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If
you open the door to the Friend who knocks and invite him into the
home of your heart, and if I do the same, then you and I will be of
one heart and soul with that Friend. That is the only unity there is
that has any meaning. That Friend is not going to barge in; he will
not impose himself. He is a gentleman, but a certain kind of
gentleman, for he is the Christ or the Anointed One of God. And so
he is Lord and Savior. Even so we do not have to pursue him, which
would make sense. But it is not a matter of reason but of grace. He
pursues us, but with restraint. He
knocks
at
the door of our hearts. We need only to open the door.
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This
is the glorious good news of the gospel. It is not by our initiative
or will or effort or good works, but by God’s grace. It is a
matter of accepting the free gift that God gives. This is what makes
the Christian faith different from all other world religions.
Whether one is a Moslem or a Buddhist or a Shintoist or a Hindu, his
religion is a matter of
effort.
He
is to diligently seek after God or the gods. Such religions have no
concept of a God who so loves humanity that, like “the Hound
of Heaven,” he is in constant pursuit of man, driven by his
magnanimous philanthropy.
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Even
we Christians, however, have difficulty in seeing that what God
offers is “by grace and not by works.” In our pride we
have a problem with a free gift, with no strings attached. We do not
have to be good enough or smart enough or right enough in order to
claim it. We only need to accept it. This quickens our pride. We
want to do something to deserve it or to be worthy of it. And so we
try harder to be good or to be right. We struggle for a peace that
never seems to come. And we grow tired of struggling. Many
Christians are defeated and discouraged. Like the Moslem or the
Hindu, they have to carry their religion as a burden rather than
their religion carry them. Could it be that we who claim to be
Christians have never done what is so simple and so basic to the
Christian faith,
accept
the free gift?
How
many of us have opened the door and invited Jesus Christ into our
hearts?
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This
blindness to the grace of God may account for our factions and
divisions. We falsely assume that unity is achieved through
intellectual understanding or through doctrinal agreement. We draw
lines and withdraw fellowship over something we call
soundness,
but
this has to do with our opinions and interpretations more than with
one’s relationship to Jesus Christ. Since we have not learned
to find oneness in the free gift of God’s grace we seek it in
all sorts of doctrinal systems. This may create a cold and
legalistic conformity but never the unity of the Spirit.
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Jesus
Christ is not simply the Friend but the transforming Friend. He
changes our attitude toward things and people, and gives us not only
a way of life but life itself. When we open the door of our heart
and invite him into our inmost soul, life will be different. We will
manifest a love that unites that which is divided. If Jesus is in
our
hearts
and if he is in
their
hearts,
we cannot help but be one together in him, and there is no other
unity that is worthy of the name.
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To
appropriate the gift of Jesus Christ, as promised in Rev. 3:20, we
may have to use our imagination. How else can we really open the
door and allow Jesus to enter but by imagining him as with us in
everyday life?
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The
business man can think of Jesus as sitting with him in his office
and sharing in those crucial decisions that every business man has
to make, and that imaginary presence will make the man aware of
loving righteousness, doing justly, and walking humbly before God.
The lonely widow can imagine Jesus at her side listening when there
is no one else to talk to. We can see him at our side as we drive to
work. We can sense his presence when we are too tired and
discouraged even to pray. We know that he understands and that he is
slow to condemn. Even when we have spoken harshly to a loved one or
been short of temper we can imagine him standing near and softly
saying something like, “What I see in you is the potential for
a good and great soul.”
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And
what begins with imagination ends in faith, for we will soon believe
that the Friend is really with us. We do not drive alone; we are not
at home alone; we do not go to bed alone; we do not face this cruel
and troubled world alone. “I will be with you always, even
unto the end of the age” was a promise made first to his
special envoys, the apostles, but it is true for all who believe in
him. He is with us! Is this not the heart of the Christian faith?
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It
is also the great lost secret to Christian unity. Give me two people
who have invited Jesus into their hearts and I will give you two
people who are united in Christ. Questions about baptism, church
membership, and erroneous views that may be held are important
matters that are to be dealt with within a loving fellowship of
mutual acceptance. If we wait until all such issues are settled to
everyone’s satisfaction, then unity will always elude us.
Those disciples who responded to Jesus’ call “Follow me”
were far from perfect in their understanding of things, but it was
nonetheless their response to that call that made them followers of
Christ (in spite of all their hangups!) and united with each other.
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We
don’t have to understand everything about a gift in order to
receive it, and we may even have misconceptions about it. I would
not refuse the gift of a new color TV set because I do not
understand how the thing works, and its performance would not be
affected by any erroneous views I might hold about video science.
Just so one may know little of the theology about Christ, or he
might even have a mistaken theology about him (such as supposing him
to be a “created” being?), and still accept the gift
that is offered with the knock at the door. And the gift will still
“work” in spite of imperfections of understanding. The
question then is whether we know Jesus Christ as the transforming
Friend, not how much we know
about
him.
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To
walk with Christ as Enoch walked with God and to be a friend of
Christ as Abraham was a friend of God is what makes us one together
because that is what makes us Christians. We are not one in Christ
simply because we are members of the same congregation or because we
do the same things when we “worship” or because we’ve
been baptized the same way. Oneness in Christ goes deeper than that.
Those who have invited Jesus to make his home in their hearts and
who reflect his living presence in their lives are the ones who are
united in Christ.
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Our
troubled homes and troubled churches indicate that with all our
religion we have failed to come to terms with the Friend who stands
at the door and knocks. In their agonizing search for “something”
our folk move from one congregation to another. Divorces plague our
ministers, elders, and deacons as well as their children. Most every
church has a string of broken homes and heartbreaking tragedies. We
live in luxury and yet we are poor. We have an abundance of
everything but where is our joyous faith?
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The
answer is tragically simple. We are a people who have not accepted
the free gift. We must stop trying so hard and come to see that
being “right” about everything is a hopeless and
fruitless effort.
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The
answer is in the knock at the door. The Friend who waits to enter
will take all our burdens upon himself. His forgiving love will give
us a glorious peace and an unspeakable joy. When we open the door
and allow him to rule our hearts and lives we will have that victory
that overcomes the world. If we will drop to our knees and do what
we have probably never done in all our years as a Christian,
invite
Jesus Christ into our hearts,
the
gift of the presence of the living Christ will light up our lives
and give us an assurance that can come no other way. And once that
grace floods our soul we will be at peace with all others who have
heard the knock and opened the door.
—the
Editor