Saturday, April 9, 2011

”I was an outcast.”


“The person who knows that he received mercy while an undeserving enemy of God will have a heart of love for even (and especially!) the most ungrateful and difficult persons. When a Christian sees prostitutes, alcoholics, prisoners, drug addicts, unwed mothers, the homeless, the refugees, he knows that he is looking in a mirror. Perhaps the Christian spent all of is life as a respectable middle-class person. No matter. He thinks: ‘Spiritually I was just like these people, though physically and socially I never was where they are now. They are outcasts. I was an outcast.’” Timothy Keller

"Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Ephesians 2:13,13