Different Together in Jesus

Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Our Daily Bread. Sheridan Voisey wrote today's reading, and he titled it, Different Together in Jesus. Business analyst Francis Evans once studied 125 insurance salesmen to find out what made them successful. Surprisingly, competence wasn't the key factor. Instead, Evans found customers were more likely to buy from salesmen with the same politics, education, and even height as them. Scholars call this homophily, the tendency to prefer people like us. Homophily is at work in other areas of life too, with us tending to marry and befriend people similar to us. While natural, homophily can be destructive when left unchecked.

When we only prefer our kind of people, society can fracture along racial, political, and economic lines. In the first century, Jews stuck with Jews, Greeks with Greeks, and rich and poor never mingled. And yet, in Romans 16 verses 1-16, Paul could describe the church in Rome as including Priscilla and Aquila, Jewish, Epinetus, Greek, Phoebe, a benefactor of many, so probably wealthy, and Philologus, a name common for slaves. What had brought such different people together? Jesus, in whom there's neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free.

It's natural to want to live, work, and go to church with people like us. Jesus pushes us beyond that. In a world fracturing along various lines, He's making us a people who are different together, united in Him as one family. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Galatians chapter 3 verses 23-29. Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Let's pray. Jesus, you created such a diverse planet full of people with different cultural experiences, perspectives, and preferences. Help us to see the beauty in diversity and to work to live in unity with our brothers and sisters from all backgrounds and walks of life. May we partner with you as you work to bring our fractured world together. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. I'm Stephen Tabor, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.