Ephesians 2:11-13
Here Paul goes back to the beginning of the chapter - dead in transgressions and sins (2:1), foreigners to the convenants (2:12) - to remind me of the state that I was in apart from Christ. I think there is a subtle difference here: at the beginning of the chapter he seems to be talking to me, the individual; here he seems to be talking to my "category" (Gentile). It wasn't just that as a sinner I was alienated from God but as a Gentile I was outside of his covenants and without hope.
"But now..." Man, I love that phrase in the Bible because it usually announces something good - and this time is no exception. The contrasts are amazing! At that time (v. 12) - but now (v. 13); seperate from Christ (v. 12) - in Christ (v. 13); excluded from citizenship (v. 12) and far away (v. 13) - brought near through the blood of Christ (v.13). Again, Paul points to the supremacy and work of Christ. This has nothing to do with me except that he chose me (chapter 1 - the controversy we all avoided!) by his grace and I accepted it through faith. It is all Christ!
The thing that sticks out to me is the arrogance of "the circumcised" - as if they had the lock on God and if things weren't done their way it wasn't done right. Of course this was pretty much true in the times of the Old Testament but even in the Christian era "the circumcised" tried to maintain their exclusive hold, even teaching that in order to be a Christian you had to be circumcised first. The pendulum has done a complete arc - now it is the Western church that seeks to maintain its exclusive hold on the culture of Christianity. We're making people do things our way just like they once made us do it theirs. Crazy!
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4 comments:
That is a great reminder. I often find myself when I hear new ideas for ways of doing ministry, or church thinking no that's wrong. Then I sit back and reflect and realize I can't really say that it is wrong, but it is new and needs to be examined and I can't just dismiss it. Being a young traditionalist I often find myself being reactionary and recognizing that in myself.
I'm reading a great book right now called "Emerging Church" by Dan Kimball who talks about the new culture that is rising in North America (post modernism or whatever you want to call it). His point is that if we were going to go overseas, we wouldn't expect to do church the same way we do it here and so we shouldn't expect the worship gatherings to look the same in the new culture as they do now. My problem with that is that there are people who expect the worship gathering in China to look like the Western, modernistic worship gathering - as if we have cornered the market on what a worship gathering should be (isn't it in the Bible?).
Very true about western culture enforcing this form of worship in to elsewhere were it really wouldnt make sense. I read several books where it talked of past situations where missionaries would go into a foreign place and try and bring western culture including the english language. Making it a western religion. Which really didnt make sense, those guys were idiots.
I love the idea of when im worshipping, there is someone else in the world that is singing praises as well in a completely different language and God loves it all the same.
I guess we don't have to look much further than the residential schools in the relatively recent past to see the horrors that this arrogance can cause...
We've got a lot to be sorry about!
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