College Union

BY: E. STANLEY JONES

(Excerpts from E. Stanley Jones devotional classic, Mastery, weeks 7 and 8.)

            (Masculine pronouns have been changed from the original)

 

            This mastery which we have just been considering, namely, the mastery of looking to God to do everything instead of standing on our own two feet and playing our part, leads to another mastery, akin to it: the mastery of special privilege before God and others.

            In this epoch-making event of the coming of the Holy Spirit who were the recipients – a special group with special privilege and standing before God and hence before others? No, there were 120 in that group who received the “promise of the Father.” Suppose it had been the Twelve only who received the Holy Spirit…it would have changed the very nature of the Christian Faith. It would have introduced into the Christian faith a group with special privileges and special standing before God and hence before others…when the cipher 0 was put to the 12, making it 120 instead of the 12, that was the most important cipher in human history. It meant that before God no one was higher or lower than any one else, and the highest gift of God, the Holy Spirit, was open to a person as a person.

            It showed that God wasn’t dealing with apostles but with persons. The Holy Spirit was given not to a priest, a prophet, or a pope, but to a person. There is no more important event in history than just that. It is a seed event – the future of humanity is in the womb of that event…Before God we are equal, therefore before each other we must be equal.

 

Women received the Holy Spirit on the same basis as men. “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women…and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14; 2:4). The all included the women.

 

That unobtrusive little fact is one of the most important and explosive facts ever introduced into life. There is enough dynamite in it to blow our existing institutions and attitudes into bits. For this simple fact meant that a woman as a woman received God’s highest and best gift – the gift of the Holy Spirit. If this highest gift was open to women, then what about the lesser gifts of life – are they open to women too?

 

The fact of women receiving the Holy Spirit on the same basis as men made Paul lay down this basic principle: “There is neither Jew nor Greek (race distinction), there is neither slave nor free (social distinction), there is neither male nor female (sex distinction); for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).

 

Peter took this attitude immediately when he saw women had received the gift as the men:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,

That I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

And your sons and daughters shall prophesy…

Yea, and on my menservants an my maidservants in those days

I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy (Acts 2:17-18).

Categories: Virtues & Choices
Tags: