—and as you have it you have us. We dare not give our love wholly to anyone save the Divine. Take it and us. Amen.
*In psychology, sentiment means more than an emotional response. It is an experience of both sensation and ideas. See Howard Crosby Warren, Elements of Human Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 218-19.
Week 8 Sunday
Week 8 Sunday
What Is the Basis of Assurance?
Matthew 24:35; Romans 10:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 1 John 2:14
You will ask what is the basis of assurance by which you will know that you are accepted. God assures us from a number of directions, which makes it far stronger than if it were from one direction alone.
First, God assures us through the Word. Nothing could be more explicit than that Christ received sinners. People did not wait until they were good enough to come to him. They came as they were, and they were made good in the very coming. That seems a commonplace to us today, but it scandalized the religious then and it does now. A modern Jewish thinker criticizes Jesus at this point, “Jesus was too familiar with God and too familiar with sinners.”
In the second century, Celsus, debating with Origen, says:
Those who invite people to other solemnities make the following proclamation: “He that hath clean hands and sensible speech may come near, he who is pure from all stain, conscious of no evil in his soul and living a just and honorable life may approach.” But hear what persons these Christians invite: “Anyone who is a sinner,” they say, “or foolish, or simpleminded”—in short, any unfortunate will be accepted by the kingdom of God! And what do they mean by “a sinner”? By sinner is meant an unjust person, a thief, a burglar, a sacrilegious person, a poisoner, a robber of corpses. Why, if you wanted a band of robbers, these are the very people you would invite.*
Origen’s answer was explicit: “Though we call those whom a robber chieftain would call, we call them for a different purpose. We call them to bind up their wounds with our doctrines, to heal the festering wounds of their souls with the wholesome medicine of faith, nor do we say God calls only sinners’’ (ibid.).
We glory in what Celsus conceived to be our shame. The first to enter paradise from the Christian movement was not Peter or James, but a thief on a cross—the forerunner of the crooked made straight.
O Christ, you did receive sinners then, and you will not reject me now. I may have dragged my soul through hell, but you will wash it—you wash it even now. I thank you. Amen.
* Origen, Contra Celsum, book III.59-60.
Week 8 Monday
The Assurance of the Word
1 Peter 1:23-25; 1 John 3:19-24; 5:11-12
We saw yesterday that the Word assures us that we are accepted. There are promises there that could not be more explicit: “Come to me, . . . and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28 CEB). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9 CEB). Does it seem out of date thus to quote passages from Scripture to heal present need? To some it may seem so. But those of us who have been
