Life Together in Christ by Barton Ruth Haley;

Author:Barton, Ruth Haley; [Barton, Ruth Haley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830896387
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2014-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

For Personal Reflection

Think about your relationships with your brothers (if you are a woman) or your sisters (if you are a man). What were those relationships like? Did you and do you experience them as relationships of equality, mutual influence and love, or ­something else? Are these experiences the same as or different from what you experience with members of the other gender in the body of Christ?

Including One Another

There are very concrete ways we can open to the transforming presence of Christ in all our relationships, particularly our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. First of all, we can be more intentional about including one another and perhaps even pay more attention to the ways in which we subtly exclude or diminish one another. One of the defining characteristics of the New Testament church was a radical kind of inclusivity, starting with the issue of race. God went to great lengths to teach the Christ-followers to affirm the conversion experiences of the Gentiles and welcome them based on evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives rather than insisting they be circumcised. This was their first challenge related to including those who had previously been excluded or limited due to some physical characteristics; their mandate was to welcome people based on the condition of their heart in relation to God, not on physical characteristics. Peter expressed it this way in relation to his experience with Cornelius: “The Spirit told me . . . not to make a distinction between them and us. . . . If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:12, 17).

What was so remarkable about this new development was the fact that circumcision was one of the most sacred cows among the Jewish people: it was a symbol of their status as God’s chosen people, instituted by God himself. Now God was challenging something God himself had put in place because it no longer served his larger purpose—the redemption of the whole world. It took attentiveness and responsiveness to God in the moment to recognize this and live into it.

As a culture we are at the point where we at least give mental assent to the fact that people of all races and classes are equal in God’s sight; however, many are still in the process of making the final application to gender as well. Since Paul himself connects the dots between the issue of race, socioeconomic status and gender in Galatians 3:28, we, too, must learn what it means to include and welcome one another’s true selves and gifts regardless of gender, as each one’s gifts and interests are given by God and breathed into life through his Spirit.

While we still wrestle at times with the tendency to subtly exclude others or make assumptions about them on the basis of race, in most circles today there is at least a basic agreement

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.