About 2000 years before Jesus was born God took Abraham and Sarah and chose them to be the parents of a Nation and a culture that he would set aside to reveal himself to, and for about 1500 of those 2000 years that Nation would be trained up in the Jewish religion.God invested his love and wisdom and truth and power and discipline into them. It was as if a nation were kidnapped and put in custody for 2000 years as a test case for humanity under the caring government of a true and just...
About 2000 years before Jesus was born God took Abraham and Sarah and chose them to be the parents of a Nation and a culture that he would set aside to reveal himself to, and for about 1500 of those 2000 years that Nation would be trained up in the Jewish religion.
God invested his love and wisdom and truth and power and discipline into them. It was as if a nation were kidnapped and put in custody for 2000 years as a test case for humanity under the caring government of a true and just God.
They represented, in their good and bad responses and reactions to God’s investment in them, how the rest of humanity in its entirety would respond and react to a God who would claim them all in due time by joining his life to ours in the person of Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. He wants to reveal himself to all of us and invest his love and wisdom and truth and power and Fatherly discipline in all of us. Humanity in total has always been the object of God’s passionate love, and when the Jewish Christ/Messiah was born into the earth he brought the fulness of God into all of humanity, not just from that time and into the future, but also redemptively all the way back to Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham. After Jesus died on the cross he took the keys of hell and death in his resurrection and opened the gates of Heaven for all those people that existed before Christ’s death.
The Scriptures are clear; We have always been in his sights, but unfortunately he is not always in ours.
The apostle Paul grew up in the Jewish religion as a true authority in the Way of the Jewish faith. He was then taken by Christ to become the true authority to the rest of humanity in the new Way of the mystery of Christ/Messiah.
Paul understood the profound differences between us all and yet the stark sameness of us all. He speaks to us about himself, who once thought as a child and then grew up to think as one who has come of age. As a very small child we all have the potential to become formed into whatever national and cultural and religious traditions and temperamental thinking it is that grows us.
Is it any wonder that as adults we all contend with each other about what is right and wrong concerning just about any aspect of our adult perceptions of spiritual reality and truth?
This is why Paul wrote to the Church in Rome which had Christians from every national and cultural and religious persuasion on earth and was able to say;
Romans 14:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.
Let us look at Paul’s journey of experiencing the almost humanly impossible pathway of getting everyone to agree with his understanding of the mystery of being One in Christ. After He had dramatically succeeded in converting non-Jews from all over Asia Minor and Greece into the mystery of Christ in us and us in him, through the Gospel, he determines to go to Jerusalem to persuade the Jews to believe in his revelation of God through Jesus Christ their Messiah.
ACTS CHAPTER 21 – THE ACCOUNT OF LUKE, THE FELLOW TRAVELLER OF PAUL
1.And so, after the tearful good-byes of the Ephesians, we were on a ship and on our way.
3. Cyprus came into view on our left but was soon out of sight as our ship kept on course for Syria, and eventually docked in the port of Tyre, to unload its cargo there. 4 After we located the Christian disciples there, we stayed with them for seven days. They repeatedly told Paul through the Spirit not to set foot in Jerusalem,
10 and after we had been there for a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.
11 He came to us, took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, The Holy Spirit says this: This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will tie up the man whose belt this is, and will hand him over to the Romans and the Greeks.
12 When we heard this, both we and the local people begged him not to go up to Jerusalem. 14 But because he could not be persuaded, we said no more, except, The Lord’s will be done.
17 When we arrived in Jerusalem, our Christian brothers welcomed us gladly.
18 The next day Paul went in with us to see James, and all the apostles were there.
19 When Paul had greeted them, he began to explain in detail what God had done among the non-Jews through his ministry.
20 When they heard this, they praised God, then straightaway said to him, but do you see how many thousands of Jews there are who have believed, and are still all ardent observers of the law?
21 They have been informed about you- that you teach all the Jews now living among the Gentiles to abandon Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs.
(They then proceeded to pressure Paul to act like a good Jew and Paul understood this, as he later explains in 1 Corinthians 9:19…I became as a Jew under the Law to the Jews and a Gentile without the Law to the non-Jews not under the Law in order that I may win them to Christ I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some) – Then they speak sternly to Paul …
23 So do what we tell you: We have four men here who have taken a religious vow;
24 take them and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses for them to have all your heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself live in conformity with the law.
27 When the seven days were almost over, some visiting Jews from the province of Asia who had seen him in the temple area stirred up the whole crowd and seized him,
28 shouting, Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our Jewish law, and this holy temple! Furthermore he has brought Greeks into the inner courts of the temple and made this holy place ritually unclean!
31 Violence broke out and while they were attempting to kill him, a report was sent up to the commanding Roman officer of the garrison that all Jerusalem was in uproar and confusion.
32 The commanding officer immediately took soldiers and centurions and ran down to the crowd and rescued Paul.
37 As Paul was being bundled by the soldiers into the barracks, he said in Greek to the commanding officer, May I have a word with you? The officer replied, Do you know Greek?
38 Then you’re not that Egyptian who started a rebellion and led the four thousand men of the Assassins into the wilderness some time ago?
39 Paul answered, no, I am a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city. Please allow me to speak to the Jewish people.
40 When the commanding officer had given him permission, Paul went and stood on the steps and gestured to the people with his hand. They had become silent, and when he addressed them in Hebrew, they kept all the more silent.
CHAPTER 22
1. My Brothers, listen to my defence that I now make to you.
3. I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated with strictness under your teacher Gamaliel according to the law of our ancestors, and was zealous for God just as all of you are today.
4. I persecuted this Way of Christ/Messiah even to the point of death, tying up both men and women and putting them in prison, 5 as both the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me because I received from them letters to the officials in Damascus, to bring Christian prisoners who were there back to Jerusalem to be punished.
6. as I journeyed and came near Damascus at about noon, suddenly a great light from heaven shone around me.
7. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ So I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’… (The story goes on to mention Paul being made blind and the disciple Ananias praying over him and him receiving the Holy Spirit and his sight being returned…)
17. “Now it happened, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance and saw Him, Jesus Messiah saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me.’
So I said, ‘Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You. And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
24. Then He said to me, ‘Depart now, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles (the non-Jews.) And they all listened to him until that was said, and then the Jewish men raised their voices and shouted, Away with this man from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live!
25 When they had bound him and stretched him out for the lash, Paul said to the Roman centurion standing nearby, Is it legal for you to lash a man who is a Roman citizen without a proper trial?
27 So the commanding officer of the Roman garrison was summonsed again, and asked Paul, Tell me, are you a Roman citizen? He replied, ‘Yes I am’.
30. He then brought Paul down and stood him before the Jewish religious council.
CHAPTER 23
Paul looked directly at the council and said, My Brothers, I have lived my life with a clear conscience before God to this day.
2 At that the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to punch him in the mouth.
3 Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Do you sit there judging me according to the law? In ordering me to be struck you are in violation of the law yourself.
4 Those standing near him said, Do you dare insult Gods high priest?
5 Paul replied, I did not realize, brothers, that he was the high priest, for I know what is written, ‘You must not speak evil about a ruler of your people’ – Sorry!
6 Then when Paul noticed that part of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, he shouted out in the council, Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead!
7 When he said this, an argument began between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided because the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body and things of the Spirit, and the Sadducees did not.
10 When the argument became so great that the Roman commanding officer feared they would tear Paul to pieces, he ordered the detachment to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks for his own safety.
11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said ‘Cheer up Paul, for just as you have testified about me here in Jerusalem, you will likewise testify about me in Rome’.
I can just imagine Paul trying to smile while thanking the Lord and thinking to himself; ’So this is as good as it gets!’ But deep down he knew it was destined to be better than this. Paul knew the greatness and goodness of Christ, and Paul never gave up.
That is why Paul was able to write;
Galatians 3:28 In Christ's family We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free or even male or female, but we are all the same; we are One in Christ Jesus.
No longer Jews or Greeks resolves the perplexity about racism, and no longer slaves or free resolves the perplexity about entitlement and privilege, and no longer male or female even resolves the perplexity about gender equivalence. And all the perceptions and the felt experiences of hurt and misunderstanding about all of these are resolved in our faith consciousness of being One in Christ - all humanity in harmony with God in Christ – the ultimate intention.
These grievous problems are not only a bewildering predicament of our human society throughout history, they are awkward unsolved puzzles that have weakened the church’s testimony of unity and justice and compassion to the world, especially when the Church has been given the very Spirit of wisdom and grace to model the answer everywhere – our Oneness in Christ.
Our humanity seems to be hardwired from an early stage in life to detect unfamiliar differences in people other than what we grew up with, and to be cautious about anything that falls too far away from under our tree, and that is not unusual. But with maturity and wise guidance and an openness of heart and mind we can learn to appreciate the practicality and harmony of the blending of our differences that reveal to us that we are really all very much the same in so many ways and indeed we have need of one another in those differences.
Paul wrote that very thing to the church in Corinth.
1Corinthians 12:12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.
God sees and appreciates those differences us in, which he himself planned for us to have, and to be expressed through his Spirit. He sees you just the same as everyone else. We see the differences and contend with each other even in the finest shades of differences of opinions or practice.
Jesus knows each one of us intimately, Spirit to spirit, human to human. He understands
the unique potential and aspirations we each have, and the misunderstandings and the hurts we have all suffered, and the suffering perhaps that we have caused to others.
So to repeat the last part of the Scripture I read before in Paul’s letter to the Romans about us seeing with understanding the enormous diversity the human traditions and personal histories and experiences of us all
Romans 14:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently…
A longstanding Caveat of discerning caution from Paul
Ephesians 4:13 until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with man-made methods and doctrines so clever they sound like the truth.
This revelation of Oneness together in Christ has to start somewhere.
I believe it starts with a revelation from the Holy Spirit for each one of us that God has made us One with himself through Jesus Christ. That has to come first. That truth needs to be grounded in the truth that each of us is deeply loved by Father God, each one loved as much as he loves his Son (John 17… You have loved them Father as you have loved me…).
This needs to be reinforced and sustained by the truth that each one of us is accepted fully as we are, along with our race and status and gender and shortcomings and limited understanding, and half formed opinions, and the not at all perfect teaching and formation of our thinking, by our institutionalised doctrines and practice and favourite television preachers.
Otherwise we are left with the fact that God sees us as One in Christ and we see one another as outsiders, the way Peter saw the Gentile Centurion Cornelius, and was reluctant to even enter the man’s house let alone present the Gospel to him. The Holy Spirit did the rest in very quick time (Acts 10).
I have seen some grand moves of the Spirit in my time, and my notion of the next move is that Holy Spirit would rain down and soften our hearts by his love, and give us ears to hear one another and eyes to see one another and hearts that feel for one another.
This flood of grace from Heaven could melt our hearts and bestow upon us a humble innocence that heals our souls. And then we might just get to take that healing power into a broken world.
This makes me feel like a little dot in a big picture and that’s okay, as long as Jesus is the big picture, because that makes a little dot feel big enough to be part of anything Jesus wants it to do.
