Why don’t y’all pass the bread? It has something to do with the Gospel of justification by faith alone. It has something to do with the fact that we are saved by grace through faith not of works lest anyone should boast. When we put race or class or any of these distinctions that we use to divide ourselves one from another in the place of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and use it as a filter for judging other people we are doing exactly what the Galatians did, exactly what Peter did in that relapse. We are denying the truth of the Gospel.
Act V: The Aftermath.
Now before this drama ends, I must take you to Galatians 3:26, to this famous text. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. . .” This passage that is often used, and I would say misused, for lots of reasons other than what it is really all about. This passage is grounded in one supreme fact. And that fact is in the preceding verse. “All of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Therefore, because this is true, then, consequently there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The unity that we have in Jesus is grounded in that to which our baptism testifies.
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Paul is here picking out the three “biggies” in human life: race, money, and sex. They dominate our culture, our entertainment business, our newspapers. This is what people talk about, it is what they think about, it is what they work every day of their life for: race, money, and sex. Now, there is nothing inherently sinfully about any one of these three things. There is nothing wrong with racial identity, with the fact that I am a Caucasian and my colleague Robert Smith is an African-American. God created us different. He did not make us all the same. God did not use a Xerox machine in the book of Genesis!
To think that racial reconciliation means homogenization is to misunderstand racial reconciliation. That is not what it is about. There is nothing wrong with racial identity. The problem comes when racial identity, whether it is white, black, brown, red, yellow or purple, gets demonized. Then it becomes racism. We use race as a pretext to separate and segregate ourselves one from another. Then it becomes a denial of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There is nothing wrong with money. God wants us to use money and use it wisely. He gives us the ability to make money and save money and provide for our family. There is nothing in the Bible against that. The lust of money is the root of all evil. But money is not evil — the Bible does not say that. Yet when money is corrupted by greed — when we begin to act like that fool who had many barns but wanted still more barns — then we are liable to hear what God said to him: “You fool! Tonight, it’s all up. Money is not going to help you now.” His wealth has been demonized into greed.