Daily Manna · Day 67 · March 8
Made Near
“But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”
In the temple in Jerusalem, a low stone wall ran around the inner courts. Warning signs were fixed to it, and two of them have been dug up. They warn, in Greek, that any foreigner who goes past that wall will have only himself to blame for the death that follows. Paul was once accused of taking a Gentile past it. That accusation started a riot in Jerusalem, and the riot led, in the end, to the imprisonment he was in when he wrote this letter.
That wall helps explain this passage. Paul does not begin with comfort. He begins by measuring the distance, and he is blunt about it. He says his readers were "without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." That is five phrases, with no softening and no hint that the people far off were secretly closer than they looked.
Against all of that comes the turn: "But now." And Paul says plainly how it happened: "ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." In the KJV, sometimes means "once," and nigh means "near." Nothing is said about them improving themselves or trying harder. They were brought near, and it was done for them.
Read one verse further, and the picture grows. The nearness runs sideways as well as up: "For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." The same blood that brought you near to God also took down a wall between people who had every reason to keep it standing. You cannot accept the half that brings you to God and refuse the half that brings you to other people, because Paul puts both in one sentence.
Someone may have come to mind as you read that. Sit down with them this week, or at the very least say their name to God with nothing added. Then look for whoever is standing where you once stood, outside the wall and unsure they are allowed in, and go over to them. Christ has already taken the wall down, so you are free to walk across.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 67 is The Rest That Did Not Come (Mark 6:31).