Two Messages from Paul

Listen to what Paul said about how Christ changes all the racial perspectives and prejudices we develop:

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:14–18).

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In the same way as he exhorted the church at Corinth, Paul reminded the Christians at Ephesus how Jesus had broken down the wall of prejudice dividing His people, and brought an end to the hostility that existed between the Jews and Gentiles of His day:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . . His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit (Ephesians 2:13–18).

The Bible, then, must be our source of racial identity, self-authentication, and racial peace,

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which must replace racial pride. When we find our true racial identity in the Bible through creation and through Christ, then we are freed from both racial inferiority and racial superiority that came through the corruption of our sin.

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