“It would be hard to imagine a more disparate group than the business woman, the slave girl and the [jailer]. Racially, socially and psychologically they were worlds apart. Yet all three were changed by the same gospel and were welcomed into the same church …It is wonderful to observe in Philippi both the universal appeal of the gospel (that it could reach such a wide diversity of people) and its unifying effect (that it could bind them together in God’s family) … The wealthy business woman, the exploited slave girl and the rough Roman [jailer] had been brought into a brotherly or sisterly relationship with each other and with the rest of the church … We too, who live in an era of social disintegration, need to exhibit the unifying power of the gospel.”
–John Stott, The Spirit the Church and the World: The Message of Acts (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVaristy, 1990),p.270, quoted by yours truly in the morning sermon
John Stott Would Want Us to Stop, Study, and Struggle https://t.co/Uf79ZeX7aR via @CTMagazine
— Jen Pollock Michel (@Jenpmichel) May 4, 2021