Alive by Grace: No Longer Left on the Outside

 

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  Ephesians 2:13

 Have you ever felt like you were on the outside looking in? I don’t know about you, but in my experience, and in every Disney teen movie ever, there’s a group of kids at school that you are just not a part of, and clearly not welcome to be. I wonder if this is what the Gentiles felt like when they lived near or with the Jews.

 You see, back in the day, the Jews were seen as God’s people. They were special, and other races weren’t. It’s not that the Jews were particularly good at being God’s people, they messed up A LOT. But God had chosen them on purpose, for a purpose. They were to demonstrate to the world God’s grace and usher in His kingdom. They got to demonstrate His grace by the fact that they messed up a lot and He loved them and used them anyways. Sound familiar? Yep, me too. And they got to usher in His kingdom because Jesus was born of the house and line of David, King of the Jews. The Jews cared a lot about ancestry and lineage. With them, you were either in (if you could prove it) or you were out. In very rare circumstances, they would let you be kind of in, but that involved some pretty complicated and painful initiation ceremonies.

 Imagine being the Gentiles of Ephesus when they heard the news that God didn’t just love the Jews, He loved them too! In the verse before today’s (Ephesians 2:12) it goes over the situation that the Gentiles were in before Jesus made a way for them. It says they were separate, excluded, foreigners, without hope and without God. What a sad, desperate, lonely place to live in. Praise God there is a verse 13! It tells us that in Christ, you (me, you, all of us) who were far away have been brought near. This was done through His blood that was shed for our sins, for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2).

 This is a bit of a throw back, but have you ever seen the movie While You Were Sleeping? It’s one of my daughter’s favorites, so it’s been on a time or two in our house. I mention it because the main character, played by Sandra Bullock, is a rather lonely type. She gets voluntold by her boss to work on Thanksgiving because she’s the only person in the pool that doesn’t have a family. Then, through a series of ridiculous events, she gets looped into a family over the course of the movie. Yeah, she falls in love with a guy, she has to, it’s a Rom-Com, but I think she actually falls in love with his family more. This movie just really demonstrates today’s verse to me. She was on the outside looking in. She saw families and friends interacting all around her, but she didn’t have that for herself. Then, through an impossible circumstance, she was given admission to a family. She saw their good and their bad sides, and it felt real, like she was truly a part of something. The sad part in the movie is that it was all based on a lie. Of course, it works out in the end, because Hollywood, but I want something in my life that is based on so much more, on something I can count on and trust in. Enter Jesus.

Here's the Thing: In God, our Heavenly Father, we have the most incredible family. Yes, we’re still human and flawed and imperfect, but we love each other anyways. We love each other not because we deserve it, because we don’t, or because we’re all particularly loveable, because we’re not, but because Jesus brought us together through His sacrifice for us, and we all love Him. The more we love Jesus, the more we are drawn to each other, because we are all loving Him.