One
Scripture that is giving me great encouragement as I consider this description of
the royalty around God’s throne is this: “But
you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own
possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.”[2] This morning I began
considering what each of these phrases means for our understanding of who we
are as the children of God. Here are some thoughts about what it means that we
are “a chosen race”.
God’s
children on earth are a chosen race of people. The world suggests that
there are many races. The evolutionary view of races categorized them in terms
of their place along the evolutionary time-scale. This led to terrible
treatment of the aboriginals of Australia, the Blacks of the Africas and
Americas, and the Jews of the world under Hitler’s hateful eyes.[3]
The church
rose up out of the conflict between the Jewish race seeing itself as superior
to the Gentile peoples of every other race known to man. There were conflicts
between the Jews and the Samaritans because the Jews believed their heritage
was purer and superior to the Samaritans who had a mixed-heritage.
When Jesus created
the church, he did away with all the earthly ideas of race, and ethnicity, and
heritage, and brought his people together into a new kingdom, with a new
identity. After the apostle Paul reminded Gentile believers of where they used
to be in relation to the nation of Israel, he gave a beautiful description of
how all believers belong together as this chosen race of God.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our
peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing
wall of hostility 15 by
abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might
create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,
16 and might reconcile
us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.[4]
Because of
race issues, and differences in heritage, tradition, culture, and experience,
all the Gentile believers had “once”
been “far off” from whatever God was
doing through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. BUT, there is a huge
difference now that these people had been “brought
near by the blood of Christ”.
However, Jesus
did not shed his blood so that he could open the door for Gentile people to
become Jewish proselytes, or Jewish converts. There were already provisions for
that under the law, and Gentile people had often converted over to the Jewish
way of life even as still happens to this day.
Jesus had
something bigger and better in mind than adding Gentiles to the Jewish race, or
Jewish people-group. He had a plan, “that
he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace”.
Jesus’ solution to the animosity between Jews and Gentiles was not to add one
side to the other. His solution was to take people out of every race, every people
group that could be identified in any way at any time, including the
distinctive conflicts between Jews and Gentiles, and make this “one new man” who would replace the
other two, who would erase all the distinctions of the other two, and create a
totally new people, what Peter would call, “a
chosen race”.
I expect there
will be more thoughts about this tomorrow. Today it was enough to see how determined
God is to convince his children of how special and precious we are to him. The book
of Revelation makes clear that the world will not understand the unique status
of God’s chosen race of people he calls his church.
However, the
church has no more excuse for thinking low, hopeless, discouraged thoughts
about ourselves, and our relationship to the “founder and perfecter of our faith”.[5] Among other things, the twenty-four elders around God’s throne
assure us that we are fully and adequately represented in the Most Holy Place
of God as his chosen race of beloved children.[6]
From
my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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