The equalizer

You vs me. Us vs them. Competition is all the rage across the globe. It is fashionable to support your team, your company, your school, your community, your church, your country, your way of dressing and a whole host of other choices that are designed to separate you from someone else. Yet despite all that we attempt to huddle around for our own particular distinction, we are all equal according to the gift of grace.

Paul tells the Ephesians, a Gentile church of believers, that Christ, through the cross, broke down the wall of separation which kept Jews and Gentile from mingling in the Temple during worship, in order to create one new man through His sacrifice. Paul also tells the Galatians, Romans, and Colossian people, all who are Gentile believers, that there is no difference in them and the Jews, between slaves or free men for Christ is in all of them.

We all are familiar with the claims of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…” The world was God’s concern, but Christ reconciled all of it back to God. Reconcile is an accounting term meaning to balance a matter to equal value. This stresses out a lot of people who live in the mentality of you vs me. From their perspective, there is a difference, or a value, that makes one of us superior to the other. However, the price of Christ, the measure of the grace given to each one of us through Him, has made us all equal in the eyes of Father.

Now I need to stress something here. All. What does that word mean to you? If your answer goes something like this, “Everyone but…” then you have a faulty understanding of All. To fix your understanding, you just have to get your “but” out of the way. That “but” has been the cause of more wars than anything else in all of the human endeavor. It was at the Garden when the serpent enticed the woman. “But” creates difference when there isn’t one present except in the mind of the “but-er.”

The critical matter here is that any renewing our mind has to take about the kingdom of God operating in our lives must first happen with our thoughts of equality. Jesus prayed that we would be one as He and the Father are one. This is equality. We are one with them too through the grace given to us. Yes, there is the question of who received more grace, however, what doe that matter? Are you jealous that someone got more than you, or happy that you got more that your neighbor? Pretty foolish thinking, isn’t that?

Grace, however much we each needed, amply abounded beyond any measure of sin that infected our lives. It made us all, you and me, them and us, believer and yes, unbeliever, all equal 2,000 years ago. Today we’re just as equal as we were then. Grace has not diminished at all.

So while you cheer on your team as the better, more worthy example of the contest, remember that God is cheering on His team too. They, you and I, are the worthiest of all through the gift of grace He has given us.