But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:13
Nowadays, on a good highway, it would take a traveller little more than an hour to make the 65 km trip from Jerusalem to Sychar in Samaria. But during the days when Jesus walked this earth, it would – and did – take Him at least two days to make the trip by foot. It would be the equivalent of a good many hundreds of kilometers by car. The Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well of Sychar was undoubtedly thinking of that great distance when she told Him: ‘Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and Ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship’ (John 4:20). Even today, the Samaritans believe that Mount Gerizim is the place where Abraham offered up Isaac as a sacrifice to God, and is the place where God intended His people to gather. They even have Scripture for it: ‘And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal’ – Deuteronomy 11:29. So the Samaritan woman had an interesting argument to put before Jesus. As far as she was concerned, the Samaritans were afar off from the Jews both geographically and religiously. As today’s text reminds us, we also used to be afar off from the Jews and from God. Among other things, there was a cloud, a mountain, and a gulf that separated us.
The cloud that separated us from God was ignorance. We neither knew God, nor cared to know Him. We were in the dark about Him and His character; and when we did make guesses concerning God, they were so wide of the truth that they did not help to bring us at all near to Him. It took the blood of Christ to dispel that cloud and to bring us into a saving knowledge of our Saviour and a nearness to our God.
With great effort and preparation, men (and a few women) have scaled the heights of the Himalayans, the highest mountains of earth. But the soaring mountain of our sins that kept us afar from God was far beyond the power of any of us to scale. But the blood of Christ, shed for us on Mount Golgotha, has both scaled and obliterated that great mountain of sin, and we are brought nigh to God.
The great gulf that was so terrible for the former rich man in hell (Luke 16:26) and became apparent when he landed there actually existed while he was still faring sumptuously on earth. That great gulf of divine wrath also existed for us before we were saved. But its eternal impassibility was removed by the One Who entered into death for us, allowing His blood to bridge the gulf and bring us nigh.
Even now, we are unable to calculate how afar off from God we used to be. We also can’t calculate how nigh to God we have been made. But we can appreciate the blood of Christ that has accomplished it. -Jim MacIntosh