Now that the wall is down, the servants of Christ are called to crawl over the rubble with the message of salvation. It is comfortable to stay in the sphere of people like ourselves, seeking refuge in a familiar ghetto of Christian contacts. But we cannot wait for non-Christians to cross the culture gaps, to scale the walls to get to know us well enough to see Christ’s grace in our lives...We who have experienced this grace are the ones who must climb the walls, build the bridges, and suffer the stresses of culture shock. People who know Jesus must pay the price to pierce the barriers between peoples.Josh and I know that we have a long way to go before we can truly say we have crawled over any rubble, but that is the desire of our hearts and we believe that there will definitely be some rubble crawling within our family in the not-too-distant future, as the Lord leads.
-Dennis E. Johnson
This is also the essence of the reason we have chosen to sign the letter to Bob Jones University pleading with them to to make an attempt to reconcile their sad past when it comes to race relations. As graduates of this school, we are saddened by the realization that often, our association with it is a blight against our testimony as bearers of the gospel, specifically because it is a school that claims to exalt Christ.
God is creating one new people in Christ, a people reconciled to each other across racial lines. Not strangers, not aliens, no enmity. Not far off. And He did this at the cost of His Son’s life. We love (rightly so) to dwell on our vertical reconciliation with God through the death of His Son. It is precious beyond measure—to have peace with God (Romans 5:9-10)—BUT LET US ALSO DELIGHT TO DWELL ON THIS: God ordained the death of His Son to reconcile alien people groups to each other in one body in Christ. This TOO was the design of the death of Jesus. Jesus died to take away enmity and disgust and suspicion and fear and malice and indifference from your heart toward all persons who are in Christ by faith, whatever their race!
Any unwillingness to embrace those of other ethnicities and nations mars our Gospel witness to a watching world and hinders the world from believing in Jesus. God intends His people to be a visual model of the Gospel, to demonstrate before people’s eyes the good news of reconciliation. How can we proclaim that Jesus by his cross abolished the old divisions, while at the same time contradicting our message by promoting or tolerating racial / social or other barriers in our fellowship?
-Carl Robbins in a sermon on the Multi-Ethnic Family of God (Eph. 2:11-3:6)
Together for the Gospel Affirmations & Denials Article XVII says this:
We affirm that God calls his people to display his glory in the reconciliation of the nations within the Church, and that God’s pleasure in this reconciliation is evident in the gathering of believers from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. We acknowledge that the staggering magnitude of injustice against African-Americans in the name of the Gospel presents a special opportunity for displaying the repentance, forgiveness, and restoration promised in the Gospel. We further affirm that evangelical Christianity in America bears a unique responsibility to demonstrate this reconciliation with our African-American brothers and sisters.It is time to stop making excuses, to stop debating whether or not reconciliation is needed. It is time to recognize that everything fades in light of the fact that Jesus was crushed by God His Father and equal in the Trinity, so that people of every ethnicity on the planet could join together in the unity of His body and be called the children of God and co-heirs with Christ.
We deny that any church can accept racial prejudice, discrimination, or division without betraying the Gospel.
The letter is scheduled to be mailed this Wednesday, November 19th, so if you are desiring to participate, the time is now.
Related Posts:
Ethiopia
John Piper on Interracial Marriage
Mixed Emotions (10 days later)
Posts
Oh man, Loraena! That was a GOOD post, and I wish I had read it sooner! : ( I just haven't had time on blogs...to really read them! I would have posted this AND sent it to my sister! I'm assuming the letter is mailed??
THANK YOU for fighting for racial reconciliation to the glory of God! Praise Him!
My understanding is that signatures coming in after the deadline will not be included on the hard copy being mailed, but the website is still up and people are still signing! =)