We don't give up on others

Maybe the retail, restaurant and business area nearest your home is like ours. Many buildings once busy with activity now stand vacant -- monuments to failed dreams or corporate bottom line.

These empty shells once were inhabited by a Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Famous Dave's BBQ, Mimi's Cafe, a bank, a party store, a gym and others. Meanwhile, other retail outlets and a restaurant now stand nearly ready to open in this same area booming with new residences.

I think I understand why businesses build new stores instead of renovating empty ones. Reclaiming vacant space doesn't appear to make sense. There seems to be no profit in it.

But it strikes me as sad. These were once destination points for people who had needs -- none that may have been greater than coming in contact with fellow image bearers of God at a time when it is possible never to leave home to work and shop. These were once locations where people gathered to serve and be served. These were once places where people unexpectedly became friends, whether as fellow employees or as workers and customers. Now they know only the sound of silence, their walls possibly never again to echo with the fulfillment of human voices.

But in contrast, there's the church of Jesus Christ. It's made up of previously empty shells. Each part of this building (Eph. 2:21), metaphorically speaking, has been reclaimed. You and I. God has reclaimed us from our fallen state as his image bearers. He has "rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son" (Col. 1:13).

Because He has reclaimed us, we don't give up on others -- before or after they trust in Jesus. We might be tempted to think there is no use in continuing to love, serve and appeal to some people. We may be tempted to think some such attempts are unprofitable, even hopeless. We may think our efforts to help a brother or sister aren't worth it because that person won't heed our advice and direction.

We don't give up on people, however, because we don't set the limits of God's grace. With our brothers and sisters, this is true for multiple reasons. For one thing, God has promised He will complete the work He has begun in His children. Also, Jesus has promised never to forsake us.

But it is also true we are eternally intertwined with one another. God demonstrates this in the New Testament. For example:

-- We are one people group from many people groups. "[Y]ou once were not a people, but now you are the people of God" (I Peter 2:10).

-- We are in the same building. We "are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:19b-22).

-- We are in the same body. "[B]ut speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love" (Eph. 4:15-16).

We don't give up on others who have been rescued from sin because we belong together. We are bound together. We are being built up together. And all of us are advancing together toward Christ-likeness.

In the church, let's don't give up on anyone. Let's don't leave anyone behind.

-- Photo by María Victoria Heredia Reyes on Unsplash