christianity

Social Justice and the Gospel: 5 – Corporate Repentance and Racial Reconciliation

It was previously stated that a primary concern of the Social Justice movement, as it manifests in the church, is ethnic or racial equality. The charge of ethnic inequality, which is synonymous with ethnic injustice, which is synonymous with racism, occurs not at an individual level but at a corporate level. This is not to say that racism does not exist at the individual level, but it is to say that there is a more pervasive version of racism corporately. Social Justice is far more concerned with corporate racism than individual racism, and therefore Social Justice is far more concerned with corporate repentance than individual repentance. The Social Justice term often used to describe corporate repentance is “racial reconciliation”.

Before we discuss corporate racial reconciliation, let us look at repentance at an individual level.

Repenting of Racist Thoughts

If a man has a racist thought and he keeps it to himself and has no racist words or deeds against anyone, then repentance would be taking such thoughts captive and not thinking such things in the future.

Repenting of Racist Words

If a man utters racist words, then repentance would be going to the person the words were spoken to and asking for forgiveness. It would be assumed that in asking for forgiveness the person is truly sorry and is not just attempting to save face. There would be an expectation of forgiveness in the event of a truly repentant apology, per the command of Christ:

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18: 21 – 22)

The gospel is demonstrated vividly in both the giving of a repentant apology and the receiving of it, for this is how God deals with us. When we come in true repentance to Christ, He truly receives it and forgives us our sins. The command to forgive up to seventy times seven is a direct attack against the natural desire of carnal man, who seeks disproportionate vengeance:

Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me; If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4: 23 – 24)

Repenting of Racist Deeds

Because there are so many forms a racist deed could take, it is hard to detail repentance at an individual level. But it is quite possible repentance will need to be more than words – a repentant deed may need to follow a racist deed. This pattern is seen in the ministry of John the Baptist:

And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.” Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.” (Luke 3: 12 – 14)

John gave the people deeds appropriate to repentance, based on their specific circumstances. The same would hold true with a racist deed – if property were defaced or stolen based on racism, it would need to be repaired or returned. If an opportunity was taken away from someone based on racism, then repentance would be providing that opportunity again. The point is, there is a close relationship between the sin committed and the deeds that may be required to fulfill repentance.

Repenting Corporately

Now that we have briefly examined repentance at an individual level, we can turn to corporate racial reconciliation. Because the Social Justice definition of racism does not require individuals to have explicitly racist words, thoughts, or deeds, racial reconciliation does not look like the individual repentance we just walked through, where there is a clear sin and a clear person being sinned against. Instead, racial reconciliation focuses on altering policies and procedures. After all, if there is no explicit racism occurring at an individual level, then the racism that exists is to be found in the policies and procedures of those who make up the corporate body of racists. And what if there are no explicitly racist policies and procedures? Then the policies and procedures are implicitly racist by what they omit rather than by what they contain.

Do not take my word for this view of racial reconciliation. Instead, consider this sample from Christian leaders:

Matt Chandler, lead pastor of the Village Church, famously said he would hire an “African American 7” over an “Anglo 8” to ensure diversity on his staff. He then said he would not hire an “African American 6” over an “Anglo 8” because he wouldn’t want to be accused of tokenism. ¹
Latasha Morrison, author of best-selling book Be The Bridge, tells the story of an affluent white lawyer who purchased a plantation so that he could give tours and run a museum that highlighted the horrors of slavery that had occurred on that plantation and elsewhere. ²
Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick Fil A, shined the shoes of Christian hip hop artist Lecrae during a panel discussion on race. ³
Russell Moore, head of the ERLC, said that worship styles might need to change so that the music sung on a Sunday morning or the liturgy adhered to would not be as white and segregating. ⁴
Beth Moore said that one needs to add more authors of color to their personal theological library, since Jesus was not white. ⁵
Pastor Eric Mason, author of the popular Woke Church, said that all blacks should get free college tuition for the next 200 years⁶

None of what has just been detailed in regards to racial reconciliation was an individual case of someone repenting of an explicitly racist sin. What was just detailed were procedural changes to routines and habits and customs in order to promote racial reconciliation. In the examples presented, the sins were not ones of commission, but rather omission. If you don’t intentionally hire people of color to your church staff, you are racist. If you don’t actively engage in highlighting the horrors of slavery, you are racist. If your worship songs are not diverse enough in sound and style, you are racist. If all the theological books you own are written by white people, you are racist.

If this whole thing seems odd to you, it should. The call to corporate repentance of all whites in the American church is a call based on no particular revelation from God, but on theological, economic, and sociological conjecture. The prescribed deeds of repentance are based on no particular revelation from God, but on the arbitrary whims of those speaking in the movement.

As one thinks about corporate repentance and racial reconciliation, one must ask, can a church in Seattle, Washington really be lumped together with a church in Montgomery, Alabama? Does God set aside all cultural relevancies and boundaries and charge all white Americans to corporately repent, for being white in America? In a country the size of America, with its diversity of cultures and ideas, it would seem hard to accuse an entire group of people with sin based on their skin color alone. Perhaps we can gain perspective by peering at the seven churches of Revelation. Christ viewed them, and named them, regionally. Jesus did not charge the “Church of Asia Minor” with sin. He spoke to seven distinct corporate bodies within Asia Minor, and charged each of them with sins relevant to themselves. Ephesus did not have to answer for Smyrna’s sins, and Smyrna did not have to answer for Pergamum’s sins. Each church was held to account for its own sin. There was no singular indictment made against the Church of Asia Minor.

To conclude, Social Justice has presented an argument for corporate repentance based on a multiplicity of conjecture. None of the key premises of the framework are proven facts. Much of the argument can be classified as a Third Commandment violation, since many of the premises could only be truthfully validated with divine revelation. Here again as reminder are the unproven facts of Christian Social Justice, which require divine revelation to be proven true:

God has charged white American Christians with racism
God uses the definition of racism that has been developed by Social Justice Advocates and Critical Race Theorists
God has given the ability to define corporate repentance to the Social Justice movement
God expects the white American Christians He has charged with racism to participate in racial reconciliation as defined by the Social Justice movement

There is one more bizarre premise undergirding corporate repentance which was not listed above. It is called generational sin and will be discussed in the next post. For now, as we think about all these things, let us focus our mind on the Third Commandment and be sure that whatever we believe about Social Justice, that we do not put words into God’s mouth. How horrible it would be to charge someone with sin that has not sinned. And how horrible would it be to mandate deeds of repentance that God has not mandated.

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. (Exodus 20: 7)

The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works. (The Westminster Shorter Catechism)

You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise and give thanks. (Luther’s Small Catechism)

This statement is excerpted from his sermon A House Divided Cannot Stand and starts around the 25:35 mark.
Chapter 4, pages 70 – 71
This starts around the 38:57 mark of the dialogue titled The Beloved Community
Let’s Crucify Our Worship Styles
This is a secondary source quotation, as the primary source is Twitter and I could not find the original conversation. The quote starts shorty after the 12:20 mark of The Dividing Line
The call for free college tuition was part of a sermon titled A Biblical Case For Reparations

Social Justice and the Gospel: 4 – The Corporate Sin of Racism

Matthew Hall, provost of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said this:

I am a racist…I’m going to struggle with racism and white supremacy until the day I die. ¹

Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church, said this, when writing on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination:

My white neighbors and Christian brethren can start by at least saying their parents and grandparents and this country are complicit in murdering a man who only preached love and justice. ²

When you combine the statements of these two men, what you have is the provost of a leading American seminary being a self-confessed racist and white supremacist whose parents and grandparents were complicit in the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

How can this be? And how can this man not be immediately disqualified from pastoral ministry? He is in clear violation of the requirements of an elder:

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity… 1 Timothy 3: 2 – 4

It is possible for a man to be a self-confessed racist and not be disqualified from ministry because of the doctrine of corporate sin, which plays a major role in Social Justice. Let us define corporate sin as this:

Sin committed by a body (corporation) of people.

As we consider the quotes from Hall and Anyabwile, the corporate body being referenced is white Americans and the sins are racism, white supremacy, and murder. In other words, they are implying that white America as a group is racist and has shed innocent blood. Before we discuss the particular claims of Hall and Anyabwile, we need to look more generally at the concept of corporate sin, for it is a Biblical teaching.

In the New Testament, we see corporate sin in Jesus’ messages to the seven churches in Revelation. Consider the message to Sardis:

Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. (Revelation 3: 2 – 4)

Jesus rebukes the church of Sardis as a whole, telling it to repent. Jesus also states that there are some people in Sardis excluded from this corporate rebuke (the ones not soiled). And thus we derive from this example two fundamental principles:

Entire bodies of people can be charged by God with sin
Even if an entire body is charged with sin, there can be individuals within that body who are exempt from the charge.

We see these two principles at play in the Old Testament. The prophets of God, preaching to Israel to repent, were not individually considered transgressors of the covenant and were not individually responsible for the sins charged to the corporate body of Israel, sins which ultimately resulted in exile. When Israel was worshipping Baal instead of God, and the prophet Elijah came against them, he and others were exempt from the corporate sin of idolatry:

It shall come about, the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall put to death. Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him. (1 Kings 19: 17 – 18)

Biblically speaking, corporate sin does not exist without individual sin. A corporate body, or (using today’s vernacular) a system, is simply a collection of individuals; their words, their thoughts, their deeds. If there is corporate racism, then there must be individual racism. If there is not individual racism then there cannot be corporate racism. And the proof of this is that anywhere in Scripture where you find God charging a corporate body with sin, the individuals in that body have committed that sin. Nowhere does God charge an innocent man with a sin he didn’t commit or an innocent body of people with a sin they didn’t commit.

It must be pointed out this view of corporate sin is in opposition to a view of corporate sin held by Social Justice Advocates, who tell us that you can have corporate sin without individual sin. Corporations and systems in the Social Justice framework seem to exist as sentient beings with their own sins and biases. Because the self-sentient system acts as the covenantal head for all the individuals within the particular system, its sins and biases then get imputed to the individuals, whether or not an individual actually has that particular sin or bias. It is as if the system is Adam and the individuals within the system are Adam’s descendants, afflicted with original sin. And so to summarize what has just been said, we see major differences in the definition of corporate sin between the Bible and Social Justice. The Bible starts with individuals, and if enough individuals in a group have committed a sin then a charge of corporate sin can be levied. Social Justice starts with abstractly defined “systems”, and then imputes the sins of the systems to the individuals within the system.

Now that we have this understanding of corporate sin from a Biblical and Social Justice perspective, we must point out that the Bible does not provide explicit detail for making a charge of corporate sin. This is a very key point for the day in which we find ourselves. The Sardis church knew it was in sin because it received the words of Jesus from an apostle. How does your congregation know God has charged it with a corporate sin? How do you know whether your church is on the cusp of having a lampstand removed due to transgression? Does God base a charge of corporate sin on the percentage of people committing a certain sin? Is it based on who within the body commits the sin (lay person vs elder)? In the Levitical system the leaders had to offer a more expensive sacrifice than the laity, when sin was committed. If that principle carries forward, we could expect a judgment on a body of people if the leaders are especially corrupt, even though the laity may not be.

In the absence of divine revelation, the best we can do in the church is to examine ourselves. When there are clear violations of God’s commands, a body of people can charge themselves corporately with sin, and when the violations are clear it is probably safe to suppose that God agrees with the judgment. Using the topic of corporate racism as an example, let us say that a white congregation turned away black visitors because they were black. If the visitors were turned away publicly and everyone knew about it and no one stood up in the moment to defend God’s truth, then the entire body would be liable. And if the congregation realized their sin, they could corporately repent to God and ask for corporate forgiveness. This is a clear corporate violation of God’s commands.

What Matthew Hall and Thabiti Anyabwile are calling racism is not such a clear violation of God’s commands. When Matthew Hall says he is a racist and white supremacist he is not comparing words or thoughts or deeds that he has and pointing them to a law of God in Scripture and demonstrating a violation of that law. Instead, he is accepting and agreeing with the Social Justice definition of corporate sin and corporate racism – the kind espoused by the now infamous book White Fragility. In this pagan definition of racism, the powerful oppressor class is inherently racist, because it inherently oppresses the weaker classes. In America, the powerful oppressor class is made of up whites. Therefore, to be white is to be racist. Matthew Hall is white, so Matthew Hall is racist. And in regards to Thabiti’s accusation that all of the white people of yesteryear are complicit in MLK’s murder, it is made on the same basis. The whites of yesteryear were the power class and therefore inherently racist and therefore inherently complicit in the murder of MLK. These Christian leaders are making charges of corporate sin not based on a careful examination of Scripture and thoughtful application of individual sin versus corporate sin, but by accepting the premises and conclusions provided by Social Justice.

What has been said thus far is the tip of the iceberg in regards to the Biblical doctrine of corporate sin, and how one might apply that doctrine to the American population as a whole and the American church as a subset, past and present. In the absence of divine revelation, such as the kind given to the prophet Elijah or to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation, how does a Christian speak on behalf of God and charge Christian groups with corporate sin? The Bible does not explicitly state the mind of God on the matter, and therefore any discussion of the applicability of corporate sin is inherently an argument of inference and induction.

As Christians who are required to think and act truthfully, there MUST BE grace and patience when debating charges of corporate sin that are by their nature inductive and inferential, when clear violations of God’s commands are lacking. If Matthew Hall wants to declare himself a racist and a white supremacist for simply being a white American, and if Thabiti Anyabwile wants to say all white Americans are guilty of MLK’s murder, where is the evidence to go along with the accusation? I am not going to call myself a racist simply because they or Robin DiAngelo tell me to.

Let us remember that the Bible teaches corporate racism cannot exist without individual racism. And regarding racism, which fits under the Biblical sin of partiality, James has these words for us today. And if we each follow them, we can be assured there will be no corporate charge of partiality against us:

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (James 2: 1 – 9)

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IiKCYSevDU

² https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/await-repentance-assassinating-dr-king/

Social Justice and the Gospel: 3 – Justice Requires Disciplined Biblical Thinking

Unlike the world, the Christian is not allowed to take shortcuts in thinking when examining issues and coming to conclusions and calls to action. We are not allowed to take justice into our own hands, like the rioters and looters we have seen in the wake of the George Floyd killing. There is no logical or justice-based connection between what happened to George Floyd and destroying privately owned business or stealing goods from privately owned companies or murdering people in the vicinity of the riots and protests. The rioting and looting and murders are complete non-sequiturs. And even if one says the rioting and looting and murders were not only in response to the George Floyd incident, but also in response to historic widespread police brutality or racist-based policing, even then destroying privately owned businesses and stealing goods from privately owned companies and murdering people are complete non-sequiturs.

But we expect such thinking and action from unbelievers, for they are operating out of darkness. As people of the light, however, such thinking and action should not exist within our churches. If there is anything true within Social Justice, then we ought to be able to find it in the Bible in some legitimate way, and the call to action ought to make sense in comparison to the sin and injustice being addressed. There are illegitimate ways to tie things to the Bible, such as stating that because Jesus turned over tables in the temple and destroyed private property that angry rioters can do the same. We do not want that type of Biblical exposition undergirding our pursuit of Social Justice. Superficial and unsound Biblical arguments are, in essence, taking God’s name in vain and making Him say things He isn’t saying.

In my prior post, I examined the doctrine of ethnic diversity in the local church body. I chose that topic intentionally to demonstrate how easy it is to think a concept is Biblical (that neighborhood demographics should dictate congregational diversity) when in fact it is not. I presented a deductive argument, which means that if the premises of the argument are true, then the conclusion is necessarily true. There is no way the conclusion can be false if the premises are true. Here is a reminder of the argument presented:

Premises

The Bible says God will save from every tribe, tongue, people and nation (Revelation 5: 9).
The Bible does not say that God will save an equal number of people from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.
The Bible does not say that God will save an equal percentage of people from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.

Conclusions

The Bible does not say how many people God will save from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.
Because the Bible does not say how many people God will save from each tribe, tongue, people and nation, we cannot say with Biblical certainty what the ethnic makeup of a particular local church body should be.

In light of this deductive argument, if someone wants to debate the ethnic makeup of a particular congregation, they are leaving the realm of deductive Biblical argumentation and are either expressing their own opinions or are inferring things from Scripture that may or may not be true.

Understanding the type of argument being presented is essential to properly responding to the various claims of Social Justice Advocates within the church. If there are explicit Biblical commands to do something or not to do something that are being ignored by the church, then indeed repentance is in order and we should thank the Social Justice movement for pointing such things out. But if Social Justice Advocates are prescribing actions based on their own opinions or inferences from Scripture that are debatable, then they ought to be recognized as such. The Christian is under no obligation to repent of a sin or injustice deriving from man’s opinion or a debatable inferential argument. We should repent of real sins based on God’s real word.

It is no small task to control one’s mind and think in a disciplined manner that is faithful to Scripture, especially when the subject matter is difficult. The Social Justice movement is raising issues and calls to action that are of a complex nature, and the current state of the American church today has trouble dealing with issues far less complex. Private biblical illiteracy and public pulpits that provide less than robust teaching have put many people in a position to not deal well in turbulent times such as this. But whether the times are good or bad, we are always required to compare all claims to the word of God. We are to accept what comports with Scripture and to reject that which does not. We must always let Scripture speak to us, and we ought not to be the ones telling Scripture what to say.

As we continue to work our way through various Social Justice topics, let us keep this admonition close to our hearts:

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority. (Colossians 2: 6 – 10)

Social Justice and the Gospel: 2 – Ethnic Diversity in the Local Church

To start our examination of Social Justice, I wanted to look at the doctrine of ethnic diversity in the local church. No Biblical Christian, understanding how Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2: 14), would oppose a diverse church congregation. A Biblical Christian would desire it and appreciate it when it can be found. So if you oppose the very idea of ethnic diversity in a local church body, you are without a doubt in sin.

In light of the real sin of opposing ethnic diversity, there are those who have contrived a sin related to this topic. Consider this quote from someone in a high position at a para-church organization:

If a church is not at least as diverse as the community that church is in, then that church is not a part of the solution to the problem, that church is part of the problem.

This brief quote illustrates one of the main concerns of Social Justice: ethnic equality. And regarding the topic at hand, it is not enough to desire an ethnically diverse congregation, a congregation must intentionally strive for diversity or it is part of the problem. In other words, congregations that are not diverse are in sin.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it assumes, but does not prove, that Scripture mandates an ethnically diverse local congregation. So we will do the yeoman’s work and go to the Scripture. The idea of a mandated ethnically diverse congregation is a misunderstanding and misapplication of Revelation 5:9:

Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Because the eternal kingdom will be a diverse body consisting of all peoples, Social Justice Advocates infer that local church congregations should also consist of every tribe and tongue and people and nation represented in its neighborhood. In other words, if a congregation is 80% white, and the neighborhood it resides in is 50% white, 20% black, 30% Chinese, there is a fundamental problem with that church, because whites are overrepresented and non-whites are underrepresented.

Even though Revelation most definitely says that God will purchase men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and that a multi-ethnic eternity will be a glorious thing, it does not provide demographic data to inform our current milieu. Yes – all tribes and tongues and peoples and nations will be represented, but we have no idea what the representation looks like. Some groups could number in the millions while others in the hundreds or thousands. We don’t even know the list of tribes and tongues and peoples and nations that God goes by. We understand the general categories being referenced but we are not able to peer into the Divine Mind and understand the taxonomy God applies to all the peoples that have ever lived.

With that being said, even though hard data from eternity is lacking to inform our present day, we are nevertheless able to abstractly think about three ways God could populate eternity. One thing to keep in mind is that this present sinful age is not going to be able to do better than what God will have achieved in the perfected eternal age. A misunderstanding about eternity will necessarily result in a misunderstanding about the church today regarding diversity. So here are the three ways:

God will save an equal number from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
God will save an equal percentage from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
God will neither save an equal number nor an equal percentage from every tribe, tongue, people and nation

Regardless of the particular ethnic composition of an individual congregation at any given time, the final end-time diversity will be achieved by one of these three means – there are no other options. Now let us look a little bit at each one.

God Saves an Equal Number

Let us suppose that God saves an equal number of people from each tribe and tongue and people and nation. In doing so, the smaller groups have a higher percentage saved and the larger groups have a lower percentage saved. Additionally, the number of people saved per group is limited by the overall population of the smallest group (if God saves an equal number of people, then that number cannot exceed the total population of the smallest group).

Refer to the table below to see how this plays out:

Tribe	Total Population	People Saved	% Saved
1	10	10	100
2	20	10	50
3	30	10	33
4	100	10	10

The implication of this method of salvation is that the local church today would not be expected to match the diversity of the local community. If God is calling people at an equal number, rather than at an equal rate, then there will be under-representation of the majority of people, and over-representation of the minority of people.

Regarding this model, we know from history it is not the one God is using. Other than Uriah, how many Hittites do you think will be represented in the new earth? Is God’s ability to save from the billions alive today limited by the number of Hittites He chose to save thousands of years ago? Certainly not. There is nothing in Scripture that would allow us to assert such a thing.

God Saves an Equal Percentage

Moving on then, if God does not save an equal number of people, let us suppose that He saves an equal percentage of people. This is the position of those who want the local church to mirror its neighborhood. Here is what that would look like:

Tribe	Total Population	% of Total Population	% Saved	People Saved	% of Total Church Population
1	10	7.69	10	1	7.69
2	20	15.39	10	2	15.39
3	100	76.92	10	10	76.92

Although this method would result in the diversity the Social Justice Advocate desires, it limits God’s ability to save. If a congregation must equal the diversity of its community, then God must save people in accordance with demographic data. In other words, if it is God’s intent that a specific congregation matches the diversity of its community, then God is limited to saving people by the demographic data of the community.

Is this a position someone wanting to stick to the Scripture would hold onto? That the eternal plan of salvation is intimately tied to neighborhood demographic data, as if the demographic held more sway over salvation then God’s own free will? There is nothing in Scripture that would allow one to assert God has self-imposed this limiting factor to His gospel plan.

God Does Not Save An Equal Number or Percentage (He Saves as He Pleases)

We have looked at two models of salvation, each of which limits God’s ability to save: God must either save people at an equal number, to ensure all people groups are equally represented, or God must save people at an equal percentage, to ensure the kingdom of heaven matches the demographic diversity of the kingdom of darkness. Both have been briefly discussed and eliminated from consideration as being a Biblical doctrine. There are no explicit references to such limiting factors and they cannot be inferred from Scripture.

This leaves us with the third possibility, and since it is the only remaining one, we know it is the one consistent with Scripture. This third way supposes that God neither saves people in equal number nor in equal percentage. There are no limiting factors placed on God. God is able to save as He pleases: whoever He wants, whenever He wants, however He wants. Per Revelation 5:9 God wants to, and will, save from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. But this course of action is completely untethered from regional demographic data. The demographic data plays no role in deciding who God will choose to save.

Conclusion

We have just undertaken a Biblical examination of ethnic diversity in the local church body. And the summary of it is this: since we have no idea the actual numbers of people populating the eternal categories of tribe, tongue, people, and nation, we are unable to make any pertinent Biblical application of Revelation 5: 9 to a local church body. The caveat is, of course, that any lack of diversity resulting from racism is a sin and needs to be repented of.

If a church body does not match its neighborhood, and if minority groups are not turned away at the door by majority groups simply because they are minorities, then who is going to throw a stone at that church and tell them to repent for being too mono-ethnic? One must be able to correlate a lack of diversity to a particular sin within the church body – otherwise one is railing against God’s providential assembling of that congregation.

I for one drive by an all-Vietnamese church and praise God that the gospel went to Vietnam, that the gospel went to Vietnamese Americans, and I have no reason to think they are intentionally segregating themselves from other ethnicities because of prejudice. It would actually take me going to that church and asking questions to find out if they are in sin. And the same holds true for a black church or a white church.

There is much more that could be said, but I will stop for now. If you disagree with this argument, and think that sitting in a church that does not match a neighborhood demographic is inherently problematic, then I encourage you to post comments and rebut what has been presented. Considering a web search of “church diversity” yields 109,000,000 results, this is no small topic and I imagine much of what has been presented here is disagreeable to many.

The Biblical Adam: 2 – Was There A Literal First Man?

Regardless of how one interprets the Genesis account of the creation of Adam, one thing is certain: unless there arose multiple human males at exactly the same time, there was a literal first man. If we use a hundred-yard dash as an analogy, there was either one man who won the race or there was a tie for first. Since we have men now, we know that the race was completed – but was there a clear single victor or a tie for first?

If for the sake of argument we accept evolution as being true, the idea that multiple human males evolved from non-human to human at exactly the same time, not even separated by a nanosecond, is highly improbable. So improbable, in fact, that the burden of proof unquestionably falls on the person who should want to oppose a literal first man. Therefore, in the absence of evidence that would cause us to accept the proposition that multiple human males evolved at exactly the same time, what the Bible says about the matter agrees with the soundest conclusion of science – there was a literal first man. And we can apply the same logic to women and conclude there was a literal first woman.

So in this simplest formulation of the argument – if all we mean by Adam and Eve is that there was a man and a woman who were the first of a sequence of men and women – the Bible and evolutionary science agree that there was a literal Adam and a literal Eve. But this is where the agreement ends. For sure, the crux of the debate is not about whether there was a literal first man and a literal first woman. The crux of the debate is about whether the Bible accurately describes the details of the first man and first woman.

The Biblical Adam: 1 – Prologue

If we think of the topic of the Biblical Adam as a boxing match, in one corner of the ring are Christians who believe the Genesis account of Adam is a biography, and in the other corner are secular evolutionists who believe humans evolved and Genesis is rubbish. But in the middle of the ring stands a third contestant – the Christian evolutionist. They don’t find belief in a literal Adam directly created by God necessary, but they don’t believe evolution is a secular endeavor – they propose that God uses evolution for His purposes and glory.

Is belief in an Adam created directly by God, not through evolution, a necessary component of Christian faith? The apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians addressed a different matter crucial to the faith, and it is analogous to our topic.

Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. (1 Corinthians 15: 12 – 14)

The Corinthians claimed belief in Jesus, but disbelief in resurrection. Paul called them out, saying their two beliefs were contradictory. Since the Jesus the apostles preached rose from the dead, it was logically impossible to believe in the real Jesus while denying resurrection from the dead. Likewise, we may rightly ask whether one can believe in the apostolic Jesus while disbelieving in an Adam created directly by God. But we must understand what the Bible says about Adam before we can render a judgment as to the importance of direct creation.

The goal then, over the course of this series, is to examine both sides of the argument, in the spirit of Proverbs 18: 17. We will proceed by asking a series of key questions, and then answering the questions from both perspectives (direct creation and evolution). The end result is hopefully a better understanding of the implications of both positions and then proceeding to believe in that which corresponds with the whole of Scripture.

Good Friday Reflection: The Suffering Servant

The Chosen One has died this day
But He, the Son, will rise Sunday
For that is what Amoz’ son did say
And we know that his word is true

Who has believed our message? (John 12: 38, Romans 10: 16)

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

And like a root out of parched ground;

He has no stately form or majesty

That we should look upon Him,

Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

He was despised and forsaken of men, (Luke 18: 31 – 33)

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

And like one from whom men hide their face

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Mark 10: 33, 34 and John 1: 10, 11)

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, (Matthew 8: 17)

And our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted. (John 19: 7)

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, (Hebrews 9: 28)

He was crushed for our iniquities; (Romans 4: 25, 1 Cor 15: 3)

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, (Hebrews 5: 8)

And by His scourging we are healed. (1 Peter 2: 24, 25)

All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Yet He did not open His mouth; (Matt 26:63; 27:12–14; Mark 14:61; 15:5; Luke 23:9; John 19:9)

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, (Acts 8:32, 33; Rev 5:6)

And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,

So He did not open His mouth.

By oppression and judgment He was taken away;

And as for His generation, who considered

That He was cut off out of the land of the living

For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?

His grave was assigned with wicked men,

Yet He was with a rich man in His death, (Matthew 27: 57 – 60)

Because He had done no violence, (1 Peter 2: 22)

Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

But the LORD was pleased

To crush Him, putting Him to grief;

If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, (John 1: 29)

He will see His offspring,

He will prolong His days,

And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

As a result of the anguish of His soul,

He will see it and be satisfied; (John 10: 14 – 18)

By His knowledge the Righteous One, (Romans 5: 18 – 19)

My Servant, will justify the many,

As He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, (Philippians 2: 9 – 11)

And He will divide the booty with the strong;

Because He poured out Himself to death, (Matt 26: 38, 39, 42)

And was numbered with the transgressors; (Mark 15: 28, Luke 22: 37)

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, (2 Cor 5: 21)

And interceded for the transgressors.

Why Christians Don’t Listen To Moses: 2 – The Torah Is Temporary

Suggested Pre-Reading: Why Christian’s Don’t Listen To Moses 1

The Law of Moses, the Torah, as a single body of law comprising many individual laws, can only be eternal or finite in duration. When a Christian says, “I listen to Jesus, not Moses”, they are saying, “The Torah is temporary, and with the coming of Jesus its time to govern has ended.”

This declaration of a temporary Torah is highly offensive to Orthodox Jews, who believe that the Law of Moses is eternal. But the temporal nature can be easily demonstrated from the Old Testament, and both Christians and Jews agree that the Old Testament is God’s inspired word. The 613 commands identified in the Torah by the rabbis can be categorized into various groups. Three of the groups are sin, death, and disease. Both Orthodox Judaism and Christianity agree that after the resurrection of the dead, sin, death and disease will cease to exist. If those three things cease to exist, by logical necessity, so do the related laws. If the laws cease to exist, then they are finite in duration and cannot be eternal.

Consider these examples:

Type	Example
Sin	A jealous husband can make his wife take the adultery test per Numbers 5: 11 – 31
Death	Ritual uncleanness occurs if entering the tent of a dead man per Numbers 19: 14
Disease	Lepers must be easily distinguished in public per Leviticus 13: 45

In the age to come there will be no sin, and therefore no adultery, and therefore no jealous husbands invoking the adultery test. In the age to come there will be no death, and therefore no tents with corpses, and therefore no ritual uncleanness related to a corpse. In the age to come there will be no disease, and therefore no lepers, and therefore no laws instructing lepers how to distinguish themselves in public.

Although we are not yet living in the fully realized kingdom, we can nevertheless demonstrate the temporal nature of the Torah, by going through each and every law dealing with sin, death, and disease, and proving them to be unneeded in the age to come. There can be no doubt about the Torah being a temporary guide, which is just what the New Testament instructs.

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. (Galatians 3: 24-25)

Why Christians Don’t Listen To Moses: 1 – Introduction

Why don’t Christians listen to Moses?

The simple answer is found in Matthew 17:

Six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” (Matthew 17: 1 – 5)

This command to listen to Jesus, instead of Moses and Elijah, came from God and is the fulfillment of words God gave to Moses to give to Israel:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. (Deuteronomy 18: 15)

Peter quoted this very verse in Acts 3 and applied it to Jesus. There is no doubt that the New Testament teaches Christians are to listen to Jesus. This theme is expanded upon by the book of Hebrews, which opens with this:

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. (Hebrews 1: 1 – 2)

In regards to the differences between what Jesus and Moses taught, we are told this:

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He says, “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house Judah; not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant (Hebrews 8: 6 – 9)

The book of Hebrews teaches that if the first covenant of Moses was sufficient, God would have no need of sending Messiah and promising through the prophets a new and better covenant. But since the first covenant was never obeyed by Israel, because of their perpetual sin, something better was needed. This better thing is Jesus and the New Covenant.

And so to summarize our initial examination of this issue, we as Christians do not listen to Moses because the New Testament tells us to listen to Jesus, and instructs us that the New Covenant has replaced the Old Covenant, due to the Old Covenant’s inability to produce the repentance and faith God desired.