One new man

ONE NEW MAN HE Colour problem in South Africa-referred to at length in this issue-is but one of the many tensions of our time which may be regarded as symptomatic of a diseased and decadent civilisation.

Everywhere in the world barriers are to be found between men and peoples, some of them racial and national, others cultural and ideological.

As far as the Christian Church is concerned this is no new situation.

In New Testament times the uwaJl of partition" which confronted the Church and threatened its very exis~ tence as a universal fe1Iowship was that between Jew and Gentile. And there was onlY one force which ultimately proved powerful enough to demolish the partition and reconcile the two opposing elements. That force was the gospel of a crucified Saviour.

So the apostle Paul writes: "For He is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the divi~ ding wall of hostility . . . that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace" (Ephesians 2. !4, 15, R.S.V.).

One new man l Here is the Christian answer to the problems of disunity and the quest for peace. Not two men-the Jew and the Gentile, the black and the white, the privileged and the unprivileged-but one new man. It is this which gives the lie to the world's accepted dictum, "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." That js true-outside of Christ. In Christ it is not true. The same Cross which reconciles both to God also reconciles both to each other. "Ye are all one man in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3.

28, R.V.).

The Church must stand firm here or it ceases to be the Church. In the end the colour bar is not a racial or political problem. It is a theological and spiritual problem. It touches the very heart of the Christian gospel.

That gospel, so the Church professes, is a gospel of reconciliation. The world has a right to question that claim and to inquire in all honesty, If the gospel is not big enough to reconcile man to man, is it really big enough to reconcile man to God?