<p>3:28 <i>There can be neither Jew nor Gentile, there can be neither slave nor free, there can be no male and female</i><i>- for you all are one in Christ Jesus</i>- For Paul to calmly teach that baptism into Christ meant that there was now no longer differentiation between male and female, slave and free, Jew, Greek or any other ethnic group- this called&nbsp;into total question all the first century understandings of society. Indeed, the idea that Gentiles could become spiritual &quot;Jews&quot;, and that the Jews weren't the <i>real</i> children of Abraham, was an intentional reversal of the categories around which society had been built. Much of the early 'geography' of the first century involved stereotypical descriptions of ethnic and geographical groups, usually ending up with praising the Greco-Roman peoples as being superior in every way to all others. Yet this worldview, which was accepted even by the despised ethnic groups about themselves, had to be ended for those in Christ. Being in <i>Him</i> was to be their defining feature. This was equally radical for the Jews, who held themselves above these stereotypes about themselves. Contrary to what is often claimed, Paul went out of his way to show that contemporary views of women were unacceptable for those in the Lord. His teaching here is that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female, is surely conscious allusion to the Jewish traditional morning prayer for men: &ldquo;My God, I thank thee that I was not born a Gentile but a Jew, not a slave but a free man, not a woman but a man&rdquo;. He is surely saying that for those in Christ, the Jewish male world-view is unacceptable.</p><p>It was hard psychologically for Jews to convert to Christianity. There were elements of Christian teaching which were a direct affront to Judaism. Part of being&nbsp;a Christian was to expect to be treated by the Jews in just the same way as they had treated Jesus. The Sabbath was replaced with keeping the first day of the week for worship; the food laws were reduced by Paul&rsquo;s inspired teaching to parts of &ldquo;the weak and beggarly elements&rdquo;. The Jewish hatred of the Christians is revealed by the riots that ensued when the Gospel was preached in the synagogues, and in the persecution of the Christians at the hands of the Jews in Jerusalem, Damascus and in the Asian cities (according to the letters in Rev. 2,3). The insistence that Jewish converts be baptized would have been hard of acceptance; for Gentiles took just such a ritual bath when they converted to Judaism. &nbsp;For orthodox Jews to submit to baptism demanded a lot- for it implied they were not by birth part of the true Israel as they had once proudly thought. The Jews thought of Israel in the very terms which Paul applies to Jesus: &quot;We Thy people whom Thou hast honoured and hast called the Firstborn and Only-Begotten, Near and Beloved One&quot;. The New Testament uses these titles to describe the Lord Jesus Christ- and we must be baptized into Him in order to be in His Name and titles. The Lord Jesus was thus portrayed as Israel idealized and personified, all that Israel the suffering servant should have been; thus only by baptism into Christ of Jew and Gentile could they become part of the true seed of Abraham, the Israel of God (Gal. 3:27-29). The act of baptism into Christ is no less radical for us in our contexts today than it was for first century Jews. All we once mentally held dear, we have to give up.</p><p>Gal. 3:27-29 explains that through baptism into the Abrahamic covenant, there is a special unity between all in that covenant. Slave and free, male and female, Jew and Gentile are all thereby united, as they were in the early church. David Bosch comments: &quot;The revolutionary nature of the early Christian mission manifested itself, <i>inter alia</i>, in the new relationships that came into being in the community. Jew and Roman, Greek and barbarian, free and slave, rich and poor, woman and man, accepted one another as brothers and sisters. It was a movement without analogy, indeed a sociological impossibility&quot;. Likewise ecclesial life today can seem &quot;a sociological impossibility&quot;, but through the power of the most basic facts of the Gospel preached to Abraham, this incredible unity is possible. As a nexus &quot;without analogy&quot;, the true Christian community of itself ought to attract the attention of earnest men and women- just as the Lord predicted. Our unity should be the basis of our appeal to men. And yet our divided state is a tragic witness against us in this regard. Because there is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ means that in practice, amongst those that &quot;have put on the new man a reference to baptism into Christ&hellip; there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman clear allusion to Gal. 3:27-29. But Christ is all, and in all. Put on <i>therefore</i>&hellip; a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another and forgiving one another&quot; (Col. 3:10-13 RV). <i>These things</i> are what the promises to Abraham are all about in practice Because we are all now united in Christ in our status as Abraham's seed, <i>therefore</i> we must see to it that through kindness, patience etc. there really <i>is not</i> Jew and Greek, or division of any kind, between us.</p>