No Longer a Stranger

“Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,”

Ephesians 2:19 · NKJV

Paul stacks two pictures, a city and a home, and he puts you inside both.

Strangers and foreigners were the people with no legal claim and no permanent place. That was the old category, and Paul says it no longer applies. The change was not gradual. It happened when the wall came down.

There is a particular loneliness in being the new person. You walk into the church lobby, the break room, the neighborhood cookout, and everyone else seems to know where to stand. You hover near the coffee and wonder whether you belong. Many believers carry that feeling into their life with God, as if they are still the visitor who wandered into someone else's family reunion. Paul says you are not the visitor. Your name is on the list and on the house, and the Father set a place for you before you ever walked through the door.

Members of the household. Household language in that world meant belonging with rights, a seat that stayed yours whether the week was good or hard.

You are a citizen and a family member. There is no version of today where you have to earn your way back in.

Go deeper: In My Father’s House →