What Makes The World Sit Up And Take Notice

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

The Holy Spirit baptizes into one body all who believe (see 1 Corinthians 12:13). God brings us together in Jesus Christ. He makes us one as he reconciles us to himself.

I’m a Scotsman and proud of it, but I have more in common with a Bedouin who loves Christ than with a Scotsman who doesn’t. A Christian physics professor has more in common with an illiterate believer than with a fellow academic who doesn’t know Christ. A multimillionaire who knows Christ has more in common with the poorest believer in India than with friends at the yacht club who know nothing of Jesus.

Christian high school students have much more in common with an old man who listens to Brahms and Mozart and knows Christ than with their friends who do not love Christ. And the old man has more in common with the Christian youngster whose jeans hang off his waist, who listens to rock music, and who loves Christ than with his friends at the symphony center who’ve never seen their need of a Savior!

If angels gasp at the way God gathers people together from diverse backgrounds, is it not also glorifying to God when people with different backgrounds gather for worship on a Sunday morning? I’ve always had difficulty with the idea of a church having a clearly defined “target audience.” I know that every church has its own culture and that this both attracts and repels, but that’s a reflection of our limitations rather than our success.

God is glorified by unity across diversity. There is nothing surprising to the world or to angels about a narrow band of people gathering together for worship because they like the same kind of music or a group who gathers together because they’re at ease with each other socially. That looks to the world, and probably to the angels, suspiciously like a religious version of the golf club.

But when people come together across the great divides of generation, race, class, and education to worship and serve Christ, the angels gasp. Even the world has to sit up and take notice, because only God could do that.

For further reading, see Galatians 3