Take a second, look at the people around you. You’re so different, right? There are Moms, Dads, Grandmas, Single people, Millennials, etc. But the truth is, you’re all alike.
This past weekend at Sunday School with the college ministry at my church we discussed Ephesians 2:11-22. This passage is all about unity in Christ as believers and how we are all one in Christ.
This topic may sound like a broken record, but every time I think I’ve been there, read that about a passage in the Bible, the Lord completely rocks my world by presenting a completely different message through said passage.
Here it is – Presidents Day 2017, perhaps a day in which we may look back in the distant future and say it was one of the most divisive times in our country.
Democrat, Republican, Immigrant, Man, Woman, Black, White: these are all descriptions of which we identify and categories that bring division to our country and world.
Paul, who wrote Ephesians, contradicts all divisive labels. In Eph. 2:14-16 Paul says, “For He is our peace, who made both groups one, and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In His Flesh, He did away with the law of the commandments in regulations, so that He might create in Himself one new man from two, resulting in peace. He did this so that He might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross and put the hostility to death by it.”
Did you catch that? Through His son, Jesus, and His body on the cross, all barriers are broken.
As the lost world continues to drive it into our minds that we are all different and no one of us are alike, the Lord reminds us time and time again that we are one flesh as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Hostility and division have been put to death by the Lord’s reconciliation and peace work.
Verses 19-22 continue, “So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is being fitted together in Him and is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.”
What stood out to me in this passage of Scripture is how, as individual Christians, all of our talk about who is acceptable as a race or not is completely squashed.
Paul basically said to the people of Ephesus, “Don’t you see? The Lord has taken our sinful and divisive nature and made us one, to fit into one temple, and belong to and dwell in one spirit with Christ Jesus as our cornerstone.”
All other arguments fall short. We are one in Christ, and to effectively share His Gospel, we must see all whom we encounter as simply lost or as a brother or sister in Christ. It should be our goal to win their souls to our side of eternity rather than prove who does or does not deserve certain liberties here on Earth.
I encourage you to read this passage of Scripture to gather your own interpretation and then act on it. The time to act is now. It’s never too early to share the Gospel with someone who is lost.