GENTILES, JEWS, AND CHRISTIANS

During my study of the Bible through the years, I have been amazed at how God seems to divide things. In Genesis One, God divided darkness and light, the water in clouds from that of the oceans, land from the water, and human kind into male and female. In Chapter Two, God explains that He even divided Adam from his rib to make Eve. There are several more examples of how God divided things, such as Abraham from the rest of the Gentiles, the Jews from the rest of the nations, and finally Christians from the Jews. It is almost like God designed into nature the "Law of Division." Nearly every living thing is the result of cell division. The irony is that God divided people and nations, and then instructed them to multiply. How mathematical of Him.

Man has been said to be created in the image of God. Humans have a body, soul, and spirit; we are trinities. Man plans, organizes, separates, invents, constructs, etc. just as his Creator does. But man is different from the One in Whose image he was created in one very important way: man sins! Man separated himself from God through disobedience, and then hid from Him. Since that first experience with "food poisoning," man has discovered a multitude of ways to remain isolated from God. We have become so good at it that few of the nearly six billion individuals in our world know much about God at all. Oh yes, man is infamously religious, but religion is, in many ways, idolatry. Worship of any god other than the God of the Bible honors a false god. Unfortunately, even Jews and Christians often have an understanding of the true God that fails to see Him as He is. We often focus on those characteristics that we need, such as being our Savior, but fail to think about the fact that He is here, He sees all, He knows our hearts, and He grieves over our lack of love of Him and of our fellow man. It is amazing that He allows us to exist!

In Galatians 5:14, we are told that "...all of the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Paul simplifies for us what God expects from His children. He wants us to love one another. If you think about it, the first commandment tells us to love God. Paul is saying that by loving others, we are loving God! We show our love for God by doing "for the least of these." Jesus said our loving acts for others were the same as doing them for Him. But why would God prefer we love others instead of focusing on Him? There are some clues found in Christ's final recorded prayer in John Seventeen. First, in verse eleven, our unity is an example of the unity between the Father and His Son. In verse twenty-one, our unity shows the world that God sent Jesus (only Jesus working in us, can produce love for others). In verse twenty-two, we find that there is a glorious aspect to our loving one another. We share some of what God gets for loving us: glory. In verse twenty-three, we find the most important reason for maintaining unity among the brethren. Our fellowship, again reveals that Jesus came, but John adds a very astounding truth. God loves Christians with the same love He has for His only begotten Son! WOW!

So, while sin separates, love unites. Love unites us with God. Love unites us with each other. And love can unite us with those who need to see God in action in us: the lost. The good news, the Gospel, is that God loves us. It is up to us to be Christlike, and thereby win the lost to Him. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). What describes the three divisions of humanity, Gentiles, Jews, and Christians, is made one in Christ. We are all witnesses to the world, one way or another. What kind of witness are you?