IN and OUT

“Are you in or out?”

This is a phrase most commonly declared in card games to the undecided player. Do you want to participate in the risk and potential of winning or sit out for the next go around? If you’ve got a bad hand, then follow the advice of Kenny Rogers know it time to fold ’em. Yet if it’s a great hand, you’re all in!

Inclusion. exclusion, or all.

Church words! Whole denominations have been created to argue their perspective of a divine truth. Are you included at the exclusion of someone else? Why bother because I’ve been excluded from the “chosen frozen” and that is alright with me. “When we all get to heaven…” Does that include the excluded or only apply to us who are included?

Denomination.

How many pennies in a dollar? Easy answer for most adults – 100. All coins are a denomination of a main standard, in our case a dollar. Yet if you have 99 pennies you don’t posses a dollar. If it is a dollar you need, you will search high and low, in couches and dryer vents, sock drawers and under car seats to find the one that makes a dollar. Your search for a denomination drives you to feel complete and satisfied with what it will buy for you.

But what do you do if you find a nickel in your search? Do you rejoice at the added riches you’ve uncovered or do you toss aside four pennies because they aren’t needed anymore? What if you found a quarter? How do you feel about those twenty-one pennies who have been with you throughout the search but now seem like extra baggage you have to haul around? Does the higher the value of the find make you place a lesser significance on the rest which comprise the whole?

One.

“Father I pray that they be one as we are one.” Two being one, how is this possible? But Jesus is asking for something even greater, billions being one! In the bible there are two people groups clearly identified: Israel and those who aren’t. Israel was the chosen ones then, and still are today and will still be tomorrow. Everyone else, that’s you and me, your grandma, great aunts, fifth cousins from a second marriage, all of us together were not, have not, and never will be Israel. And yet…Jesus wants us to be one with Him and the Father.

Today there are over 7 billion people on this planet and maybe 100 million of them are recognized according to bible standards as Israel. Less than 1% of the entire world population, according to the bible standard, is included in Israel. The rest of the world is excluded simply by birth. Yet the various people groups of the world are clamoring to make Israel be like one of them even to the point of trying to look like Israel so that they’ll “fit in” when they come together with Israel.

One New Man.

“God so loved the world…” Our Father is big. He thinks and loves big. BIG! Trust me when I say that you will never think or love as big as He does. As a matter of fact, we all have greatly under-estimated Him. Does that exclude us? Nope. That is just our introduction to His big thoughts and love! In under-estimating Him we have minted a currency that will never equal the standard. Our various denominations all interact not realizing that when you bring them all together they still do not add up to the value of the one. If you want to get legal about it, we’ve counterfeited God by saying and doing things that do not measure up to who He truly is.

A counterfeiter knows what the true standard is but they are willing to use their own efforts to try to replicate that standard at the risk of being caught in the lie. These same counterfeiters in order to escape the authorities will create smaller denominations in order to pass them around to as many places as they can to get others to spread their misdeeds thereby not creating a trail that leads directly back to them.

However, out of the bigness of their love and the grace that extends from it, the Godhead created in Jesus one new man who would set the standard of everyone who followed him thereafter. Not follow him in thought and discipline, not in some creed or daily bible study program, but truly be created, or birthed after him. No special inclusion, or secret exclusion, but all encompassing just like their love. This is the value of their oneness that they desire for you and me.

Am I saying that we’re all born again? No, but for 2,000 years we have been after Him. And while the 99% still are not Israel, Love has declared that they are His, lock, stock, and barrel. Now I know that many will reject what I’m claiming here simply because their denomination doesn’t believe in such things. My question to you is what about under-estimating don’t you understand? Paul demands the renewing of our mind because he simple want to know, are you in or out?