Christ Has Brought Peace to Us

February 8, 2018

Christ Has Brought Peace to Us

But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 2:13

Read: Ephesians 2:11-16

From Paul’s Jewish background, he saw all of the world’s people divided into two groups: Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were the people of God and the Gentiles were everybody else. In today’s passage Paul affirms that by uniting all believers to Christ, God has created a new people, Christianoi, the people of Christ. Paul is emphatic that this was made possible through Jesus’ shed blood on the cross. I believe it is very important that we never lose sight of the high cost God paid to unite us with Jesus.

When you look at all that God has created in nature and humankind, the diversity is staggering. There are over 27,000 species of fish. There are over 7,500 known varieties of apples. There are 193 member states in the UN and each country contains countless subcultures or groups of people. There are more than 4,200 religions in the world and at least 41,000 Christian denominations. Diversity is good and only becomes bad when we make it an end in itself. It is a good thing that there are 41,000 groups proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is a very bad thing, and clearly inconsistent with scripture when any of those 41,000 thinks they are the only true church.

My Takeaway: Paul concludes this passage with this thought: “Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.” (v.16) God has put our hostility to death on the cross of Jesus; have we put our hostility toward others to the same death?

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Copyright © 2018 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.