Based on Ephesians 2:1-10, evangelicals often define the gospel with reference to our reconciliation to God (see esp. “But God,” verse 4 famously begins, makes us alive in Christ and saves us by grace, say the following verses. Chapter 2 then begins by recalling the fact that we are all dead in our sins and separated from God (vv. Paul defines this mystery as the unification of all things in Christ (1:10) and “the gospel of your salvation” (1:13). The mystery of the gospel is an important theme in Ephesians (1:9-10). Let’s just consider Ephesians 2 and 3 for a moment. In order to understand what biblical racial reconciliation is and what it means for the church, Christians, first of all, need a better understanding of the relationship between the gospel and racial reconciliation. NEEDED: RELATING THE GOSPEL AND RACIAL RECONCILIATION Gospel-grounded racial reconciliation, after all, is supernatural, not natural. But none of these things depends upon a gospel-centered racial reconciliation. My wife and I hope to adopt a little girl from another country. I am in a multi-ethnic marriage with a Hispanic woman from Costa Rica. I long to be part of a multi-ethnic church. I have African-American, Native American, and Caucasian blood flowing through my veins. To clarify, I strongly desire, promote, and live for ethnic diversity in both church and society. To define racial reconciliation as simply diversity, or to think that our churches are racially reconciled simply because they might be diverse, is misleading. And then racial reconciliation shows itself in our love for the “other.” It flows from the Spirit-empowered obedience and demonstration of who we are in Christ. Racial reconciliation begins, in other words, with the “indicative” of who we are in Christ. He united one-time enemies to God and therefore to one another. Gospel-grounded racial reconciliation begins with what Christ accomplished at the cross. Yet such settings hardly enjoy the racial reconciliation of the gospel. An assembly of the United Nations is multi-ethnic and diverse, as is the army, or the local public high school, or so many other groups. But diversity is not the same as gospel-centered racial reconciliation and the goal of gospel-centered racial reconciliation is not simply diversity. I agree that gospel-grounded racial reconciliation produces multi-ethnic and diverse churches. Part of the problem is that evangelicals can confuse racial reconciliation with multi-ethnicity or diversity, and so they begin conversations about racial reconciliation with a push for multi-ethnic churches. RACIAL RECONCILIATION, NOT JUST DIVERSITY But the sad fact remains that not all Christians have always viewed race relations within the church as a gospel issue. Moreover, the salvation secured by Christ in the gospel is more comprehensive than justification alone: it brings repentance, wholeness, love for brothers and sisters in the Christian community. They might point out that God’s saving purpose is to draw to himself, through the cross, men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation that the church is one new humanity, made up of Jew and Gentile that Paul tells Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus as his brother, as the apostle himself that this trajectory starts at creation, with all men and women being made in the image of God, and finds its anticipation in the promise to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. But Carson continues,Ĭertainly the majority of Christians in America today would happily aver that good race relations are a gospel issue. To be sure, we should be extremely careful about referring to various issues as “gospel issues,” as D. Assuming the modern social construct of race, he strongly criticizes fellow evangelicals for suggesting, in light of the sad events in Ferguson, Missouri, that the Christian gospel speaks to issues of race and racial reconciliation. One white Southern Baptist pastor illustrates the point in his 2014 article “ I Don’t Understand the Evangelical Response to Ferguson,” where he argues that racial reconciliation is a social issue instead of a gospel issue. Michael Emerson and Christian Smith observe in Divided by Faith (Oxford, 2000) that evangelical Christians have traditionally viewed racial reconciliation and matters of race as a “social issue” instead of a “gospel issue.” However, there is hardly a Christian consensus regarding the church’s role in the work of racial reconciliation. I (an African-American) make this point in a book called One New Man, and biblical scholars Kenneth Mathews (European-American) and Sydney Park (Asian-American) make a similar point in The Post Racial Church. Some Christians propose that the gospel and gospel action can solve the current racial divide in the church. The relationship between the gospel and racial reconciliation has been a contested topic among evangelicals of late.
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