Jesus' Family Album December 28 Devotional

GALATIANS 3:27-28 | ²⁷ As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

REVELATION 7:9 | ⁹ After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

Jesus invented a new kind of family, a new community, with a startling and unheard of diversity. There was economic diversity, from slaves to free people, from the poor to the wealthy. There was racial and ethnic and linguistic diversity, for the church included Jews and Greeks. Gender diversity also, in a gender restricted era, emerged in the church, with women as well as men playing vital roles. Paul insists that our unity in Christ is greater than any form of human difference. It is a unity of need, for his saving grace, a unity of soul for we share his Spirit, and a unity of mission for we are all sent in his name to witness and serve.

This unity we know now can be challenging, for the creation of oneness out of diversity is hard. We need the assurance of Revelation, that our unity will be greater when the kingdom comes finally and fully—and so will our diversity. The unique power of God in Christ is to build eternal and joyous unity out of a beautiful diversity.

Do you have any unity challenges in your life that arise from diversity?

Gracious God,

Thank you for the richness of human life and culture and the power of Christ to unite us.

Amen.