There are no Jews, Greeks, etc. Part 8

We who believe in Him shall be justified by our faith. (Rom 1:17) Because we are all His people, those of us who believe in Him, He calls us righteous. (Isaiah 10:24) Whether Jewish, Gentile, men, women, slave, free, we are all righteous. That is a difficult concept for those of us who want to believe we’ve cornered the market on the truth. In fact, we know very little of the truth. We don’t realize our Jewish heritage, because the Son of God was Jewish and followed Jewish customs, redesigning them to make His point, but nonetheless the customs had their origins in being a Jew. And Paul in Gal 4:26 exhorts all of us not to forget our heritage, because God’s chosen people were these, before He opened the floodgates and let everyone who called upon Him be called His child.

Because we are His children, because we are called to righteousness, God expects us to act accordingly. We need to show reverence toward God (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim 3:15) and submission and brotherhood toward each other. (Rom 16:16) Because once we are in the church, His church, we are truly on Mount Zion, in the living city of the living God. (Heb 12:22,23) and praise God for this city. For in its pristine state, not the carnal one we so often are blindsided by, but in the state God intends it to exist, the church has no politics and there is a purity of a bride being presented to a groom on their wedding day, full of hope and excitement and the passions and joys of love. He has given us His Name. (Eph. 3:15) He calls us to be His sheep. (Ezek 34:15, John 10:16) just as the sheep know the master’s voice, in Him we know His voice. One voice made up of many, we are made up of different laborers (1 Cor 3:9), different nations (Joel 3:2). “We are bound together for an habitat of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). By God’s Spirit, we are held together as His building, His family, His daughter (Ps 45:13), the bride of His only begotten (Rev 21:2). We belong to His household (Eph 2:19) and we are His inheritance (Ps 20:9; Is 19:25). We are His people when we walk in Him. (Gal 6:16) Because we are all these things, we who are many are one. And He blesses us when we realize it is His kingdom that is important, when we “seek first His kingdom”. (Matt 6:33) How do we enter? This is the tricky part: we need to let go all our prejudices, repent, and understand what lies ahead and not be caught up in the wiles of time and temptations thrown at us from satan. None of us have a special discount card. And He blesses us when we come to the collective realization that it is all His anyway. (Matt 6:33) And because it is His first when we not only acknowledge it, but come to seek Him first, His kingdom, and what it is truly made of, the treasures, the beauties therein then we can understand what it means to walk in Him. Then and only then. And when we walk in Him, letting go of idols, particularly in our worship, is not so difficult, as it was for the rich young ruler. (Matt 19:24) and it is easy to repent and realize that our days on this earth are truly numbered. None of us are guaranteed the next second, so that to seek Him and to find Him that is more precious because it is the only secure thing that can be held onto.

There are no jews,no Greeks, etc.

One thing is for sure, and this is spoken of in Romans 16:17. We are warned about accepting the teachings of those who would cause divisions in the church, or causing divisions ourselves through our pettiness and selfishness and saying “I feel better if we do it this way or that way”. We are warned about that by God through Paul, because God knows that people in the world do that. People in the world will argue about which is their seat in a theater and whether they should be allowed to go first at the traffic sign. People in the world argue about what should come first the music or the sermon. That’s why there are books and books of doxology written about how to run a church service, all because some ecumenical council has decided this is so. Is it wrong? Not necessarily. But is it the most beneficial? Not necessarily. What God desires is that we all come together as one body and that we all realize that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God but because of His power, we are justified by faith in Him. Only Jesus can save us, not rules, not regulations, but the faith that Christ is the Word incarnate, the Word made flesh, coming down to earth to show us God and show us the way so that through his blood we may be reconciled to God. We cannot continue in our present condition. If we are going to allow God to work in us, we must die to ourselves and be buried with Christ in baptism, as Romans 5 and 6 both describe so beautifully. And then there will be a new creation, one no longer under the law of sin but under the law of the Spirit. The belief we now have is that God is in control always. All are called to be His children if they believe, that includes men, women, American, African, South American, Central American, European, and every other country anyone can think of. We must respect each other and our differences, our talents. We must agape one another, we must be passionate and compassionate toward one another because our brother Christ is. Above all we must not revel in our differences but pronounce that is what makes us the same, because God can use any one of us and because through His creation we are what we are and He loves who we are. Once we revel in our differences we want to display those differences as a counterpoint to being called Christ’s siblings. Once we pronounce that we are who we are we proclaim identity with Christ and put him on humbly. We must realize that we are all in this together. Jew, Greek, man, woman, slave, free. And we must act as though we are truly citizens of His world, not our own little patch of it.

There are No Jews, No Greeks, etc. Part 6

No one will argue that worshipping Him is important. No one will deny that we must seek to go by His Word. Where the lines of communication come down is which part of His Word holds more weight to God. I’ll tell you again, I don’t know. Only God knows. Since I like a sure thing and don’t like taking too many risks, and my desire is to be sure that I treat Him as God and the One in charge, I think the safest and surest way is to adopt the principle of doing what the entirety of God’s Word says and what Jesus taught and if there is nothing, no word, no example of his pleasure or displeasure, nothing, then God really doesn’t give His seal of approval or stamp of condemnation and allows us to pursue our own free will. As long as it doesn’t preoccupy us away from Him. But what we as His people must realize that the style of worship of God in the first century was different from worship in 500 B.C. was different from worship in the 18th century and the 20th century. Simply because cultures change. People change. And whether we believe it is a bad word or not, evolution, or microevolution, within all cultural races has occurred. But one thing has remained the same: God never changes. His desires for us, His Word, His promises are still the same whether we are in the first century church or the 21st century church. Pleasing Him is not that hard if we keep in mind His principles are never changing. And neither is His love.

There are no Jews, no Greeks, etc. Part 6

He considers us His bride (Song of Solomon 6:10), the salt of the earth that better not lose it’s flavor. (Matt 5:13) And finally, He welcomes us as His people who wait for others of His people to also come to Him. (Phil2:25; 2 Tim2:3; 2 Tim 4:7) Above all, His people are not only in the Old Testament. While there were holy people among the Jews and at one time the designation of the Jews was His holy people, He has invited gentiles as well to the wedding feast. He has thrown out those who misappropriate His vineyard for their own gain and brought in new tenants and He has called others and me like me His church, His temple, His holy people along with the remnant that were Jewish and believed in the Messiah. And this bothers some folks. Because the first question is that I hear is that people want to know who is going to heaven. I’ll tell you, only God knows that, and has written about that through His Word, Jesus. Only He knows who is His guest. I know the appropriate dress, and He has told me that if I accept His promise and offer that I can come to the banquet. But is that all there is?