Anywhere on the Bus

That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, Ephesians 3:6

Anywhere on the Bus

Those of us old enough to remember the early American Civil Rights Movement will remember Rosa Louise Parks. On December 1, 1955, Parks, who was black, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white male.

In accordance with Southern “Jim Crow” laws at the time, Parks was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. She was fined $14.00, plus court costs. Her case was appealed but was denied. However, her quiet and courageous act would become the premier event that began the American Civil Rights Movement and was instrumental in bettering racial relations nationally.

 

 

Rosa Parks arrest by the Montgomery, AL, PD, 

December 1, 1955

In the early church there was a lot of bigotry by Jews toward the Gentiles. Jewish belief had always been that any association with them made them ceremonially unclean. As far as any Jew was concerned, no Gentile sat at the back of the bus, they weren’t even allowed on the bus.

Paul’s preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles is one of the main reasons Jewish leaderships were always so annoyed with him. Jealousy was the other (Acts 13:45, 22:21-22).

Paul was simply not one who was ahead of his time in not being ethnically challenged. He was one sent, and he went, to the non-Jewish world because God saw the Gentiles worthy of inclusion in His plan of redemption. Paul allowed any cultural or personal prejudices to die away and to let the love of Christ rule his heart. With that, a great harvest was reaped of new believers into the household of Israel. In Yeshua, Christianity is fully Jewish.

Thank God Paul walked in the Spirit, realizing, that ethnically speaking, Christ’s blood was thicker than religion. His blood was the Supremacy of a new and personal Second Covenant, offering full acceptance to we Gentiles. His atoning blood was and is the only thing powerful enough to defeat the satanic realm and open the veil for us into the holy presence of our Father in heaven. Because of Christ not only are Gentiles now allowed on the bus, but praise the Lord, we can sit wherever we want.

Ken