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From Many Peoples to One Holy Family in Christ · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reform Thinking. We are back at the table, ready
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  to open up a text that challenges a lot of the
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  assumptions floating around in the modern evangelical world.
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  We are, and this is a big one. We are continuing our series
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  through the book Biblical Missions, Principles,
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  Priorities, and Practices, and today we are looking
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  specifically at chapter 5. It is written by Scott Callahan,
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  and the title is 1 Holy Race, Ethnicity and the People of God.
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  This is one of those chapters that really forces you to sit up
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  and pay attention. I mean, it deals with race,
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  ethnicity and the definition of the people of God.
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  These are, you know, volatile topics in the broader culture
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  right now. Absolutely.
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  But Callahan is not offering a sociological opinion or some
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  kind of political strategy. He's doing biblical theology.
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  And that's why we're here. As we always say, we're
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  approaching this from the perspective of those who hold to
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  the Westminster Confession. We are looking for the regular
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  fiddy eye, the rule of faith. We aren't interested in polling
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  data or, you know, graphic trends.
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  We want to know how redemptive history unfolds from Genesis to
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  Revelation, regarding who God's people actually are.
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  And you really have to strip away the modern obsession with
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  demographics and just ask, what is God doing?
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  Callahan starts us right at the finish line, which is a really
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  helpful way to Orient our thinking.
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  He goes straight to Revelation 7.9, the great multitude.
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  Right, the text says a great multitude that no one could
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  number from every nation, from all tribes and people and
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  languages. Now you have to think about how
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  that verse is usually used in contemporary.
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  Preaching. Oh, it's almost always used as a
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  celebration of diversity for diversity's sake.
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  It's the celestial census, you know.
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  The argument is usually that heaven is perfect because it's
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  diverse, and therefore our churches should aim for that
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  same demographic mix to look like heaven.
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  It basically validates the idea that God collects cultures.
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  Right. It frames God as wanting
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  representation, as if he's checking boxes to make sure
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  every group is accounted for. But Callahan really pushes back
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  on that reading. He argues that reading
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  Revelation 7.9 is a mandate for ethnic representation is
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  fundamentally anthropocentric. It makes the text about us.
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  Yes, it focuses the camera on our skin tones, our languages,
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  and our distinct cultural artifacts.
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  But the text is so clearly theocentric.
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  It's God centered from start to finish.
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  Well, look at the action of the multitude.
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  They aren't standing there celebrating their own diversity.
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  They're not looking at each other saying, hey, look at this
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  wonderful cultural mosaic we've created.
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  No, they're crying out. With a loud voice, Salvation
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  belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
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  So the diversity isn't the point of the passage, the scope of the
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  atonement is the point. Precisely.
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  The mention of nations and tongues isn't there to glorify
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  those nations, it's there to magnify the power of the Lamb.
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  It proves that the atonement was so effective that it obliterated
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  every human boundary. It couldn't be contained.
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  No, not by geography or genetics or language.
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  So the mission of our discussion today is to recover that God
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  centered view. We need to walk the timeline,
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  creation, election, judgement and the church to see how God
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  actually handles this concept of race.
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  OK, so let's start at the very beginning, Creation.
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  If we want to understand what human beings are, we have to go
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  to the blueprints. Genesis 1.27 the Imago day.
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  God created man in his own image.
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  Usually when we discuss this in a theological context, we focus
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  on the functional aspect. We talk about the mandate to
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  exercise dominion, to subdue the Earth.
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  That's the what of humanity. But Callahan draws our attention
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  to The Who. Male and female.
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  He created them. That's it.
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  That is the fundamental essence of humanity.
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  Sexual differentiation is primary to the human
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  constitution. But notice what is conspicuously
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  absent from the creation narrative.
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  Race. There's zero mention of it.
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  Complete silence. And that is a silence that
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  should really shape our thinking.
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  It is striking when you think about how much weight we put on
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  it today. We'll think about Adam.
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  His name relates to the Adama, the ground, the dust, and Eve is
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  made from his side. They can't be described by
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  ethnicity in any way that makes sense to our modern categories.
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  Right, they weren't white, black, Asian or Semitic.
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  They were simply the proto humans.
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  So ethnicity is not a fundamental element of what it
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  means to be human. It's not part of the hardware,
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  it's software that got added later.
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  And it wasn't added by the fall, either.
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  Callahan is really careful to point out that when sin enters
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  the world, it breaks our relationship with God.
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  It breaks creation, but it doesn't instantly create races.
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  Adam and Eve are banished from Eden, but they leave as one
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  family. The fracturing of humanity into
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  distinct groups is a post flood reality.
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  That's right. So that brings us to the table
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  of nations in Genesis 10 and of course the incident of Babel.
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  This is where we actually see the origins of distinct people
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  groups. This is where ethnicity enters
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  the biblical narrative. After the flood, you have Noah's
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  family, just eight people. That's a massive genetic
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  bottleneck. From there, Genesis 10 describes
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  the branching out families, languages, lands.
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  We often view Babel purely as a judgement.
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  God confuses the languages to stop their rebellion.
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  But there seems to be a redemptive purpose in that
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  scattering, isn't there? Oh, there is, and Paul connects
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  the dots for us in Acts 17.26. It's one of the most significant
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  texts for understanding a biblical philosophy of history.
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  Paul says he made from one man every nation of mankind to live
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  on all the face of the earth, and then he gives the purpose
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  clause. He says God determined their
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  appointed periods and the boundaries of their dwelling
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  place. So that and there's the purpose
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  they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and
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  find Him. Wow.
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  That completely reframes the existence of nations.
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  God didn't invent distinct cultures just because he likes
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  variety. He used the separation of
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  peoples as a divine strategy. It was a strategy.
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  The scattering was to prevent a united, monolithic rebellion
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  against him like we saw at Babel, and to create a context
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  where people would realize their need for him.
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  It's theological, not just sociological.
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  God uses geography and even cultural limitation to drive men
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  to seek him. But then the story shifts gears
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  dramatically. God stops dealing with mankind
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  in the aggregate and zooms in on one specific individual.
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  Genesis 12, the call of Abram. This is the moment of election.
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  And to understand how radical this is, you have to understand
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  the ancient Near East. In Abrams world.
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  If you ask someone, who are you? What is your nation?
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  Their answer relied on three pillars.
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  I'm going to guess those pillars are land, language, and blood.
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  That's exactly correct. A nation in the ancient world
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  was defined by owning a specific territory, speaking the language
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  of that territory, and sharing a genetic ancestry with the people
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  in that territory. Those were the anchors of
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  identity. And God systematically strips
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  every single one of those away from Avram.
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  It's a total deconstruction of identity.
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  First, the land. God tells him, Go from your
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  country to the land that I will show you.
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  So Abram becomes a sojourner. He never really owns the land in
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  a political sense during his lifetime.
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  He buys a burial plot that's about.
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  It right, but otherwise he's a nomad living in tents.
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  He loses his geographic security.
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  This is a detailed Callahan highlights that we often miss
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  Abram starts in UR the Chaldeans he likely grew up speaking
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  Acadian or a dialect of it. Then he moves to her on probably
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  picking up Aramaic. Then he moves to Canaan.
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  And to survive and trade there, he has to learn the Canaanite
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  dialects. Which eventually evolve into
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  what we call Hebrew. So Hebrew is essentially A
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  Canaanite dialect. Abram doesn't have a holy
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  language that he was born with. He's a linguistic immigrant,
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  doesn't have a mother tongue that anchors his identity in the
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  way his neighbors did. OK.
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  And then the third pillar, genetics.
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  This has to be the big one. This is the most critical point.
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  Abraham wasn't genetically distinct from his father Tara or
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  his brother Nahor who stayed behind.
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  There was no Jewish gene in ur. God created the Hebrew people X
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  Nilo out of nothing. Wow.
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  He took one man and said, I will make you a great nation.
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  So the Hebrew identity is a constructed identity.
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  It's a covenantal construct. It is based entirely on God's
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  sovereign choice, not on superior DNA.
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  And we see this reinforced almost immediately in the
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  narrative. Look at the immediate
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  descendants. Ishmael is Abraham's son.
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  Genetically, he is the seed of Abraham.
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  But he is not the child of the promise.
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  Exactly. Then look at the next generation
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  Jacob and Esau twins. You can't get more genetically
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  similar than that. And yet the word is Jacob.
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  I loved. Esau I hated.
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  If ethnicity or bloodline were the primary definer of God's
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  people, Esau is just as Hebrew as Jacob.
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  Of course, But he isn't. Romans 9 makes that argument to
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  show that election depends on God who calls, not on human
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  descent. And this permeable boundary,
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  where blood isn't enough to get you in and lack of blood isn't
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  enough to keep you out, continues even after Israel
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  becomes a nation. Think about the Exodus.
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  We tend to picture this uniform column of Israelites marching
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  out, but Exodus 12.38 tells us a mixed multitude went up with
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  them. A mixed multitude.
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  Egyptians, Nubians, other Semitic laborers, anyone who
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  sought the plagues and realized Yahweh is the true God, I'm
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  going with him. They marched out, they stood at
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  Sinai and they entered the covenant.
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  They were absorbed into Israel. And the ultimate example of
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  this, the one that really challenges the idea of racial
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  purity, is a prerequisite for God's favor, has to be Ruth.
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  Ruth is the unanswerable argument here.
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  I mean, we have to remember the context.
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  The Moabites weren't just foreigners.
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  They were the result of Lot's incest.
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  They were enemies. Deuteronomy 23.3 is explicit.
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  No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord.
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  Even to the 10th generation. That sounds like a hard racial
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  barrier, a wall that cannot be climbed.
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  It certainly sounds that way. And yet here is Ruth.
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  She abandons her people. She abandons her gods.
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  She looks at Naomi and makes that famous confession.
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  Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.
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  And God doesn't just tolerate her, he weaves her into the
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  lineage of the King. She becomes the great
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  grandmother of David. She is in the genealogy of Jesus
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  Christ in Matthew chapter 1. If ethnicity or DNA were the
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  primary definer of God's people, the Messiah's lineage would be
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  legally impure. But it isn't.
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  Why? Because the definition of an
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  Israelite was ultimately about covenant faithfulness, not just
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  bloodline. OK, I want to push back on this
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  a little bit, playing devil's advocate, because there are
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  texts that seem to go the other way.
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  We have to talk about Ezra and Nehemiah.
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  The texts of terror, as some modern scholars call them.
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  It really makes modern one reader squirm.
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  You have the post exile community returning to
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  Jerusalem. They realize the men have
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  married foreign women, and Ezra and Nehemiah, well, they don't
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  just suggest counseling. They command these men to
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  divorce their wives and send them away.
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  It is a brutal scene. There's weeping, there's
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  trembling in the square. It's intense.
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  And frankly, if you read that with 21st century Western eyes,
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  it looks like ethnic cleansing. It looks like rampant
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  xenophobia. You have commentators today, you
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  say, well, Ezra was just a racist or this is a mistake in
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  the Bible. But Callahan argues we have to
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  defend Ezra and Nehemiah here. We can't view this through a
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  modern racial lens. We have to ask, what was the
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  motivation? Was it about skin color?
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  No, Ezra 9.1 lists the issue right at the start.
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  The people of Israel have not separated themselves from the
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  peoples of the lands with their abominations.
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  Abominations. That's the keyword.
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  It wasn't about the DNA of the wives, it was about the idolatry
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  they brought with them. Israel had just spent 70 years
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  in exile specifically because of idolatry.
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  They are back in the land by the mercy of God, and now these
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  marriages are reintroducing the very spiritual poison that
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  destroyed them before. It was a matter of spiritual
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  survival. It was an existential survival
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  issue. And Nehemiah, 13, points out a
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  really practical aspect too. It says the children spoke the
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  language of Ashdod and could not speak the language of Judah.
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  That's significant. If the next generation loses
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  Hebrew, they lose access to the Torah.
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  They can't read the word of God. Exactly.
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  So the threat wasn't racial mixing in a biological sense.
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  The threat was the erasure of the Covenant community and the
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  loss of the messianic hope. Telling him makes a very
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  technical distinction here that I think helps clarify this.
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  He talks about the difference between a holy seed and a holy
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  race S Yes, this is a crucial linguistic detail.
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  The Hebrew word used in Ezra 9.2 is 0, which means seed.
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  It is not the word for race or species.
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  It links directly back to the Abrahamic promise in Genesis
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  that through his seed all nations would be blessed.
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  And Paul tells us in Galatians 3.1 C explicitly he does not say
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  and to seeds referring to many, but referring to 1 and to your
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  seed, who is Christ. That is the connection.
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  The protection of the holy seed in Ezra wasn't about maintaining
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  A purebred ethnic group for the sake of national pride.
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  It was about protecting the specific lineage that would
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  deliver the Messiah. The messy, idolatrous syncretism
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  of those marriages threaten the clarity of the messianic line.
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  So it was never about racial purity, it was about messianic
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  preservation. Precisely.
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  And we know this isn't just us spinning the text, because in
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  the very same book, Ezra 6.21, we see a loophole if you will.
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  It mentions Gentiles who separated themselves from the
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  uncleanness of the nations and joined Israel.
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  They were allowed to eat the Passover.
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  Wait. So if a Gentile turned away from
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  their idols and committed to Yahweh, they were allowed in.
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  Yes, even in the strict time of Ezra, if they separated from the
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  uncleanness, the moral and spiritual impurity, they could
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  join. But the foreign wives in Ezra
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  10, while they refused to abandon their abominations,
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  That's the difference. You could become part of the
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  covenant people through faith and repentance.
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  You couldn't become a different race, but you could switch your
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  covenant allegiance. That completely dismantles the
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  accusation of racism. It reinforces that the
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  boundaries were always moral and theological.
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  And this theme just continues into the prophets.
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  If Israel thought their ethnicity gave them some kind of
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  special security, the prophets shatter that illusion.
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  Seven. I have it marked here.
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  Are you not as the sons of Ethiopia to me, O sons of
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  Israel? Imagine the shock of hearing
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  that you're an Israelite. You have the temple, the
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  history, the food laws. You pride yourself on being
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  distinct. And God says to me, you're just
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  like the Kushites. You're just like the
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  Philistines. He equates them with their
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  enemies and with distant Pagan nations because they had
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  abandoned the covenant. The take away is stark.
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  Ethnic identity offers no shield against divine judgement.
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  God is not impressed by your lineage.
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  But there's a flip side to this judgement, isn't there?
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  Callahan points out a really surprising twist in Isaiah 19.
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  The oracles against the nations are usually just lists of doom.
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  Woe to Babylon, Woe to Egypt. Right.
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  But Isaiah 19 ends in a place that no Israelite would have
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  ever predicted. God is speaking about the
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  future, the Messianic Age, and he says blessed be Egypt my
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  people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my
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  inheritance. Calling Egypt my people.
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  That title was exclusive to Israel.
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  And Assyria. The Assyrians were the brutal,
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  violent oppressors of the ancient world.
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  Yet God envisions a day where his claim extends over the most
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  hostile Pagan nations. It's a foreshadowing that
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  redemptive history is moving toward God, claiming people from
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  every single background as his own.
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  Which leads us perfectly into the New Testament and the
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  establishment of the Church. This is where Callahan uses that
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  phrase, one holy race. Here we see the shift.
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  In the Old Testament, the covenant sign was circumcision,
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  a physical mark on the flesh of the males of one specific ethnic
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  group. But the New Testament shifts the
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  focus entirely to the heart. Romans 2.29 But a Jew is 1
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  inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the
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  Spirit, not by the letter. The new sign of the covenant
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  isn't a physical surgery or a genealogy.
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  It's the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
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  And Acts 2 makes it crystal clear the Spirit is poured out
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  on all flesh. This brings us to the main
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  conflict in the early church. We can't understand the New
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  Testament without understanding the Judaizers.
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  The Judaizers were the first great threat to the Gospel.
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  They were a faction of early Christians who essentially said,
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  yes, believe in Jesus. That's great, but you also need
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  to become Jewish. They wanted to keep the training
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  wheels on. They insisted on maintaining the
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  ethnic distinctions, circumcision, dietary laws, the
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  calendar as necessary for salvation.
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  They were trying to rebuild the wall of partition that Christ
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  had already torn down. And Paul goes nuclear on them.
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  He does in Galatians. He doesn't just disagree with
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  them, He calls it a different gospel.
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  He says let them be anathema cursed.
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  Why? Because by insisting on ethnic
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  markers, they were adding to the finished work of Christ.
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  They were saying the cross wasn't enough.
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  You also need this cultural identity. 11 really sums up
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  Paul's counter argument here. There is not Greek and Jew,
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  circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave free,
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  but Christ is all and in all. The categories are just
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  obliterated. Not that people stop having a
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  background. A Scythian didn't stop being
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  from Scythia, but those backgrounds cease to be the
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  basis of their standing before God.
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  Now here's where Callahan pivots to the present day, and it gets
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  really interesting. He introduces a term to describe
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  a modern phenomenon in the church.
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  He calls them the gentleizers. Yes, this is his modern
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  application. If the Judaizers were people who
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  insisted on Jewish ethnic identity as spiritually
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  necessary, gentilizers are the modern mirror image.
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  These are people, often within the Church, who insist on the
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  ongoing spiritual relevance of ethnic identity or skin color
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  consciousness. So anyone who says you need
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  Jesus? Plus, you need to view
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  everything through the lens of your racial identity.
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  Exactly. Callahan argues that rebuilding
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  those dividing walls that Christ tore down is a heresy,
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  regardless of whether the wall is built of Jewish bricks or
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  modern sociological bricks. If we start defining our
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  spiritual communities by race or focusing on skin color as a
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  primary identity marker within the body of Christ, we are
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  acting just like the Judaizers. He uses pretty strong language
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  here. He says any gospel that focuses
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  on skin color rather than the heart is a distraction from the
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  cross. It is a distraction because it
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  misdiagnoses the problem. The problem of humanity is sin,
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  rebellion against a holy God, not power dynamics or systemic
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  structures in the abstract. And the solution is the
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  atonement, not sociological restructuring.
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  When the Church adopts the world's obsession with race, it
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  loses its prophetic voice. It does, and this leads us right
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  to the mythological implications.
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  If we are sending missionaries out into the world, what does
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  this theology actually mean for them?
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  Yeah, on the ground it means the missionary must oppose skin
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  color conscious religion wherever they find it.
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  Callam defines this religion is one that looks at the outward
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  appearance, which First Samuel 16.7 tells us God does not do.
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  It defines relationships by power and collective guilt
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  rather than personal sin and personal repentance.
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  He introduces this concept of color irrelevance.
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  Now we need to be careful with this term because I can hear the
• 18:57
  objections already. You're saying be colorblind.
• 18:59
  You're ignoring my culture. You're saying my background
• 19:01
  doesn't matter, right? And Callahan clarifies this
• 19:04
  distinction. Color irrelevance is not color
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  blindness. Color blindness is pretending
• 19:08
  you don't see that someone is from Nigeria or Japan.
• 19:12
  That's just foolishness. Of course we see culture.
• 19:14
  We need to understand culture to communicate.
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  So what is color irrelevance then?
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  It means. Believing that color is
• 19:21
  irrelevant to 1. Standing before God and one's
• 19:24
  status in the church. The gospel is color irrelevant
• 19:27
  because it saves irrespective of ethnicity.
• 19:30
  It doesn't need to check your DNA to see if you qualify for
• 19:33
  grace. O Practically for a missionary,
• 19:36
  this means they shouldn't let their own whiteness or blackness
• 19:40
  or whatever it is to find their message.
• 19:41
  Exactly. A missionary shouldn't feel
• 19:43
  guilty for their color, nor should they feel superior
• 19:45
  because of it. It is simply a biological fact,
• 19:48
  not a theological 1. And practically, Callahan says,
• 19:51
  this means we have to evaluate who we partner with.
• 19:53
  Oh, that's interesting. He says we need to separate from
• 19:55
  organizations that promote ethnocentrism, whether that's
• 19:58
  old school racism or this new gentleizer ideology that
• 20:02
  obsessively categorizes people by race.
• 20:05
  That is a tough stance. It implies walking away from
• 20:08
  potential partnerships, funding, or networks if they're too
• 20:11
  focused on race for the sake of gospel integrity.
• 20:14
  Yes, if a group is preaching that your primary identity is
• 20:18
  your race, they are preaching a different gospel.
• 20:21
  The Church is the one holy race. That's the title of the chapter
• 20:25
  first Peter 2.9. You are a chosen race, a royal
• 20:29
  priesthood, a holy nation. The Church is the race.
• 20:32
  That is the paradigm shift. We are not a collection of races
• 20:35
  trying to get along. We are a new race created by the
• 20:38
  Spirit, born again into a new bloodline, the blood of Christ.
• 20:42
  Our unity isn't something we achieve by trying really hard or
• 20:45
  holding workshops. It's a supernatural reality that
• 20:47
  we have to live into. As we wrap up this deep dive, I
• 20:50
  want to leave this with a thought to chew on.
• 20:52
  We started with Revelation 7, the gathered people of God.
• 20:55
  Think back to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel.
• 20:57
  When humanity was united in rebellion.
• 20:59
  Right at Babel, they wanted to make a name for themselves.
• 21:01
  They were united, but they were centered on man.
• 21:04
  Today, if we focus on our earthly ethnicity as a primary
• 21:07
  identity marker, are we actually drifting back toward Babel?
• 21:10
  Are we trying to build a name for our group, our tribe, rather
• 21:14
  than being lost in the wonder of the Lamb?
• 21:16
  It's a dangerous temptation. Are we acting like the
• 21:19
  unbelieving nations who obsess over their boundary and
• 21:22
  bloodlines, or are we the redeemed people at Pentecost,
• 21:26
  where the Spirit transcends those barriers to proclaim the
• 21:29
  mighty works of God? That is the question and the
• 21:33
  answer determines the future of our missions and our churches.
• 21:35
  Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into Reformed
• 21:37
  thinking. We'll see you next time.