“God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.”
Ephesians 1:12-14 NLT
Paul had a difficult task ahead of him. In the one vain, he had the task of building the church and this was to be done in the fertile ground of Judaism. It was fertile because it was seeded by God and was the birthing place of the Messiah. On the other hand, it was only the birthing place and not the resting place. The plan of the Holy Spirit was to cause total submission by the Jewish Messiah, but not only for the Jewish people. They were to be a “signpost people,” whose whole lives were external markings pointing to God. But the end result was to be that God would be worshipped internally, or as Jesus put it, “in Spirit and Truth.” This is part of the gospel message, that all may worship together. The Holy Spirit both promised that type of reconciliation from the beginning, and is a promise of that type of reconciliation now. All believers should have a heart-set that is oriented in that direction. We must question how we view our solidarity. Is it a matter of appearance alone, or is it the nature of a heart-set that has been sealed by the approval of the Holy Spirit? Only this type of proof, will be genuine enough to build the reconciliation in life we seek, and the blessings we have inherited.
JOSH McGARY. COM 