So then, all things are yours and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

! Corinthians 3:21, 23

In my mind’s eye, I am there in Corinthian, a Roman citizen with a few Jewish friends.  I heard the Word of the Lord through them, offering me salvation, fullness of the Spirit and an inheritance in heaven along with all the saints of God, no matter our tribe, language or ideology.  It is all a miracle of grace, whether we have a long history of walking with God, or a new walk in the Salvation that Jesus bought us with his own shed blood.

What is the promise?  That “all things are yours.”  The Corinthian church was a mixture of peoples, including Jews and Gentiles, a Roman city in Asia Minor.  Paul was not a native of Corinth!  Yet he spoke the Word of the Lord into their fellowships.  Jews and Gentiles all need salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ.  As each person stands before that wonderful reality, all things grow dim as the light of the Gospel speaks to and through all.

I was not brought up to think that full salvation is for all.  I never gave that a thought.  How my life was changed as I found my wife and me in Tanzania living with people who are so different from us that is seems like a miracle that we can communicate at all.  Yet this set the stage for us to live the life of Christ with them and they with us.  I cannot begin to describe how this went, pain and joy, but with the firm realization that Jesus saves all who call on Him, always and everywhere!

I cannot begin to describe those days – the turmoil, the searching, the living hope and feelings that I cannot even begin to describe.  Those days reoriented my life completely.  I was once again in the lowest grade in life’s school!   I was rebuilt – so to speak.  And have not been the same since.  It was a rough road for me, and for others in both cultures who were called to follow Christ.  Why God chose me to experience this I do not know, but I know it happened.  Praise his Holy Name, now and forever.