A mother once came to...
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A mother once came to me telling that she would like to see her son involved with the youth group, but, according to her son, the people in the youth group did not want him in the youth group. In speaking with some of our youth, they told me that this young man was a "burnout." I thought that I knew the meaning of this word, but I asked the youth to explain the meaning to me. They told me that he "drank and smoked and used drugs." I asked them if they had ever seen him do any of these things and they said "no!" But this was what others were saying about him -- it was his reputation. I told them that it sounded to me as if this young man needed our youth group -- that he could use a good influence, but, our youth weren't open to this suggestion. As I reflected on this experience, I thought to myself, "What does Christ call us to do? To exclude from our fellowship people who have a bad reputation, or do we try to reach out to them with the transforming love of Jesus?" Paul was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. He tells us, in our text for today, that this is the reason he was in jail. There were Jewish Christians who were oppposed to taking the gospel to the Gentiles and they wanted to exclude them from the body of Christ, the church. But Paul believes that the Gentiles have become, through the work of Christ, to be acceptable in God's eyes and that the good news of the gospel should be proclaimed to them and that all Gentile believers should be included as members of the church. -- Frank
