While reading Acts 13, I came upon two verses (16 and 26) that I’d merely breezed past before. In this passage, Paul is speaking in the synagogue and addresses both the Israelites and the “others who fear God.” While distinguishing between the two groups, he then brings them together with two small words: “to us.”
The message of salvation has been sent to us.
There’s something beautiful here. Those who were once regarded as outsiders and “others” (Gentiles) are being addressed as people to whom this good news belongs. Luke is making the staggering declaration that the gospel reaches across the boundaries people have drawn.
But religion built on exclusion struggles to include those we’ve labeled “the others.” Their inclusion threatens the ego’s need to be the right ones, the chosen ones, the faithful remnant. In fact, when our sense of importance depends on someone else being outside, their belonging feels like our loss.
Yet Jesus works through people like Paul and Peter, those who knew the machinery of religious superiority; and he had to confront their own participation in it. They knew what it meant to draw lines, defend boundaries, and assume that faithfulness to God required keeping certain people at a distance.
And we can do the same. We can elevate ourselves until everyone who doesn’t believe like us, sing like us, or pray like us becomes someone beneath us. We can often exclude and assign those who don’t fit well within our club to the outside.
Then the gospel confronts us with the people we’ve dismissed and asks whether we can receive them as family. It’s as though God is asking, “Will you allow the person you’ve labeled ‘other’ to be recognized as someone I’ve already included in Christ?”
Furthermore, can we rejoice in their belonging when it costs us our sense of superiority?
Selah
