Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to God’s called-out people.”
Paul, in 1Corinthians 10:32
Paul here reveals that there are not two kinds of people on earth, Jews and Gentiles, but three: Jews, Gentiles, and God’s people, called out from among both Jews and Gentiles.
The saints of God are a new race of men, for whom the Lord Jesus was a new Adam, “so it is written, ‘The first man Adam was made a living soul’, but the last man Adam was made a life-giving spirit. . . . The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1Cor. 15:45, 47).
Jesus was the first of this new race of men, new creatures with a fleshly, human body but with God’s holy Spirit dwelling within it. This race did not exist under the Old Testament; it began when Jesus was born again at the Jordan River after his baptism by John, and then it exploded into that nation of new creatures “born in one day” on the day of Pentecost (Isa. 66:8). This is what Paul meant when he said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2Cor. 5:17).
By the phrase “new creature”, Paul meant a new kind of being that never existed before. By sending His Spirit to indwell men and women, God created a kind of creature that He did not create during the six days of His creation in Genesis. Through Isaiah, He said, “Behold! I will do a new thing!” On Pentecost morning, He did it.
Not only is there in this new breed of men in Christ neither male nor female, slave or freeman, but there is also neither black nor white, old or young, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile (Gal. 3:28). This new race is not to any extent an earthly race, and earthly distinctions, so very important to the vain people of earth, are absolutely irrelevant to God.
Every person on earth is born the first time either as an earthly Jew or as an earthly Gentile. But those who are born again in Christ no longer belong to either of those two categories. They are neither Jew nor Gentile because God has created them by His power to be a new race of men altogether.