Image: "Without Embellishment", 2009, Nature Walk, Covenant Village Retreat Center, Pa.
Acts 10:4 And when he observed him, he was afraid, and said, “What is it, lord?” So he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God.
Acts 10:15–16 And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” 16 This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again.
Acts 10:28 Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
Acts 10:34–35 Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth, I perceive that God shows no partiality. 35 But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.
Acts 10:43 To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins.”
Acts 11:17 If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?”
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Throughout my formal ministry, I would, on a regular occasion, hear someone say something similar to: "I feel like a second class citizen". One person was born into a family in which other members were active in foreign missions while he only was part of our local church and was actively raising his family. Others would compare themselves to the officers and/or teachers who ministered to them and who reflected a fairly deep knowledge of scripture and zeal while they found the doctrines and understanding of scripture difficult to grasp much less master. Some quite unfairly and without the least justification, thought they were inferior to the main body of the congregation because they were not as "spiritual" as others.
Though they did not quite express it this way, they had this in common: they thought Jesus did not, could not, love them or value them as highly as "those other guys." Their claim on salvation, in their mind, was tentative and God was generally tolerant of them but without enthusiasm.
This kind of thinking is somewhat inevitable in any American church. We are a very "value" focused people. We tend to equate "respect" and "merit" to some measure of accomplishment. Our own self-perception is often formed by thinking more about how other people must "see" us rather than anything else. At its root, this leads to a negative form of "works-righteousness" or even "class distinctions." If a person does not have a college degree then those who have one must think less of them. Perhaps it is a matter of vocation, or marital status, or even, as with some women, whether they have natural-born children.
Jesus Christ came to found a Church, indeed to build a Kingdom, wherein this type of thinking must be ripped up by its roots - whether it is found in those with an assumed "inferiority" self-perception, or, even more egregiously, in those who view others with a degree of contempt for these reasons.
The bottom line is, within the Church of Jesus Christ, there are no "second class citizens." Since the entire premise of salvation by grace is founded on the premise that none, not anyone, merited God's favor, then no person stands above another in value or claim to God's affection. These two chapters drive that truth home with simplicity. The unadorned, bare-bones-gospel, is that "Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so." Period.
God sends an angel to tell Cornelius that though he is a Gentile and a Roman Soldier, he stands on equal ground with any member of God's historic covenant people, the Jews. God reveals to Peter and later on the rest of the Church, that any person He has declared "clean" is not to be considered, nor treated, as "common", that is, as inferior in quality.
It doesn't really matter how we "feel" about ourselves that determines our standing before God. It doesn't really matter how we "feel" about other brothers and sisters in the church that determines their standing in God's household. Jesus made it painfully clear that "many who would be first shall be last." In other words, many who put in a great effort to gain "status" in the Kingdom of God, will, on the last day, be revealed as having demonstrated a lesser "faith" than other, far more simple, Christians. To the degree that we contaminate our faith, in whatever manner, with some kind of "works-righteousness", it is to that degree that our faith is deficient.
Here is where Jesus' admonition that we are not to judge, lest we be judged, comes into play. In order to make real progress in our ministries and in our faith, we must cast away the shackles of merit-based thinking. Most certainly we are to seek improvement in our understanding of Scripture and the doctrines of our faith, but never should we think that somehow this will make God love us more.
If God loved us when we were, by nature, children of wrath, and sent His Son to purchase for us our salvation, then on what possible grounds do we think that His love for us can be improved? If God sent His Son to effect that same salvation for others in our congregation, regardless of their relative progress in sanctification or edification, then how can we view them as inferior to ourselves in any matter of eternal significance?
The bottom line, again, is that there are no second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. There are those who are outside the faith and that is a different situation. They have no claim on God because they do not believe. But, (cf. 11:17) if God has poured out His Spirit on a person such that there is evidence of a true and lively faith present, even if as a grain of mustard seed, then that person is beloved of God. As this is true for ourselves and the most certain antidote for an assumed inferiority in ourselves, so is it the vibrant standard that we must embrace for viewing others.
That's the stark, black-and-white, barebones gospel truth of it all.
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