All distinctions obliterated in Christ.
"Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all, and in all." The old distinctions which separated man from man can have no existence in the new spiritual life.
I. NATIONAL DISTINCTIONS ARE ABOLISHED IN CHRIST. "Greek and Jew." The peculiar privilege of Abraham's natural seed is gone. Mercy is shown on exactly similar terms to Jew and to Gentile. Thus is manifest that catholicity of the gospel which the Gnostics repudiated.
II. RITUALISTIC DISTINCTIONS ARE ABOLISHED. "Circumcision and uncircumcision." The errorists in Galatia would have imposed circumcision on the Gentile Christians, but neither circumcision nor the want of it availed anything in Christ's kingdom, but "a new creation" (Galatians 6:15). Thus, while it was an advantage to be born a Jew rather than a Gentile, it was none to become as a Jew by conforming to its ritual (1 Corinthians 7:19).
III. NO DISTINCTION IS RECOGNIZED AS TO CIVILIZATION OR REFINEMENT. "Barbarian, Scythian." The barbarian was the foreigner, the Scythian the savage. The gospel turns the barbarian into a brother, and lifts even the Scythians—the lowest type of barbarians—into the dignity of Christian fellowship.
IV. SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS ARE ABOLISHED. "Bondman, freeman." The gospel has placed them on one level of religious privilege.
V. CHRIST HAS OBLITERATED ALL THESE DISTINCTIONS. "But Christ is all, and in all." He has absorbed them all into himself, filling the whole sphere of human life in its widest varieties of development. He dwells in all, their true Centre; for the life of all believers is "hid with Christ in God." This fact places the saints under immense obligations. They must consecrate all to Christ and resign all to his wise and loving will.—T. C.