Profile - Bible College IV – The Exodus

When the hymn concluded and it was time for me to stand and speak I froze. It was as if someone had applied glue to my chair. I was afraid to stand and afraid not to stand. What was I going to say to all those people? What was I going to say to the administration and faculty? 

The two seniors who had approached me in the dorm were in the front row, I was a number of rows back of them. One of them turned to look at me, then he began to stand, I assume to cover for the scared kid who didn’t know what to do. 

Without a conscious decision on my part I found myself on my feet, Bible open to John 13:34 – 35, asking those assembled to read along with me. 

I didn’t speak long, for less than 5 minutes. It went like this:

The fact that Jesus gave us this commandment, to love one another as He loves us, means that He expects us to keep it. But we can’t keep it, not in and of ourselves. Only Christ living in us and through us can keep this commandment. Why we have trouble enough loving people of our own race, but Christ expects us to love pink people, and purple people, and green people, and red, black, and yellow people – He has called us to love all people. But we can’t do it – only Christ can do it living within us and through us.

When I sat down, the student who sat to my left, who was from South Africa, looked at me with a stunned expression and said, “Oh, wow.”

I didn’t understand the import of the “Oh, wow.” He was older than me and he was always congenial to me, and I don’t think his “Oh, wow” was a criticism but rather a realization that the kid sitting next to him had perhaps just gotten himself into trouble. The kid was too naive to know what he had just done.

The kid thought that he had just given a faithful representation of an element of John 13:34-35, a faithful representation of why we need Christ living in us and through us. The kid was only passing on to others what he was learning from the writings of Chambers, Murray, Tozer, Nee, and Bonhoeffer.  The kid was locked into Galatians 2:20. The kid didn’t realize that he was on his way out. 

Did I mention that the school was segregated?