Playing the Whole Deck

Part 2 of The Three Passions Series
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They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
—Acts 2:42

The central quality of a disciple of any kind is devotion. Someone who is devoted to chess, for example, pours his time, thought, and resources into the game. A true disciple of chess actually plays it, not just follows the exploits of the grand masters.

The first group of Christ’s disciples is described as devoted. Yes, they were devoted to some things (the focus of later posts), but it is important that we understand what is meant by devotion in the first place. Since we are ultimately talking about a devotion to Jesus, it is his definition that most interests us. This is how he characterizes it:

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
—Matthew 6:24

For Jesus, true devotion is single and categorical; it can be offered only to one thing. This runs counter to the way we play it out. Think of devotion as a deck of cards. We tend to deal out our “devotions” to a number of players. My wife gets a few cards; my kids get a few; my job gets some; maybe my church gets a few; my hobby gets some too. We pass out the devotion cards in proportions according to the value we assign the recipients. But Jesus’s perspective raises a question: Once I’ve rationed out my cards which person has the deck? None of them. For Jesus, devotion is the whole deck, which is why it can’t be given to two masters. If you cut the deck (by even one card) it is no longer devotion.

This is a radical position, especially for us who live daily with divided hearts. To be frank, there is something freaky about a demand for total devotion. (We’ve all seen fanaticism run amok.) But aside from the issues of misapplied devotion, there is another question inherent in Jesus’s perspective. If I hand the whole deck over to God, thus fulfilling the greatest commandment, how can I fulfill the second greatest commandment, to love my neighbor as myself? There aren’t any cards left over.

The Apostle John answers this question for us (whew). He writes, This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands (1Jn 5:2). According to John, the way we love our neighbors is not by giving them a few devotion cards, but by handing the whole deck over the God. In fact, if I do hand any cards to them, I am not fulfilling the second commandment or the first!

All this may seem a game of words, but for anybody contemplating what it means to be a disciple of Christ, this is essential stuff. However, as we read in Acts 2:42, this “whole deck” devotion is not some abstract or fuzzy feeling; it is expressed in three important and definite ways. These are the focus of upcoming posts.

But next we’re going to take a look at what the first group of followers experienced when they were together, an experience that was both the fruit of and motivation for their commitment to play the whole deck.

Explore posts in the same categories: Chûrch, The 3 Passions