HIS GRACE TO ALL NATIONS Part II
This is because today in the “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:1-2) God has no specially favoured nation, no people chosen above others, as was once the case with Israel, and will be again in the “Day of Christ” to come. In the interim God’s grace is good news for every nation and people on earth.
It is in Eph. 3:6 (KJV) that God discloses this long kept secret:
That [now since the proclamation of it through Paul] the Gentiles (Greek: nations) should be fellowheirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.
The Greek ethnos, translated here as “Gentiles” can mean individual non-Jewish persons but more truly means “nations” as the following more accurate translations show.
GOD'S WORD® Translation
This mystery [a secret now made known] is the Good News that people who are not Jewish have the same inheritance as Jewish people do. They belong to the same body and share the same promise that God made in Christ Jesus.
New Heart English Bible
That the non-Jews are fellow heirs, and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Good News,
Young's Literal Translation
That the nations be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in the Christ, through the good news.
Therefore, there is no question but that my country, New Zealand, is a nation and that from the scriptures she now has as much inheritance in Christ as the present state of Israel does. The real question is: How can New Zealand learn about this “promise in Christ by the gospel” and become “a partaker” of it?
First though let’s define what the promise is. It is that the inheritance is the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8) to the “Gentiles” or the “nations” and that they are now made “partakers” of it.
Unsearchable means “past finding out”. The Lord does not make television announcements or put up advertising hoardings to declare what He is doing in grace for either individuals or nations. He operates silently and largely in secret. Nevertheless blessings flow out constantly from Him.
Strong evidence of this is found in the fact that while huge setbacks, disasters and calamities seriously damage other countries New Zealand by and large escapes the worst of them. We are not at war, nor is our territorial integrity under threat. Yet for many other countries it is.
Our land is still one where nobody need starve. Yet right now 350 million people in the world face death through starvation largely as a result of civil war. The United Nations World Food Organisation says the global food crisis is now the largest and worst in modern history. Never has extreme hunger been so widespread. While climate change is a factor, displacement of people through war is the main cause.
I am convinced that without the Lord’s positive intervention life in New Zealand would be desperately worse than it is. Fact is none of us can draw a breath without God helping us to do so. As to blessing for a nation it seems acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as the “one true God” is essential. Granted all nations suffer calamities and social, economic and political setbacks. Just that some like New Zealand recover better than others.
Where Christ is ignored and opposed and other [supposed] gods are given pre-eminence instead, as they are in Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Communist nations, blessing seems in short supply. At grass roots level the life for people in some countries is parlous at best, desperate at worst. Worship of false gods, whether that of Communist dictators or fabled pagan deities, fails to guarantee peace, still less freedom to believe the gospel and speak one’s mind.
Thus free speech, the right to believe God through the Bible, peace rather than war and a sufficiency of essentials are among the blessings of grace God has bestowed on New Zealand. Our country has never been invaded by a foreign enemy force. Few other nations can say the same.
As to provision we have free education, health care and the financial support of a generous welfare system. Compare that with the lot of say, Afghanistan, where most live in grinding poverty, millions starve, women are barred from school and must cover themselves and not speak in public.
And God’s grace is clearly seen in our history too. For over a millennium different pre-Polynesian races who worshipped the Creator lived here without war, an unrivalled achievement. That peace was broken by arrival of cannibal warriors who became the Maori. As detailed in my two books on New Zealand pre-history, “Forbidden History” and “Noah’s Land”, life then became a desperate struggle for survival, tribes not knowing whether they would see tomorrow or be attacked and become somebody’s lunch.
Yet God showed grace in bringing to this land the gospel of Jesus Christ that in some 30 years (between 1810 and 1840) saw more than half the then population of 180,000 engaged in Bible study and Sunday services. No other country has seen such a large, per head of population gospel penetration in the last 2,000 years. Thus the grace of Christ transformed the nation ending cannibalism and inter-tribal war.
In Borneo, by contrast, only 15 years ago, after 600 years of Islamic preaching, cannibalism was rife in the Dayak assault on the Madurese people; thousands were killed and eaten.
And in my view it was grace that helped New Zealanders develop the dairy and meat trade and other exports that have been the backbone of our growing economy.
Sadly, though today this Christian legacy is fast being watered down. Insult is thrown in the face of Almighty when Christ is no longer given the “pre-eminence” (Col. 1:18) in our society God has given Him in his. Instead, seemingly, beliefs of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and atheism are given preferential treatment, gospel preaching is discouraged and appeal to Bible truth denied.
Yet God is still gracious. He hears when we still sing “God defend New Zealand” if we mean it and He has in many ways answered our prayer that we as a people should be “guarded from the shafts of strife and war”.
Frankly, but for God’s grace we might still be killing and eating each other. Yet we must ask: Have we as New Zealanders learned the lesson of grace. It is that it is “the kindness and goodness [the grace, if you will] of God that leads to repentance” (Rom. 2:4)
And repentance should lead to righteous behaviour. If it doesn’t then sooner or later for every nation self-inflicted judgement follows. Rom. 2:3-4 sounds a warning our nation needs to heed:
Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God.
God is not judging or getting angry now. That awaits a future time. But it’s best to bow the knee and confess with the tongue the name of Jesus (Phil. 2:10) now, before it is too late.
John Dudley Aldworth
Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com