Embracing Your Heritage

In 1 Corinthians 10:1, Paul, writing to a Jewish and Gentile audience, essentially says that anyone who is a follower of Jesus is to understand the Israelite story as their own. It was no longer to be their story (i.e. the Jews) but my story. Paul calls them to embrace their faith heritage. This is huge because the most significant moments in early Israelite history were grounded in a refugee reality. And once God rescued His people from their refugee reality, He commanded them over and again to love the refugee and the foreigner in their midst, because that was their story in Egypt. God wanted them to embrace their story so they could be empathetic to those who were experiencing something similar. As followers of Jesus, if we’re going to love those who are displaced among us – whether foreigners, refugees, or those hurting and in need, we must embrace our own biblical heritage or we likely won’t respond well to those displaced in our midst.

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