Together in Christ: 'One in Christ!' — Ephesians 2:14-16

Gentile prejudice against Jewish people has been present through the ages and has been vicious and genocidal at times. Jewish discrimination against Gentiles has been mean-spirited, filled with slanderous slogans and names, unfair, and abusive. How could these different races, ethnicities, and cultures ever be brought together?

The answer: Through a Jewish man Who was God in human flesh, ^[1] Who came to earth to unite all people into one. ^[2] As non-Jews in His day proclaimed, God sent Jesus to be the "Savior of the world"! ^[3] Just as Jesus' cross had vertical and horizontal beams, two groups unified in their hatred to crucify Him. Jewish leaders sentenced Jesus to death, demanding the Romans legally execute Him, which they did. ^[4] The death that Jesus died was to save all people - Jews and non-Jews, Gentiles and non-Gentiles. ^[5]

The early disciples began to preach the Good News to all people as Jesus had told them to do. ^[6] His followers were first called Christians in Antioch of Syria, where people from different races and ethnicities found new hope and unity in their shared faith in Jesus, the Lord of all, the Savior Who welcomed all people. ^[7] Several millennia of prejudice, hatred, bitterness, vile talk, and bloodshed are hard to overcome, but in Jesus, the new communities of believers celebrated their diversity of cultures while sharing the table fellowship of their one Lord. ^[8] They were beginning to discover what Paul declared:

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to you. ^[9]

Now, dear brother or sister, God calls on us to make the reality of heaven ^[10] true on earth. "He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death."