ReForum: The Gospel & Ethnicity - Our Unity in Christ in a Divided World
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Introduction
Introduction
The ministry of reconciliation as demonstrated in the local church by the gathering of people from diverse backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities is the natural outworking of a rich covenantal theological commitment.
1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Ethnicity - a group of people with claims to a shared culture, history, or descent; who may also share language, social boundaries, and geographic location.
may also share language, social boundaries, and geographic location.49
In his essay titled, “Ethnicity and Social Identity,” Aaron Kuecker says,
In his essay titled, “Ethnicity and Social Identity,” Aaron Kuecker says,
it is certainly plausible to suggest that one of the most revolutionary effects of Christianity in its ancient contexts had to do with its impact on social groups at explicitly ethnic boundaries. For it is here that the vision of peace, so closely connected to the Old Testament and New Testament vision of the reign of God, was manifest socially.
Tucker, J. Brian. T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament (Kindle Locations 1593-1595). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
We are exposed in the book of Acts to the way Jesus began to work out his plan for his church by breaking it out of its Jewish only cultural identity. From his declaration to his apostles that when the Holy Spirit came upon them they would receive power and be his witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth; to Pentecost when Jews and proselytes from all over the Roman world heard the multi-lingual worship of God from the Spirit filled disciples
Tucker, J. Brian. T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament (Kindle Locations 1593-1595). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
ACTS2.
the way Jesus is working out his plan for his church by breaking it out of its Jewish only cultural identity.
To the shock and the drama that takes place in when Peter goes to Caesarea to the Roman centurion Cornelius’s house. And Cornelius’s family and friends are converted and became disciples of Jesus. We see the criticism Peter faces for having fellowship and eating with Gentiles. God is starting to add some new people, some different people, to the church. People who were so different that it disturbed the believers who were in Jerusalem.
shock and the drama that took place in chs 10-11 when Peter went to Caesarea to the Roman centurion Cornelius’s house. And his family and friends were converted and became disciples of Jesus. We saw the criticism Peter faced for having fellowship and eating with Gentiles. God is starting to add some new people, some different people, to the church. People who were so different that it disturbed the believers who were in Jerusalem.
Luke’s interests in the book of Acts often appear to be more thematic than chronologic; this theme of Jesus adding people to his church. In he skips back to the beginning of when the persecution started in Jerusalem. He says in vv. 19-20,
Now Luke takes us all the way back to the beginning of ch. 8 when the persecution started in Jerusalem. He’s not following a strict chronological order here, he’s following a theme order about how Jesus added these new people to the church. He says in vv. 19-20,
19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. 20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.
The Jerusalem church sends Barnabas, the son of encouragement - a Greek speaking Jewish Christian from Cyprus, to Antioch to find out what’s taking place.
Barnabas sees these new believers from the unclean Gentiles, this new international community, and it brings him joy and gladness because he recognizes the grace of God when he sees it. He goes to Tarsus to look for Saul. Brings him back, and they teach a great many people, Luke says. And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians.
Here we are again in the thee verses I read from chapter 13. Luke calling out the diverse background of the believers. They are a multi-ethnic group of prophets and teachers over the church in this multi-ethnic city. This is the group who, at the leading of the Holy Spirit, lays hands on and commissions Barnabas and Paul for their first missionary journey.
It’s not accidental, and therefore, it’s of great significance that we are continually met with the ethnic and national identities of people and groups. You see, when we talk about our unity in Christ in a divided world, we have to realized that this is actually what God is committed to. This is the Lord’s heart and plan from the beginning.
God’s Plan from the Beginning - Unity in Diversity
God’s Plan from the Beginning - Unity in Diversity
When God says in , “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on earth,” he was serious about all of it.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
GEN1.27-
The issuing of what is called the cultural mandate would have resulted in a rich diversity of cultural expressions all over the world as humanity bore witness to the creative genius of our God as his beautiful image. God is beautiful community in himself, unity in diversity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And in the humanity that images him, what we would have seen in the being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it, exercising dominion—what we would have seen without the Fall is a rich tapestry of humanity, spread out over all the, beautiful in unity and diversity, glorifying God in faithful obedience to him. I can’t put it any better than Herman Bavinck does when, in describing destiny of humanity in community, he rightly says,
“The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be…Only humanity in its entirety—as one complete organism, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation—only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God.”
The imago Dei is much to rich to be fully realized in a single human being—and I would add, in a single ethnic group or culture—no matter the richness of their gifting. You want to have a full vision of the image of God, you have to imaging the entirety of redeemed humanity, spread out over the whole earth, unity in diversity...
We need to grasp the truth that the fall of humanity into sin didn’t just corrupt us individually. Our corruption is corporate as well. So, relationships between individuals and relationships between groups are fractures, fraught with distrust, oppression, injustice.
Herman Bavinck describes our attempts at unity in our post-fall condition well when he says,
Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma
Among us unity exists only by attraction, by the will and the disposition of the will; it is a moral unity that is fragile and unstable.
Of God, however, he says this,
Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma
But in God both are present: absolute unity as well as absolute diversity. It is one selfsame being sustained by three hypostases. This results in the most perfect kind of community, a community of the same beings; at the same time it results in the most perfect diversity, a diversity of divine persons.
The Lord is committed to reversing the story our ethnically, racially, culturally fractured lives. He’s committed to reversing our ghetto living.
Reversing Our Ghetto Living
Reversing Our Ghetto Living
The last time humanity was completely unified is presented to us in
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
The last time we were unified, our unity was expressed in willful rebellion against God... Our sinful rebellion at Babel brought the Lord’s judgement and effectively created ghetto living. Now, I’m deeply embedded in my people group, and my sense of identity, value, and dignity comes from that group. And, by nature, my group is suspicious of, at best, and hostile toward, at worst, groups that are different. So systemic injustice and oppression was inevitably going to follow on the heels of the ghtettoization at Babel.
My point, however, is that the Lord is committed to reversing that ghettoization.
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Hear, in the call of Abraham, the Lord’s declaration that he’s providing the solution to the division of humanity that took place at Babel. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So, when we talk about Pentecost as the reversal of Babel, it’s the Lord fulfilling his promise that would come through the seed of Abraham.
My point is to put before us a heart for the same commitment that God has. Aaron Kuecker is helpful in describing the world of the NT when he writes,
[W]e can confidently state that the texts that comprise the New Testament were written into a world filled with competing ethnic identities where, at least episodically, ethnic antagonism reared its ugly head.
Into that world filled with competing ethnic identities, ethnic antagonism rearing its ugly head, the gospel breaks in. Into our world, where we still experience the competing identities and the antagonism, the same gospel breaks in.
Tucker, J. Brian. T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament (Kindle Locations 1649-1651). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Unity in Christ
Unity in Christ
This is Paul’s message to the church in that world filled with competing ethnic identities,
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
To unite, to sum up, all things in Christ—God’s plan for the fulness of time...
[The Church] is…a sign of a cosmic unity that all things are summed up in Christ, and the Church is to be the visible communion of human beings that anticipates that ultimate union of all things in Christ. It is a living sign; a community where that unity is already experienced in some degree…This is, in some respects, is the whole point of redemptive history. That God is going to knit back the human race in his Son. When the church fails to be that proleptic reality of the eschatological union of all things in Christ, then we are very deeply failing in the calling we’ve been given. - Peter Leithart
[The Church] is…a sign of a cosmic unity that all things are summed up in Christ, and the Church is to be the visible communion of human beings that anticipates that ultimate union of all things in Christ. It is a living sign; a community where that unity is already experienced in some degree…This is, in some respects, is the whole point of redemptive history. That God is going to knit back the human race in his Son. When the church fails to be that proleptic reality of the eschatological union of all things in Christ, then we are very deeply failing in the calling we’ve been given. - Peter Leithart