The Excluded Are Included (Remove The Gospel From Gun Point)

Nobody’s perfect. The happiest people have rough days. The people who hate smiling laugh now and then. Doctors make mistakes. Teachers make mistakes. Students make mistakes. The smartest person has once failed. The greatest athletes have fallen. The best singers have hit sour notes. And sometimes the barista doesn’t quite get the coffee the way you like it. Nobody’s perfect. That includes “Christians.”

Being a Christian doesn’t make you better than anyone. Being a Christian doesn’t give you the right to judge. Being a Christian doesn’t allow you to tell anyone that the gospel was never for them. You don’t get to pray for someone to go to hell. What kind of God would He be if answered our prayers for praying evil on our fellow neighbor? He definitely wouldn’t be considered a God of love, but instead, a God of revenge. News flash: He’s not in the “getting even business.”

I’ve never understood why people don’t like the gospel. The gospel of good news. For over a century, people have been holding the gospel at gunpoint. Why? Why hold something so good at gun-point? It’s because they believe that if they tell people the REAL heart of God and the REAL gospel they’ll lose control over their congregation, their status in the community, and the weight that follows their name. They’re scared to preach the good news. They’re afraid to set people free. They’re afraid to remove the gospel from gun point because once you do, you see that all of the unnecessary works of the flesh, all of the years of the good life they have wasted, and see that God included all in Christ.

Whether you believe it or not, the people who you think are excluded from God are included. The neighbor that you don’t like. The neighbor that wronged you. The neighbor that abused you. The neighbor that accused you. The neighbor that walked all over you just to get ahead of you. The neighbor that voted different than you. The neighbor that killed one of your family members. The neighbor that has run your name into the ground. Every neighbor you have, the neighbors you have yet to meet, and each person, on this Earth, were included in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Guess what? You cannot do anything about it because you can take it to the grave when God sets it in place. Truth doesn’t care about your feelings. It just wants to set you free.

In Matthew 1:1-5, the women Matthew includes in Jesus’ genealogy are outsiders and/or sexual outlaws: Tamar, who seduces her father-in-law; and Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho who assists Joshua’s spies; and Ruth. God included them in Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:14 says, “For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;”

In Matthew 5: 1–11, the Beatitudes (Jesus’ first sermon) offers visions of God’s kingdom where the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the peacemaker, the persecuted are blessed for great is their reward in heaven. God included them in Christ.

In Acts 8:26 – 40, Philip meets and baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch. Despite their differences in race, ethnicity, social status, and sexual identity, the eunuch is baptized because he bore “fruits of the Spirit.” God included them in Christ.

In Acts 10, Peter’s dream and encounter with Cornelius teaches him that those with the “fruits of the Spirit” are to be welcomed even if they are Gentiles. The church did not begin to grow until ALL were welcomed to come.

Galatians 3:23, 28 says, “Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith could be revealed. “ “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

There are many more verses that explain that God included ALL in Christ.

God being inclusive was hard for me to understand when I first heard it. Most of the time, all you hear, is people talking about “God’s going to get you,” Only a few people are going to heaven,” and “God only died for a few people.” That’s not true. I know a lot of you grew up listening to preachers who held the gospel at gunpoint and preached the law instead of grace, but the gospel is not something you should be afraid of. Everyone is in Christ. The people who you think are excluded are included because Christ died once and for all. If everyone wasn’t included in the death, burial, and resurrection, then Christ died in vain.

-Taleigh E. Reed, Coffee Dates with Jesus ☕️