A Nation of the New
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance. Psalm 33:12, New King James Version
"If you are in Christ," proclaims Tony Marida, "you not only have a new identity, you have a new community."
So it is that the Psalmist in Psalm 33:12 can proclaim His people a chosen inheritance rather than one dictated by physical boundaries or genetic happenstance. We are blessed by identity in Him which outshines our demographics. What's more, He preserves us from the pride which is the enemy's next play because we have a new birth and a new understanding which many of our momentary neighbors on Earth do not.
Christ has exercised His prerogative to snatch a person from this tribe and from that tongue as His, but He has not left us isolated. He has formed us into a nation more united than any polity. We are united in being aware in Whose image we are made and remade. We are united in each being called into His service, not a few as THIS nation's professional soldiers while the rest go about indifference to national concerns. In this everlasting nation with Christ as our king, all the saints are equipped for the work of the ministry.
We are blessed in that even before this kingdom, this new nation, is fully revealed along with the visible authority of the One on Whose shoulders the government will rest eternally, we can find kinship with fellow nationals scattered about Earth's various groupings. Our kindness can begin, says Scripture, with the household of faith. Thus, we have good reason to withhold skepticism and defensiveness, withhold sorting based on immediate and polarizing differences. This new face, after all, might belong to a brother or a sister, a fellow heir to Christ's promise. Their membership in the new and true community might be apparent if I give pause to the habits of the flesh for a moment.
As the chosen ones according to Psalm 33:12, and aware of it by the sovereignty of God unashamedly proclaimed in that verse, we are buffered from one of the nonsensical traps of earthly nationalism, which is readiness to proclaim ourselves superior because of the national heritage into which we were born. Even more clearly than the circumstances of our physical birth, we were not in control of the Lord's choice. But for that election, we would be left among the worshipers of the various idols to which the world's people give themselves. By His grace, though, we are chosen not just as His present wards, but as His inheritance who will continue to grow and produce according to His likeness. We are, by grace, more like the one to Whom we have been gathered man the peoples whose fate we have escaped.
"If you are in Christ," proclaims Tony Marida, "you not only have a new identity, you have a new community."
So it is that the Psalmist in Psalm 33:12 can proclaim His people a chosen inheritance rather than one dictated by physical boundaries or genetic happenstance. We are blessed by identity in Him which outshines our demographics. What's more, He preserves us from the pride which is the enemy's next play because we have a new birth and a new understanding which many of our momentary neighbors on Earth do not.
Christ has exercised His prerogative to snatch a person from this tribe and from that tongue as His, but He has not left us isolated. He has formed us into a nation more united than any polity. We are united in being aware in Whose image we are made and remade. We are united in each being called into His service, not a few as THIS nation's professional soldiers while the rest go about indifference to national concerns. In this everlasting nation with Christ as our king, all the saints are equipped for the work of the ministry.
We are blessed in that even before this kingdom, this new nation, is fully revealed along with the visible authority of the One on Whose shoulders the government will rest eternally, we can find kinship with fellow nationals scattered about Earth's various groupings. Our kindness can begin, says Scripture, with the household of faith. Thus, we have good reason to withhold skepticism and defensiveness, withhold sorting based on immediate and polarizing differences. This new face, after all, might belong to a brother or a sister, a fellow heir to Christ's promise. Their membership in the new and true community might be apparent if I give pause to the habits of the flesh for a moment.
As the chosen ones according to Psalm 33:12, and aware of it by the sovereignty of God unashamedly proclaimed in that verse, we are buffered from one of the nonsensical traps of earthly nationalism, which is readiness to proclaim ourselves superior because of the national heritage into which we were born. Even more clearly than the circumstances of our physical birth, we were not in control of the Lord's choice. But for that election, we would be left among the worshipers of the various idols to which the world's people give themselves. By His grace, though, we are chosen not just as His present wards, but as His inheritance who will continue to grow and produce according to His likeness. We are, by grace, more like the one to Whom we have been gathered man the peoples whose fate we have escaped.
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