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The New Humanity
Brian Mashburn
February 28, 2016
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The New Humanity
People build walls between themselves mindlessly. We don't even question it. Some are big and literal (the Great Wall, the Berlin Wall). Most, however, are in the heart.
I recently received a note from someone looking for a church home who said their last one was just too full of cliques for them to stay. What were they talking about?
You know, don't you? He was perceiving (real or imagined does not matter to make my point) an insider-outsider feeling. He felt walls of division. We've all felt them, and we all build them. It is a part of being human.
Why? Because we are looking for an identity. We take something about ourselves, lift it up to an absolute value, and say we are that. I'm an American. I'm black. I'm a Sandie. I'm a Democrat. I'm conservative. I'm Catholic. I'm educated. I'm pretty. It can be anything. We then look around, see those that are different, and adopt an us-them mentality. Presto! Divided humanity. It doesn't have to be all bad, but it often is. It. Shreds. Lives.
Jesus came to put an end to that. Paul uses the Jew-Gentile division as his case study to explain it, but it applies to all categories: "His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace" (Eph 2:15). A new humanity.
How does Jesus accomplish such a thing? First, by modeling it. Wouldn't you say God and Jesus are of a superior "race" to us? And yet, Hebrews 2:11 says that he is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. Second, by paying for it. In the cross, we have something so intense to identify with that all other identifiers pale in comparison. Finally, by ending the law and replacing it with love. Law divides those who are in and out. A religion that is based on love (rather than law) can at once be a universal religion.