Extreme Makeover in Race Relations — UHD 14:6

Racist attitudes in North American churches persist. Sometimes blacks and whites are suspicious of each other.  Skin-color or physical appearance is not the only factor that puts up walls between ethnic groups. The language barrier makes some Americans feel like they’re living in a foreign country.  Some Koreans and Hispanics have their own churches.  The pain of feeling uncomfortable at church seems to be the main barrier for most people of any nationality.

Highly charged racial tension existed in NT times too, between Jews & Gentiles.  Herod’s Temple compound in Jerusalem had an outer court that was referred to as the Court of the Gentiles. Gentiles were excluded from entering into any of the inner courts by signs in Greek and Latin that warned that the penalty for trespassing by any Gentile was death.  Jews avoided Gentiles.

The Jews’ attitude to Gentiles was based on misuse of God’s Mosaic law.  God did make a clear distinction between Israel and the Gentiles in his OT instructions.  God favors one ethnic group, Israel, more than others.  When Jesus began his ministry he instructed his disciples, “Don’t go to the Gentiles, go to lost sheep of Israel…”

Ephesians 2:11-22 teaches that God temporarily suspended his racial preference when he formed the Church.  Though God still has a future for ethnic Israel after the rapture of the Church, right now God put aside those racial preferences to create unity ethnically. This is not God’s eternal intention, however. The Church does not replace Israel. God made promises to the nation of Israel that included land and descendants forever that are not yet fulfilled.  God will keep his promises made to Israel in the future, but for now, God set up racial equality in the Church.

The fact of racial equality in the Church does not mean that everyone in the Church is equal.  We tend to believe that Abraham Lincoln was right to say “all men are created equal.” This statement by Lincoln was designed to recognize that any human being from any race is created by God in the image of God.  His intent was not to say everyone is equal in position or roles.  That would contradict his position of authority as President of the United States.  Perhaps Lincoln’s words fuel broad egalitarian philosophy for Christian thinking today.  Equality in Jesus Christ does not mean that everyone is equally mature or wise.  Equality in Christ does not require that official positions of leadership or authority be eliminated.

What God did was temporarily break down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles to build a racially unified Church.

At this point in history, God set aside or temporarily removed His racial preference for Israel to create ethnic unity in the Church.  God now includes Gentiles with Jews to build a racially unified Church in an extreme relational makeover.