The Stream Burst Its Narrow Banks

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.   Galatians 3:28

Paul was commissioned to take the name of Christ to the most privileged people in the world and to tell them that they must come. The Jews need Jesus. But Paul was also commissioned to take the name of Christ to the most desperate people in the world and tell them that they may come.

Perhaps you feel about as far from God as anyone could be, and you wonder how God could ever be interested in you again. Picture a bulldozer demolishing one wall after another, creating a path between you and the presence of God. The rubble is piled high on either side of the pathway. That’s what Jesus Christ has done for you. There is grace and forgiveness for the most desperate person in the world.

Paul described the backgrounds of some of the early Gentile believers in Corinth. Some were prostitutes, some thieves, others drunkards or sexually immoral. But when they came to Christ, they were washed and accepted into the fellowship of believers.

Paul was commissioned to take that Good News to Jews and Gentiles. And as he did, God raised up communities of believers where the privileged worshiped alongside those who had been desperate, and they discovered that they were one as they walked on the same path that had been opened up for them by Christ Jesus.

The stream of God’s blessing had burst out of its narrow banks. God’s blessing began to flow through Abraham’s descendants to all nations. The most privileged and the most desperate found themselves worshiping together at the feet of Jesus.

Your life will intersect with thousands of other people’s lives. Some of those people will be very privileged—they need Jesus. Others will be very desperate—they can come to Jesus. We must tell the privileged not to presume, and we must tell the desperate not to despair. Our mission, like Paul’s, is to carry the name of Jesus to the privileged and to the desperate and invite them to come to him.

For further reading, see Galatians 3