WHAT DEFINES YOU?

Colossians 3:11 "In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and He lives in all of us."

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

What is it, who is it that defines your worth, your sense of identity? Jesus Christ has done such a final and complete work of redeeming mankind so as to set aside and nullify the categories the world uses to evaluate people, ascribing their worth.

Are there real differences between people? Of course there are! But the categories the world uses to assess the value of one or to devalue another have been shown to be utterly empty by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the 2nd century, an early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, wrote to the Roman Emperor to explain what followers of Jesus Christ thought and did. He wrote, "We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies."

Social status, ethnicity, economics, education, nationality, language or culture, these things are never to be used as a means of dividing what Jesus Christ has united by His death and resurrection. To take a stand to either denigrate another or yourself or to exalt yourself or another on such grounds is not from the Holy Spirit, but from the pit of Hell.

If politics has become your religion or if you have begun to practice a kind of syncretism where politics shapes, flavors or amends your faith in Christ Jesus, you have begun to believe in and rely on something that is a counterfeit. A counterfeit is something that is ALMOST right but is ultimately poisonous and deadly.

Be reminded that Jesus Christ was hated by both the liberals and conservatives of His day. Why? Because He had come to do no other will but His Father's will. Speaking His truth to the world today in the Holy Spirit's power will most likely cause the same backlash He experienced toward His mission and ministry.

I must never preach my ethnic background. If I do, I will be playing false to the One Who redeemed me from such folly and emptiness. Being made in the Image of God has nothing to do with the color of my skin, my language or my country of origin. Humanity, mankind, male and female, ALL of us bear the Image of God, though marred it is, marred beyond human healing. Jesus Christ alone is the healer and redeemer of humanity, not political affiliation.

AND, if I ignore the sorrow of any ethnic group that has experienced suffering and loss at the hands of pagan-minded people (those who have refused to live by God's Word in action), I am forgetting that Christ Jesus has called me to weep with those who weep as well as to rejoice with those who rejoice.

I know that people of every age, from the very beginning, have been used by Satan to try and twist the Word of God to be something it is not. Some of those so used have been very respected Christian leaders in the past. Antisemitism is utterly ungodly and yet some of the Early Church Fathers wrote in ways that are plainly antisemitic. Please read this carefully. The Jews were not the cause of Jesus crucifixion. God, the Father, sent God the Son to be the Savior of the World. John the Baptist proclaimed of Jesus Christ, "Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world." John was from a priestly family and revealed that Jesus was that FINAL lamb to be offered in sacrifice Who alone could take away the sin of the world. Jesus' life was not taken from Him; He laid it down. He gave it according to the will of His Father. It was my sin, your sin and the sin of Jew and Gentile, the sin of the whole world that necessitated and caused His death.

Anyone who calls themself a follower of Jesus Christ but uses ethnicity, economics, culture, country of origin, or language as ANY basis to cause or endorse division, suspicion, hatred, or contempt for another has stopped following Jesus Christ. They have begun to follow the demonic spirit of this present age.

My ethnicity must NEVER become the foundation of my sense of worth nor the ground of meaning in my life. Jesus Christ has established my worth and the meaning of my life without any reference to my ethnicity, achievements, efforts, or abilities. He has valued every human being by the price He paid on Calvery's cross. Infinite Life of infinite worth was given to redeem finite and spiritually dead humanity.

It is neither my ethnicity nor your ethnicity that gives us the right to speak the Gospel Truth to this present age. It is Jesus Christ that both calls and qualifies us to speak into the chaos and madness at hand. We declare that hatred and violence will never give birth to love and peace.

Only a full surrender of the whole of life to Jesus Christ can bring about the heart-change needed to heal our world, our nations, our states, our cities, our neighborhoods and our homes. Salvation is of the Lord. It is found nowhere else and in no one else. For that surrender, for that very thing, I will pray for as long as the Lord Jesus gives me breath.

1 Samuel 12:23 "As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way that is good and right."