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Lenten Devotional

March 30, 2019

All Day

Here there is not Greek and Jew

Colossians 3:11

Put Off
Cultural Snobbery

Paul wrote this letter to combat a growing movement within the church which wanted to elevate the Jewish custom and Jewish identity and place these things above the freedom and new identity we have in Christ. In this response, Paul teaches the church that in Christ there is not Greek and Jew.

As we consider our own prejudices, it’s worth remembering that we come from different nations and different races for a reason – and that these differences were a part of God’s plan for mankind from the beginning. God’s very first command to man is: “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28) 

He reaffirms this command with Noah and his children after the flood, saying, “But you, be fruitful and multiply: spread out over the earth and multiply on it.” (Genesis 9:7) His children did just that, they spread out in every direction and became the different peoples and nations. When the people of Babylon refused this command, God dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:8)

We were never meant to bunch up. God wanted some of us to live by the sea, some in the mountains, some on the plains, and some on the islands. We were supposed to eat different foods, sing different songs, tell different stories, and to be different peoples – and to do it all for the glory of God. And what God established in the beginning will be to his glory in the end. Even after this earth passes away, and the new earth and new Jerusalem come down – the nations are there: The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it… They will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. (Revelation 21:24,26) 

God wanted diversity in this world, so that when he redeemed mankind there would be an endless variation of how his Son would be glorified. With our many backgrounds at IPC, we are blessed to experience this diversity a little earlier than most!

For this reason, we can each celebrate who we are and where we are from, so long as we first elevate Christ. The world sees this differently, they see a struggle of nation against nation and, like those men in Babylon, they long to solve it with man-made political and economic unity, but our struggle is not against flesh and blood. (Ephesians 6:12)  Our struggle−mine certainly−is with another kind of prejudice: favoring the hollow thinking of this modern age over the timeless truth of the Word of God.

If there has been any progress in this world, it is solely through the grace of God and we can praise him for it. We are not the moral superiors of our ancestors in the faith. And so, as we read the clear instructions God has put in place for his church here in this letter and elsewhere, let us be careful not to say, “Yes, but those commands were for a different church, a different time, a different people. They don’t apply to us.” What an easy way to elevate ourselves and our own earthly thinking rather than elevating Christ!

Prayer: Father, we recognize that whoever we are, wherever we are from, our identity in Christ is the one worth having. Help us to imitate the thinking of Christ, not this present age, for your glory.  Amen.

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