None of us belong, and all of us belong. We all have done wrong, treated each other improperly, and allowed sinful thoughts to affect our actions and lives. However, we have all been called to the foot of the cross, welcomed by the Almighty, to salvation. Our previous shortcomings, our current sins, nor our future problems do not withhold the grace found at the cross. Before we proceed with anything involving the church, we must affirm that our faith and salvation comes from no other place than the Almighty God, which did not consider sending Christ Jesus to Earth an act beneath the Creator. Therefore, because Christ pulls us out of sin, we cannot think that any of us is too perfect or too far gone for God’s salvation.
The church can never become a gatekeeper for salvation but must embody the sacrificial love that God has for followers of Christ. We must let go of our notions about who belongs and who doesn’t belong because we must all recognize that we are all lawbreakers and deserve death, but because of God’s mercy, we are saved by grace. The church gathers rule breakers and fugitives. For God calls us all to put down all of our idols and names and come before the cross, laying EVERYTHING down before Christ. Any idea that we carry any other identity other than a child of the Almighty God is foolish and idolatrous.
Isaiah 45:20-25 (NIV)
20“Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.
21Declare what is to be, present it— let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord ? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me.
22“Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
23By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.
24They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are deliverance and strength.’ ” All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.
25But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the Lord and will make their boast in him.
Elpis and Shalom 