Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 217 · August 5
Neither Jew Nor Greek
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:28 is a sentence about who inherits.
Read the verses on either side of it. Just before it, Paul says, "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Then comes the famous line, and then the conclusion the whole chapter has been building toward: "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Paul has been arguing about a will, a covenant that no law coming later can cancel, and the question is whose names are written in it.
The list of pairs changes from letter to letter, and that is one way you can tell it was never a slogan. To Corinth, Paul writes that we are all baptized into one body by one Spirit, "whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free." Colossae gets a longer list: "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." Scythian was that world's word for the most uncivilised person it could picture. Each church was shown the wall it most needed to see come down.
The idea is older than Paul. It describes what God is like before it sets any rules for a church. Moses says that God "regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward." Peter says it in a Gentile's house: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." And Romans says it flatly: "For there is no respect of persons with God."
Now the warning. James wrote to churches that held this teaching and still arranged their seating by the clothes people wore, giving the man with the gold ring a good seat and telling the poor man in shabby clothes to stand, or to sit on the floor by someone's footstool. He calls it what it is: "if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors." Quoting Galatians 3:28 has never moved a single chair. Someone in every church decides, week after week, how newcomers are welcomed and where they end up.
So look around the room where you worship. The person who is easiest to overlook there is named in the same will as you, by the same grace. Nobody earned a place in it. God wrote every one of those names in Christ, and He wrote yours there too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 217 is Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (Psalm 139:13-14).