Reconciling strangers
This week's verses are on Colossians 1:21-23:
Last week we talked about what Ezra did when confronted with the corrupting influences of people from enemy cultures. This week is what happens when we are those enemies. Paul, as usual, is talking about the gospel.
Before we begin to know about God, before we're Christians, before we allow ourselves to be changed by his love, we are exactly like those people who were scheming against Ezra. We have our own hidden agendas. We have our own cultural practices and idols. We have our own value systems and world view, and it doesn't always line up with what God wants.
In those days, maybe we looked down on religious people. Maybe we looked to things or people to define our value, or maybe we built our lives around a cause or a career. Maybe we just inherited the local morality of the culture we grew up in, or allowed ourselves to be carried away by the fashions of the age, and the manipulation that is always behind them.
The right thing for God to have done would have been what Ezra did: To tell us that we are not wanted, that we have no right to be in his presence, that we can never represent him, and that we are not part of his plan and never will be. His kingdom would be surrounded like the garden of Eden, with armed guards ready to strike us down if we tried to get too close to his paradise. If you make a habit of reading the Old Testament, there are a lot of times God says things very much like that.
We were strangers, and enemies, and did horrible things to meddle with the plan God had for his world, and yet something happened to change all of that. Jesus died and was reborn to reconcile us and present us as clean and holy and acceptable to God.
Imagine if Ezra had done that. Imagine you were one of those filthy, scheming liars who had tried to betray him to the Persians. What if someone like that decided he really did want to help out, and came to Ezra? If Ezra had handled it like God, he would have put his own son to death so that there could be a place at the table for this foreigner. It's such an extreme love that it's difficult to translate it into human terms.
Just as the people coming to Ezra were not his flesh and blood, we weren't God's people either after Adam and Eve did their thing. We were unwelcome strangers, particularly those of us who are not of Jewish heritage. But thanks to Jesus dying on the cross, there is a place for us. We are accepted as if we were flesh and blood, like we were adopted into the family, sat at Jesus' table.
Knowing about how much it cost to gain us access to God helps us to not be religious elitists. On the one hand, like we talked about last week, we have to be careful not to put ourselves in a position where we can be controlled by ungodly forces. But on the other hand, we're not to separate ourselves entirely from contact with non-Christians, like modern Pharisees. There's a difference between being careful and being an obnoxious snob.
Paul says we should remain strong, established, and firm in our faith, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. We're supposed to get to know people, and to live in a world that doesn't always have our best interests at heart. But we're also supposed to stay firm in the fact that we are transformed into something different. Our values are not always going to be the same as those of the people around us, and the values of our faith have to be the ones that win out in our lives.
To have something so costly given at no cost to us, it's easy to forget its value and trade it for something cheap, but we can't let ourselves do that. We're among strangers and enemies every day, but we can't forget that we've been reconciled. Maybe they can be too someday.
And you were at one time strangers and enemies in your minds as expressed through your evil deeds, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him—if indeed you remain in the faith, established and firm, without shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has also been preached in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become its servant.
Last week we talked about what Ezra did when confronted with the corrupting influences of people from enemy cultures. This week is what happens when we are those enemies. Paul, as usual, is talking about the gospel.
Before we begin to know about God, before we're Christians, before we allow ourselves to be changed by his love, we are exactly like those people who were scheming against Ezra. We have our own hidden agendas. We have our own cultural practices and idols. We have our own value systems and world view, and it doesn't always line up with what God wants.
In those days, maybe we looked down on religious people. Maybe we looked to things or people to define our value, or maybe we built our lives around a cause or a career. Maybe we just inherited the local morality of the culture we grew up in, or allowed ourselves to be carried away by the fashions of the age, and the manipulation that is always behind them.
The right thing for God to have done would have been what Ezra did: To tell us that we are not wanted, that we have no right to be in his presence, that we can never represent him, and that we are not part of his plan and never will be. His kingdom would be surrounded like the garden of Eden, with armed guards ready to strike us down if we tried to get too close to his paradise. If you make a habit of reading the Old Testament, there are a lot of times God says things very much like that.
We were strangers, and enemies, and did horrible things to meddle with the plan God had for his world, and yet something happened to change all of that. Jesus died and was reborn to reconcile us and present us as clean and holy and acceptable to God.
Imagine if Ezra had done that. Imagine you were one of those filthy, scheming liars who had tried to betray him to the Persians. What if someone like that decided he really did want to help out, and came to Ezra? If Ezra had handled it like God, he would have put his own son to death so that there could be a place at the table for this foreigner. It's such an extreme love that it's difficult to translate it into human terms.
Just as the people coming to Ezra were not his flesh and blood, we weren't God's people either after Adam and Eve did their thing. We were unwelcome strangers, particularly those of us who are not of Jewish heritage. But thanks to Jesus dying on the cross, there is a place for us. We are accepted as if we were flesh and blood, like we were adopted into the family, sat at Jesus' table.
Knowing about how much it cost to gain us access to God helps us to not be religious elitists. On the one hand, like we talked about last week, we have to be careful not to put ourselves in a position where we can be controlled by ungodly forces. But on the other hand, we're not to separate ourselves entirely from contact with non-Christians, like modern Pharisees. There's a difference between being careful and being an obnoxious snob.
Paul says we should remain strong, established, and firm in our faith, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. We're supposed to get to know people, and to live in a world that doesn't always have our best interests at heart. But we're also supposed to stay firm in the fact that we are transformed into something different. Our values are not always going to be the same as those of the people around us, and the values of our faith have to be the ones that win out in our lives.
To have something so costly given at no cost to us, it's easy to forget its value and trade it for something cheap, but we can't let ourselves do that. We're among strangers and enemies every day, but we can't forget that we've been reconciled. Maybe they can be too someday.
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