Victorious Living. E. Stanley Jones
the church. Yes, I know them all. But nevertheless, the church is the mother of my spirit, and we love our mothers in spite of weakness and wrinkles. My word, then, to you is that, as you begin this new life you begin it as a member of the church family.
O Christ, who read our deepest need and who gathered us together into a family in which you are the elder brother and God is our Father, we thank you that you invite us to take our place in the family circle. We do. Amen.
Week 10 Monday
Is Christendom Living Victoriously?
Acts 19:1-2, 6, 20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-4
It would seem that we might now go straight from the beginning of the new life to the social order and talk about our relationships to it. But we cannot, not yet.
For to do that would mean that we have passed by the problem of victorious living within the ranks of the Christians themselves, within the ranks of the converted and the semiconverted—and shall I add the unconverted—inside the church. We have all three. Even the most enthusiastic would scarcely claim that the characteristic of the rank and file of the churches is victorious living. Here and there one sees it, but the chief thing that strikes me in looking at Christendom is the lack of it. A strange sadness, which we mistake for solemnity, has come over us. What is its root?
I asked a congregation in India to express this desire for a new life, and many had done so. The pastor was translating my prayer in which I said, “O God, we do not know what these people need, but you know.” He translated, “O God, you know what these people need, and so do we!” He could not let that pass! Many pastors in the quietness of their hearts would have to say, “O God, you know what I need, and so do I!” We need victorious living.
Spiritually we seem to have turned gray. The vivacity, the sparkle, the spontaneity, the joy, the radiancy that should characterize people called Christians seem to have faded out. Moreover, there seems a lack of moral dynamic, a paralysis that makes us limp and helpless in the face of rampant wrong.
We protest, but seem to have little power to change. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, needed so much among Christians today as the discovery of the secret of victorious living. If we can find that, then anything can happen. Without that nothing will happen, except staleness, tastelessness, and bitter disappointment with religion.
O Christ, are you putting your finger on our need? Then help us not to rest until we know this secret, and use it in our living. Amen.
Week 10 Tuesday
The Spirit of Nonexpectancy
Matthew 8:10; 9:2; Mark 4:40; Luke 18:8
Yesterday we said that the chief characteristic of modern Christianity is not victorious living. This would not be so serious if we expected something else; if we were pushing upon the gates of abundant life to have them open. But many have settled down to a spirit of nonexpectancy. They do not expect anything beyond spiritually muddling through. This is serious.
I have watched what the awful power of fatalism can do when it falls upon a civilization. Have I not seen these lovely people of the East paralyzed at the center by a strange fatalism that makes them turn over their hands in helpless resignation? Across the world that danger is at our doors. It has slowly crept into many a heart, and we are resigned to moral and spiritual defeat—we take it for granted, in fact. Doctor Elwood Worcester of Boston, who has labored for years in clinics for people troubled in body and soul, can say these astonishing words: “Most Christians do not expect their religion to do them any great or immediate good.” When one tells them that this condition of moral and spiritual defeat need not last for a single hour, that we can find victory and adequacy and buoyancy in living, they look at you as one who announces strange doctrine. For they have become naturalized in defeat.
John Macmurray quotes Mathias Alexander, who tells the story of a little girl who was permanently lopsided and who was brought to him for treatment. After working with her for some time, he managed to get her to stand quite straight. Then he asked her to walk across to her mother. She walked perfectly straight for the first time in her life and then, bursting into tears, threw herself into her mother’s arms, crying, “Oh, Mummy, I’m all crooked.”* We too think of being spiritually straight and upstanding and adequate as something strange and unnatural.
O Christ, speak to our dead desires and bid them rise. We know we cannot live unless, first of all, we desire to live. We do desire to live—to live fully and adequately. Your pressure awakens us. Our eyes open. Amen.
* Reason and Emotion (Amherst, N.Y.: 1999), 86.
Week 10 Wednesday
Is Forgiveness the Best We Can Expect?
Romans 6:1-7
Many Christians do not expect anything beyond repeated forgiveness for constantly repeated sins. They do not expect victory over sins. Thus in Christianity the most beautiful thing, namely the forgiving grace of God, is turned into the most baneful, for it actually turns out to be something that encourages evil. What a cross that must be on the heart of God! And what a travesty it is on our Christian faith!
This expectancy of constant forgiveness for constantly repeated sin is weakening to character, and is one reason for so much weak character within the Christian church. Under this idea, life turns flabby.
The Hindus believe that they will have to suffer for their sins—the law of karma will exact the last jot of retribution. There is no forgiveness. Samuel Evans Stokes Jr., a famous American missionary who turned Hindu, told me that one reason he did so was that he wanted his “children to be brought up under karma, rather than under redemption.” I could see his point if redemption meant constant forgiveness for constantly repeated sins. And if I had to choose between a cheap, easy forgiveness on the one hand, and the law of karma on the other hand, I should choose the law of karma.
But I do not have to make that choice, for a cheap, easy forgiveness does not represent the gospel. The gospel does offer forgiveness for sins, but along with it, and as a part of it, the gospel offers power over the sins forgiven. Forgiveness and power are the indissolvable parts of the grace of God. We cannot take one without the other. If we should try to take the forgiveness without the power, it would mean that moral weakness would remain; and if we should try to take the power without the forgiveness, it would mean that moral guilt would remain. God does not give one without the other. We must take both or neither.
O Christ, we thank you for redemption. This redemption that comes out of the cross we have twisted and have made into a further cross for you. Forgive us and give us power to do so no more. Power—power, we need. Amen.
Week 10 Thursday
What Does the Gospel Offer?
Mark 5:15; Romans 7:24-25; 8:1-2; 1 John 1:7-10
There are two dangers at this point. One is to make the standard too low, and the other is to make it too high. In either case it paralyzes us. One demands no change, and the other demands such a change that we simply feel helpless before it and give up the struggle. We must avoid this double danger.
It is interesting that both modern psychology and the gospel unite in being pessimistic about humanity. They both say that we are less perfect than we might be, and that there are great possibilities for idealistic progress, which we universally reject. Freud says, “Psychoanalysis here confirms what the pious were wont to say—that we are miserable sinners.”*
While both psychology and the gospel are pessimistic about humanity, both are amazingly optimistic as well. They unite in saying that this divided state must not continue, humanity and human ideals must come together if human happiness is to result. Sin is no necessary part of our makeup. It is an intrusion. It is no more necessary to give spice to life than sand in the eye is necessary for sight.
The first thing, then, to get hold of is this: the gospel offers freedom and release from every single sin. There is no compromise at that point, for compromise would be deadly! It sweeps the horizon and says, “Sin will have no power over you, because you aren’t under Law but under grace” (Rom.