CC--Christianese 25f: Christian Liberty (part 6 of 6)

--As we learned previously, Christian liberty primarily proclaims God’s greatness in showing that it is our faith in His grace and not our performance that saves us. But it also has the practical benefit of allowing Christianity to take root in almost any cultural context and without all the conflict which comes from the ordinary cultural markers to which non-Christians attach themselves and their identity so strongly.
--But another big practical advantage of Christian liberty is that it preserves the unity of the faithful even amidst their tremendous potential for cultural diversity. If we are all God’s chosen people brought together by our common faith, what a testimony to God’s uniting power that we could all get along despite such differences when precisely those differences are such sources of division and discord apart from Him.
--See, normally, culture divides people. But in Christ, cultural differences can coexist without division. That’s why Christian churches properly embodying this are such a contradiction in expectations. Different socio-economic groups, different ages, and even different societies all come together and don’t merely endure each other. They cherish and serve and celebrate each other. That’s because they all equally realize that performing their cultural rules counts for nothing with God. Only faith in Christ does. Thus they are free to enjoy their own culture without haughtiness and to enjoy another’s culture without guilt. In other words, Christianity is the only true basis of real multiculturalism there is.
--And it was the violation of this unity in diversity of Christian liberty that made Paul chastise Peter publicly in the incident at Antioch.
--Temporarily forgetting (or denying) that Christ had united Jew and Gentile fully, Peter had chosen to eat only with fellow Jews rather than with the Gentiles and even as a Gentile as he had practiced elsewhere. This return to legalism and division made Paul immediately chastise him, for which he repented.
--Since we’ve been made at peace by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, we must never divide what Christ has joined by adding additional requirements to what Christ has done for us.
--I know people don’t think too much of it in this context, but when people become Christians (the official ceremony of which is baptism), we fellow Christians really take something like the marital vow with those people. “What God has joined [to Himself through Christ], let no man [with his additional rules] put asunder (separate).”