…by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, and language and people and race. You have made them to be a kingdom of priests to serve our God.Revelation 5:9-10
Clearly, Christ so prizes racial unity within his church that he willingly paid an infinite cost to obtain it. Just as clearly, such unity must not be ignored or devalued by his true servants.
This reality provokes the questions: How important is racial unity to members of Jesus’ church? More to the point, how important is it to you?
As 2014 came to a close and 2015 began, racial unity, or the lack thereof, dominated the news. It is neither wise nor helpful for Jesus’ followers to remain silent while other voices dominate the conversation. However, let’s be careful to ask what exactly we should say. And has what we may have already said been consistent with Christ’s Kingdom agenda? What can we say for certain in the midst of so much cultural, legal, racial, and political ambiguity? The complexity alone is enough to silence anyone.
I humbly offer the following as a new year commences to assist followers of Jesus to rightly think, speak, and act.
First, we can and should take intentional steps toward personal racial education and developing relationships that cross racial lines within Christ’s church. Revelation 5:10 makes the cost of this Gospel-shaped, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural kingdom explicit: it was purchased with his blood. Our inattention and inactivity with regard to this reality says how far our values and our lives are from being “conformed to the likeness of the Son” (Romans 8:29). First steps of faithfulness might be marked by seeking, cultivating, and maintaining a friendship with a believer outside your own cultural and racial background.
Second, if we are members of the majority race within this culture, we can and should take the initiative toward the under-resourced people, places, and races within our community in the name of Christ. We must engage our city’s residents and areas with creative business solutions, educational provision, and missional service.
We owe a debt of thanks to all who, as a part of LMPC, have been pace-setters within Chattanooga in this way for decades. Members of LMPC have been involved in establishing and maintaining long-term spiritual, physical, medical, and social restitution for people of all races. Many have helped serve, fund, and at times found ministries such as Hope for the Inner City, Shepherd’s Arms, Choices, Teen Challenge, The House of Refuge, Urban Young Life, The Bethlehem Center, The Alternate Seminary, and Lookout for Orphans, to name just a few of those ministries in which we promote racial unity.
As 2015 begins, stand with our Savior in these matters of racial unity among his people as well as outside his church. Give yourself freshly to informed and attentive prayer for racial unity. Make new plans for first or further steps in this direction, both personally and in mission.
If racial unity within his church warranted Jesus’ highest sacrifice, than surely such unity merits our diligent attention and sincere address.
In prayer and thanks for you, Pastor Joe