Daily Manna · Day 103 · April 13
No Longer Strangers
“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;”
Around AD 60, a church is meeting in the Roman province of Asia, in what is now western Turkey. It is a mixed church. Some of its members are Jews who grew up in the synagogue, but most are Gentiles who did not. Until recently, the Gentiles had no place at all in the covenants the Jewish believers had been raised on.
Imagine that church as one room. On one side sit people who can name their grandparents' place in Israel's story. On the other sit people who were worshipping at the temple of the goddess Artemis not long ago and are still learning who Moses was. Paul is writing to a room like that. He wants to say something that holds both halves together without talking down to either.
What he says sounds more like a legal ruling than a warm feeling: "ye are no more strangers and foreigners." Both words had technical meanings. Strangers, xenoi in Greek, were outsiders with no rights. Foreigners, paroikoi, were people allowed to live in a city, and even pay for the privilege, who were never made citizens. Against those two words Paul sets two better ones. "Fellowcitizens" means full standing. "Of the household of God" is closer still, because a household was a family, and it took in people who could never have bought their way in. Then Paul keeps building for three more verses: a foundation, "the chief corner stone," and "all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord." The Gentiles who once stood outside a dividing wall are now part of the building itself.
Six verses earlier, Paul named what this cost: "by the blood of Christ." Their place was given to them before they ever fitted in, and that is why it is steady. A belonging you did not earn cannot be taken back on a day you do badly.
The last time your church met, someone probably stood at the edge of the room. This week, learn that person's name and sit beside them. You know how the edge feels, and in Christ you now have the standing to welcome someone in from it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 103 is Moses Does the Arithmetic (Numbers 11:23).