Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Christ for Everyone Everywhere


By definition, the Gospel is cross-cultural. Jesus died for all, thus salvation is for all. Our seed sowing must be indiscriminate: racially unbiased, ethnically impartial, and color blind. The conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch (AC 8) is a classic proof of this.

To Israelites, castrated men were forbidden to attend public worship, and Ethiopia was for all intents and purposes the farthest away dregs of the earth, the southernmost edge of civilization. If salvation could be made available for an Ethiopian Eunuch, it was for all.

Fortunately, Philip felt an urgency to go on a short-term mission trip, and ended up sending the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. This was not always the case in early days of Christianity. We were hindered at first by an obsession with Jerusalem. Maybe believers thought God would bring the world to them. For some reason they stayed put until persecution drove them out (AC 8:1).

The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD made even more necessary the need to go. Our faith has ever since never had a sacred building, a sacred city, or a favored ethnic center. Everything changed. Christianity became a nonlocal, non-tribal, non-ethnic religion meant for every person everywhere.