Last night I taught a few willing listeners about some of the things the Apostle Paul is talking about in his letter to the Saints in Ephesus, specifically the second chapter, verses 11 through the end.
There is a lot going on in this passage and I’m not starting it all up. One point, however, stuck out to me, it glared and glistened as it dribbled out of my mouth last night: I’m doubly undeserving of God’s grace.
The Jews, as Paul talks about in Romans 3, were some privileged dudes. They had all the oracles and promises of God; they had the Temple; they had–for good and bad–the whole history; they had Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; they had their promised land and their circumcision (yikes!). The Gentiles (this includes myself and probably most of you), by contrast, had nature... boom! Yea. That is about it. Paul talks in Romans 1 that the Greeks had nature to reveal to them the God of the Universe and even that truth we all suppressed....umm....I think with their divine inspiration the Israelites had a leg-up in this case.
So thinking about the fact that no human being had the right to be called God’s children (first part of Ephesians 2), we can throw some more impossible into this cake and say that Gentiles (non-Jews) were not even a consideration for this dance.... we weren’t even a name that had been crossed-out, we were not even written down in the first place!.... or so it seems.
In Romans 9 and onward Paul discusses how Gentiles were the most unlikliest of unliklies to receive the blessing and mercy and grace of God’s salvation. No one deserves God’s mercy. But if anyone did it was the Jews. And here I am, as Gentile as a pork sandwich on Passover Day, receiving daily the full benefits of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross and the glory of his resurrection. This is amazing! Now go ponder how great you are in light of that (pour me some sarcasm, please!)
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