A Thought For The Week Of June 20,2016

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) What shines through for me from this verse and from the larger passage of which it's a part is the unity of the Christian community. We are all one in Christ Jesus. There is no Jew or Gentile, no slave and free, no male and female. We are all simply in Christ. I don't think that Paul meant that to be an exhaustive list of the divisions that Christ has overcome either. Any opportunity we've discovered that allows us to divide ourselves up has been overcome by Christ. To the above list, we might add rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight. The possibilities are endless, and the point is that if you are in Christ then you are one with Christ and with Christ's people - even though the Christian community might not always do such a good job of bringing people together because we spend far too much time emphasizing our differences. But, ultimately, the divisions that we establish mean nothing in the face of the unity of Christ. This passage is generally linked to baptism, but at least one translation I've come across doesn't use the word baptism, so that rather than being "baptized" into Christ, it refers to those who are "immersed" in Christ. That's a helpful way to think of Christian unity. If we emphasize baptism, then we're giving the impression that the unity of Christ depends on a human ritual. But to speak of being immersed in Christ has a much different connotation. To me, being immersed in Christ implies a surrendering of myself. It suggests that my life is now a part of the life of Jesus - which, for now at least, is being lived out collectively by his followers. All the things that divide us have been submerged into Christ, and Christ is all we're left with. That's a helpful way for me to think of what it means to be "one in Christ Jesus."