Ephesians 2:15b-16, “His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”

When Paul mentions creating one new humanity of the two, he is talking about Jews and non-Jews coming to Christ. Their identity as Jews or Gentiles becomes secondary to their identity in Christ. What shapes your identity and what shapes the perceptions you have of others? In our congregations we don’t have an issue with the Jewish/Gentile divide but we have been conditioned to see each other through a racialized lens. We see each other as white, black, Asian, Latino, Native American.

The biblical worldview is the only antidote to identity politics. Intersectionality erodes the bedrock of civil society and dismantles decorum precisely because it is predicated and upon differences. It will only tolerate and celebrate divergence and divisiveness. The Christian worldview, however, offers a powerful response to identity politics. The biblical reply does not deny the reality nor the importance of identities to the human story. It does, however, begin with what unites all humanity—the Imago Dei. The biblical worldview starts in sameness not differences. It grounds the value of an individual in something more transcendent than experience, background, race, or gender; it starts with the image of God that resides in every human being on the planet. Humanity stands united by virtue of our common descent from Adam and Eve. Christians, therefore, do not reject identity politics and intersectionality merely because of its failure as an ideology, but because it denies the common bond that beats in the heart of every human: we are all made in God’s image. That identity is precious, perennial, and most to be cherished.

By the way, this issue helps to underline why biblically committed Christians must point again and again to the common descent of all humanity from Adam and Eve. We all share the same first parents. Modern evolutionary theory denies the very possibility of common descent from a single couple. Ideas have consequences.

Christians must understand and hold fast to the image of God that unites humanity in a common identity. The most important identity for every human is not our own self-prescribed definition based upon their experiences and background, but the identity given to them by the God of the universe. That identity trumps everything else.

Additionally, the biblical argument is not drawn only from Genesis. It reaches not only into the truths of Genesis, but the glories of the New Covenant of redemption inaugurated by Christ.  Jesus Christ is creating a new humanity—a people not of this world but of heaven, a people for God’s pleasure. It is a people made up of every tribe, tongue, people, and language—a citizenry of every ethnicity and race, of every socio-economic background and culture. Its citizenship does not stand on its differences but on our common salvation in Christ. In Christ we find our true identity. Believers in Christ share an eternal and glorious unity in Jesus Christ the Lord—a unity we enter upon faith in Jesus’s perfect sacrifice and atonement for sin.

Intersectionality and identity politics breed division. These ideologies atomize society and drive humanity away from its core and essential commonality. This is where Christians must counter with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. Only the gospel secures peace and establishes truth. Only the gospel will unite a fractured society. Only the gospel can stem the tide of modernity’s downward spiral into chaos and decay. Identity politics is bad enough in the culture. In the church, it denies the gospel altogether.

Of this, I am certain: At the marriage supper of the Lamb, no one will hold any kind of sign claiming their own identity.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at Brandenburg Gate at a ceremony commemorating the 750th anniversary of the City of Berlin. In his speech he uttered some of the most famous words every said by an American President, “Mr. Gorvacbev, Tear Down This Wall!” That Wall, which began to come down in November of 1989, tells a deeper story about the nature of humanity: humans are willing to divide themselves over any issue. There is something in  our hearts that causes us to divide ourselves and erect walls to protect our identity. This division can be manifested in different ways: social, racial, economic, political, and even theological.

In Ephesians 2:14-18 the Apostle Paul argues against such division, primarily concerning the issue of race. In the context, Paul is speaking about the deep rift between Jews and Gentiles. The division that extends all the way back into the Old Testament. These two ethnic groups, who once hated each other, are now one in Christ. Paul describes how Christ has broken down the wall of separation and has reconciled both groups together. The issue at hand is a hard one but a very pressing issue.

The cross has spiritual implications (Ephesians 2:1-10) and social implications (Ephesians 2:11-22)

In the larger context, Paul shows that the death of Jesus both has spiritual and social implications. In verses 2:1-10 the text demonstrates that we are reconciled to God by faith. This logically leads Paul to discuss the social implications of the death of Jesus in verses 11-22. For this article, I want to focus primarily on verses 14-18 of the text and show a few ways this impact those in Christ.

 Jesus Has One People 

It’s important to realize when we talk about the social implications of the gospel that we don’t miss the gospel. Paul makes clear that in order to be reconciled to each other that we first must be reconciled to God (v. 13). Those who were far from God are now brought near through the death of Jesus. His substitutionary work subsequently changes the way we view the people of God now. The Bible claims that the two groups (Jews and Gentiles) are now one and Christ has torn down the dividing wall of hostility.

This means that the two groups of Jews and Gentiles in Christ are now one because Christ Himself has torn down the very things that seek to divide them. So practically for us, we may not experience hostile Jew and Gentile tensions, but we do experience division as it is related to race. In Christ, we are no longer divided based on race, culture, or ethnicity; rather we are one in Christ. This means that there is no hostility but peace. The reason why, “He is our peace.” Jesus is the One who creates peace between fallen people like you and me.

One New Humanity

Since Jesus has One New people, He has broken down the wall that divides them. The “wall” in context is referring to the “the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations.” Paul probably has in mind the identity markers of Israel such as circumcision, food laws, and the Sabbath. The very things that would make a Jew, a Jew. However, in Christ, those identity markers have been torn down! For Paul, his identity was not found in him being Jewish but in Christ.

This means that in Christ, He has redefined the people of God. To be included into the people of God is not a matter of social or ethnic identity. Rather it is a matter of identity in Christ. This means that anything that divides people has to be broken down by Jesus. Paul does not mean that race, ethnicity, or cultural heritage are not important. Actually to the contrary. Even as a follower of Jesus, Paul still maintained some of his Jewish culture. But those things don’t define God’s people. The people of God are a beautiful mosaic of different people, languages, nations, and tribes. And Paul’s point is that Jesus Christ has created One New Humanity. As Diognetus argued, Christians are a “New Race.”

Reconciled into One Body

Paul further argues that reconciliation has happened through the cross of Jesus Christ which has resulted in one body. Reconciliation is the removal of animosity and the acceptance as equals. This one body language could mean the church body or Christ’s bloody body. I personal understand the phrase to mean that through the One body of Jesus (bloody body), He has now reconciled us into One Body (the Church) John Piper says:

That is what God is aiming at in our salvation: a new people (one new man) that is so free from enmity and so united in truth and peace that God himself is there for our joy and for his glory forever. That’s the aim of reconciliation: a place for God to live among us and make himself known and enjoyed forever and ever. 
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The death of Jesus reconciles us to each other. We are created for each other, and we need each other. We are part of the people of God that does not divide itself over issues of race, ethnicity, or culture. Rather we are reconciled, brought into friendly relationship, with each other by the death of Jesus.

Christ Preached Peace

Paul grounds his argument by saying that Jesus Himself preached peace. I believe this is referring to both peace with God and with each other. Through the death of Jesus, we now have peace with God (Romans 5:1), which results in peace with each other. I’m convinced this is our message. We don’t preach peace for the sake of unity and harmony. We preach peace, as Jesus did, in order to people would experience peace with God that results in peace with each other.

Access to Spirit and Father 

Lastly, Paul seeks to prove that these two groups, now made one through Jesus Christ, have access to God by the Spirit. It is by the Spirit that the existence in the realities of the New Humanity can occur. The Spirit Himself provides the access needed to be in proper relationship to God. As one New Humanity brought about by the death of Jesus and applied to us by the Spirit, we can experience complete access to God’s grace, mercy, and peace. We do this in unity together because of the work of Jesus.

Christ has come to break down the spiritual and social Berlin Walls in our lives. Christ died to make us one in Him. His death accomplished more than just a personal relationship with God. It provided a way to have relationship with each other. This text is a call to unity. We must forsake those things that divide us whether they are racial barriers, cultural concerns, or ethnic division. We have to cast of those identity markers that divide the church. Our identity as the people of God is not based on any social, racial, or political identity. Rather it is based on Christ.
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Now realize: we are not color blind, and we should not pretend that race doesn’t matter. Rather the church must be on the frontlines of discussing the issue of race by proclaiming peace! And peace is only found in Christ. We must know that God in Christ by means of His Spirit is calling fallen humanity into a New Humanity – the church which is made up of many races, languages, tribes, and people.
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Paul and Revelation:
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​Paul and Revelation: Building the unified, multi-ethnic church

1. The biblical world was multi-ethnic, and numerous different ethnic groups, including Black Africans, were involved in God’s unfolding plan of redemption.
2. All people are created in the image of God, and therefore all races and ethnic groups have the same equal status and equal unique value.
3. Inter-ethnic marriages are sanctioned by Scripture when they are within the faith.
4. The gospel demands that we carry compassion and the message of Christ across ethnic lines.
5. The NT teaches that as Christians we are all unified together “in Christ,” regardless of our differing ethnicities. Furthermore, our primary concept of self-identity should not be our ethnicity, but our membership as part of the body and family of Christ.  
6. The picture of God’s people at the climax of history depicts a multi-ethnic congregation from every tribe, language, people, and nation, all gathered together in worship around God’s throne.

At the center of Paul’s theology is the doctrine of justification by faith. That is, believers are forgiven their sins and are justified before God by the grace of God through faith in Christ. Yet Paul also develops the consequential and practical outworking of this doctrine. Since we all come before God based on what Christ has done for us rather than what we have done, then we are all equal before him. Paul stresses this in passages such as Galatians 3:28, “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The slightest notion of ethnic superiority is a denial of the theological reality of justification.
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Furthermore, Paul’s emphasis is not just on equality, but on unity. Thus in Colossians 3:11 he writes, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Likewise in Ephesians 2:14-16 Paul stresses that in Christ groups that were formerly hostile (like the Jews and Gentiles) are now brought together in unity in one body.

Paul is not just commending toleration of other ethnic groups in the Church, he is teaching complete unity and common identity among the groups. He proclaims that we are all members of the same family, parts of the same body. Once we have been saved by faith and brought into Christ, then our perception of our self-identity must change, leading to a radical shift in thinking about other groups of people within the faith as well. Our primary identity now lies in the fact that we are Christians, part of Christ and his kingdom. This overshadows and overrides all other identities. Thus the primary identity for us, whether we are White Christians or Black Christians (or Asian or Latin American, etc.) is that we are Christian (“in Christ”).

​This should dominate our thinking and our self-identity. We should now view ourselves as more closely related to Christians from other ethnicities than we are to non-Christians of our own ethnicity. We don’t just tolerate each other or “accept” each other; we realize that we are connected together into one entity as kinfolk, brothers and sisters of the same family, united and on equal footing before God, and only because of what God has done for us. This does not obliterate the reality of skin color or cultural differences. What it changes is where we look for our primary self-identity. Our ethnic distinctions should shrink to insignificance in light of our new identity of being “in Christ” and part of his family.
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This unity is brought to a climax in the Book of Revelation. Central to the climactic consummation presented in Revelation is the gathering of multi-ethnic groups around the throne of Christ. Revelation 5:9 introduces this theme by proclaiming that Christ has redeemed people “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” This fourfold grouping (tribe, language, people, nation) occurs seven times in Revelation (5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15). In the symbolic world within the Book of Revelation the number four represents the world while the number seven represents completion. Thus the seven-fold use of this four element phrase is an emphatic indication that all peoples and ethnicities are included in the final gathering of God’s redeemed people around his throne to sing his praises. 

​Building the unified, multi-ethnic church
At the center of Paul’s theology is the doctrine of justification by faith. That is, believers are forgiven their sins and are justified before God by the grace of God through faith in Christ. Yet Paul also develops the consequential and practical outworking of this doctrine. Since we all come before God based on what Christ has done for us rather than what we have done, then we are all equal before him. Paul stresses this in passages such as Galatians 3:28, “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The slightest notion of ethnic superiority is a denial of the theological reality of justification.

Furthermore, Paul’s emphasis is not just on equality, but on unity. Thus in Colossians 3:11 he writes, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Likewise in Ephesians 2:14-16 Paul stresses that in Christ groups that were formerly hostile (like the Jews and Gentiles) are now brought together in unity in one body.

Paul is not just commending toleration of other ethnic groups in the Church, he is teaching complete unity and common identity among the groups. He proclaims that we are all members of the same family, parts of the same body. Once we have been saved by faith and brought into Christ, then our perception of our self-identity must change, leading to a radical shift in thinking about other groups of people within the faith as well. Our primary identity now lies in the fact that we are Christians, part of Christ and his kingdom. This overshadows and overrides all other identities. Thus the primary identity for us, whether we are White Christians or Black Christians (or Asian or Latin American, etc.) is that we are Christian (“in Christ”).

​This should dominate our thinking and our self-identity. We should now view ourselves as more closely related to Christians from other ethnicities than we are to non-Christians of our own ethnicity. We don’t just tolerate each other or “accept” each other; we realize that we are connected together into one entity as kinfolk, brothers and sisters of the same family, united and on equal footing before God, and only because of what God has done for us. This does not obliterate the reality of skin color or cultural differences. What it changes is where we look for our primary self-identity. Our ethnic distinctions should shrink to insignificance in light of our new identity of being “in Christ” and part of his family.
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This unity is brought to a climax in the Book of Revelation. Central to the climactic consummation presented in Revelation is the gathering of multi-ethnic groups around the throne of Christ. Revelation 5:9 introduces this theme by proclaiming that Christ has redeemed people “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” This fourfold grouping (tribe, language, people, nation) occurs seven times in Revelation (5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15). In the symbolic world within the Book of Revelation the number four represents the world while the number seven represents completion. Thus the seven-fold use of this four element phrase is an emphatic indication that all peoples and ethnicities are included in the final gathering of God’s redeemed people around his throne to sing his praises. 

The Most Diverse Movement in History
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​​I met Senganglu Thaimei (Sengmei to her friends) in New Delhi, India. Born to the Rongmei tribe in the extreme northeast of India, she teaches English literature at Delhi University and writes stories reimaging the tales of her tribe through the eyes of marginalized women. Sengmei is keen to preserve tribal culture, and preservation is necessary. The Naga tribes were reached by Western missionaries in the 19th century. Christianization brought westernization. Today, over 80 percent of the Rongmei are Christian, and tribal traditions are declining.
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For many, this would be one evidence among many that Christianity is a white, Western religion forcibly exported to other cultures and leaving a trail of cultural destruction in its wake. But the rest of Sengmei’s story complicates the picture. Raised in a nonreligious home, she started following Jesus as a teenager through the witness of a Rongmei friend. Today, she is a passionate Christian and her husband (from a kindred tribe) pastors a multiethnic church.
What’s more, as we discussed the history of her tribe, Sengmei warned me not to give Western missionaries too much credit. Westerners saw only a handful of Naga converts, who then effectively evangelized their tribes. And while Sengmei deplores the ways Western culture was illegitimately packaged with Christianity, she is equally clear about the positive effects of Christianization, especially for tribal women.

I visited India to meet with 12 Christian academics. Ten came from Naga tribes. Between them, they spoke seven indigenous languages. But they spoke with one voice when it came to Christianity. Cultural anthropologist and Naga tribe member Kanato Chophi stated it most starkly: “We must abandon this absurd idea that Christianity is a Western religion.”


Diverse from the Start

Centuries of Western art depicting Jesus as fair-skinned may incline some of us to forget that he was a Middle Eastern Jew who lived under oppressive Roman rule and whose followers were first called “Christians” in Antioch—the ruins of which lie in modern-day Turkey. Christianity did not come from the West.

But nor was it constrained by its culture of origin. Jesus’ life and teachings scandalized his fellow Jews by tearing through their racial and cultural boundaries. For instance, the hero of the Parable of the Good Samaritan came from a hated ethnic group. Jesus commanded his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). They began at once.

In Acts, we see the Spirit enabling the apostles to evangelize people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), including those from modern-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt (Acts 2:5–11). This move of the Spirit to communicate in the heart-language of those listening is one evidence among many that Christianity is a multicultural and multilingual movement. In fact, the Bible itself is multilingual!

The Old Testament is in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. But Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic, and the Hebrew Scriptures were mostly accessed by first-century Palestinian Jews via Aramaic translations. We see traces of Jesus’ first language in Mark, when he raises a little girl (Mark 5:41), heals a deaf man (7:34), and cries out to his Father on the cross (15:34). The criminal charge posted at the cross (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) was written in three languages—Aramaic, Latin, and Greek—to cover the relevant languages of the time (John 19:20). But there is no single language of Christianity.


The Diversity of the Early Church

It is a common misconception that Christianity first came to Africa via white missionaries in the colonial era. In the New Testament, we meet a highly educated African man who became a follower of Jesus centuries before Christianity penetrated Britain or America. In Acts 8, God directs the apostle Philip to the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch. The man was “a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure” (Acts 8:27, ESV). Philip hears the Ethiopian reading from the Book of Isaiah and explains that Isaiah was prophesying about Jesus. The Ethiopian immediately embraces Christ and asks to be baptized (Acts 8:26–40).

​We don’t know how people responded when the Ethiopian eunuch took the gospel home. But we do know that in the fourth century, two slave brothers precipitated the Christianization of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which led to the founding of the second officially Christian state in the world. We also know that Christianity took root in Egypt in the first century and spread by the second century to Tunisia, the Sudan, and other parts of Africa.

Furthermore, Africa spawned several of the early church fathers, including one of the most influential theologians in Christian history: the fourth-century scholar Augustine of Hippo. Likewise, until they were all but decimated by persecution, Iraq was home to one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world. And returning to Sengmei’s homeland, far from only being reached in the colonial era, the church in India claims a lineage going back to the first century. While this is impossible to verify, leading scholar Robert Eric Frykenberg concludes, “It seems certain that there were well-established communities of Christians in South India no later than the third and fourth centuries, and perhaps much earlier.” Thus, Christianity likely took root in India centuries before the Christianization of Britain.

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Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

Many of us associate Christianity with white, Western imperialism. There are reasons for this—some quite ugly, regrettable reasons. But most of the world’s Christians are neither white nor Western, and Christianity is getting less white and less Western by the day.
Today, Christianity is the largest and most diverse belief system in the world, representing the most even racial and cultural spread, with roughly equal numbers of self-identifying Christians living in Europe, North America, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Over 60 percent of Christians live in the Global South, and the center of gravity for Christianity in the coming decades will likely be increasingly non-Western.

According to Pew Reseach Center, by 2060, sub-Saharan Africa could be home to 40 percent of the world’s self-identifying Christians. And while China is currently the global center of atheism, Christianity is spreading there so quickly that China could have the largest Christian population in the world by 2025 and could be a majority-Christian country by 2050, according to Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang.

To be clear: The fact that Christianity has been a multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic movement since its inception does not excuse the ways in which Westerners have abused Christian identity to crush other cultures. After the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, Western Christianity went from being the faith of a persecuted minority to being linked with the political power of an empire—and power is perhaps humanity’s most dangerous drug.
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But, ironically, our habit of equating Christianity with Western culture is itself an act of Western bias. The last book of the Bible paints a picture of the end of time, when “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” will worship Jesus (Rev. 7:9). This was the multicultural vision of Christianity in the beginning. For all the wrong turns made by Western Christians in the last 2,000 years, when we look at church growth globally today, it is not crazy to think that this vision could ultimately be realized. So let’s attend to biblical theology, church history, and contemporary sociology of religion and, as my friend Kanato Chopi put it, let’s abandon this absurd idea that Christianity is a Western religion.

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​The furore about race that has taken the world by storm may have started in a despicable way, but it has opened up conversations that really needed to happen. People are hurting. Injustice has gone on unchecked for too long. Angry responses are devastating lives and businesses. We have to talk about race.

GOD IS NOT COLORBLIND

​God created each one of us uniquely, intentionally, with a specific destiny in mind. He made us in the skin we’re in – on purpose. Moreover, He sees nations, tribes and ethnicities with unique callings, characteristics and contributions to His greater purposes. 

Different cultures together create a beautiful mosaic, with each reflecting aspects of God’s glorious nature in different ways, yet each flawed in at the same time. Each people group has its own character, history and journey.
When you observe closely how God talks about people groups, He is more than happy to “lump them together” as a singular unit, even though we know very well that He also knows each one of us intimately, as individuals. But God also relates to us in our communities, addresses congregations as one unit (see the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3), and speaks to entire nations as singular entities. You have to be pretty determined to read the Bible through and conclude that He does not see races, people groups and nations. Indeed, we see the glorious climax and evidence of this in Revelation 7:9-12:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Each people group has its own unique place before the throne of God. All are invited, people will be there from every nation, and all are equal before Him. Our race does indeed matter to God, and is significant to His wider story. He deals with nations as a whole, and our racial heritage and culture will ultimately stand to give glory to the God who created us all. We not only see God dealing with nations in the Scriptures, but even today, we can observe how He seems to pour out His revelation on people groups in remarkable ways. I heard a Cru staff member saying how it seemed wherever they were in the world, Chinese people were coming to faith at that time. Now we see God at work in Iran, which is the fastest growing church in the world (with Afghanistan in second place). The curious thing is that Iranians are coming to faith in great numbers even though they are scattered throughout the nations (something that God spoke about regarding Iran in Jeremiah 49:36 along with several other interesting prophecies). Yes, God sees our ethnicity, wherever we are in the world.


GOD IS NOT RACIST

When Moses’ sister, Miriam, criticised Moses for his African wife, God punished her with a temporary but terrifying bout of leprosy. Leprosy is a symbol of sin. Not OK, Miriam! When Jonah was reluctant to share the good God of Israel abroad, God insisted that he should go to Nineveh so they could know him too. The first missionary team in Acts was multi-ethnic, and Peter’s ethnocentrism was rebuked.
“So Peter opened his mouth and said: “I now truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”” (Acts 10:34-35)

However, the sin of racism is most definitely alive and kicking all over the globe. Grievously, people reject and abuse one another on the basis of ethnicity all the time. Injustice, hate and division are rampant, as our hearts so often incline to evil. The ironic thing is that countries most often and most loudly accused of racism – including the US and Israel – don’t even make an appearance on the list in research seeking to determine the most racist countries in the world. According to the findings of a research-based inquiry from 2016, the most racist country on Earth is India, followed by Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, and Egypt. (World Population Review).

IT’S NOT JUST THE SKIN, IT’S THE STORY

There are reasons why the situation is so explosive in the US. George Floyd’s appalling murder has a wider context. There is such a thing as national trauma, as the people of Israel know all too well. Moreover, that trauma can be literally passed on through the genes, as a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda discovered:
Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations. The conclusion stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war. They also analysed the genes of their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders, and compared the results with Jewish families who were living outside of Europe during the war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.2
Similar results appear to occur among descendants of those who went through the horrors of slavery.3 In a phenomenon known as Epigenetic Transmission, signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have even been found in the third generation, and have been detected in the grandchildren of trauma survivors. 
The science of epigenetics, literally “above the gene,” proposes that we pass along more than DNA in our genes; it suggests that our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress… Trauma experienced by earlier generations can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to “switch on” negative responses to stress and trauma.4

When looking at people groups, God sees everything they have gone through, and everything they are still going through till this day. And when it comes to the traumas of both the Holocaust and slavery in the US, they are more recent than many seem to think. The pain is still very fresh. We need to look through this lens of history and appreciate the depth of trauma and pain that is continuously and deeply felt, always there, just below the surface. Especially in these tense times of global upheaval, George Floyd’s murder was a match thrown on a petroleum-soaked situation. It’s not the only incident of racial injustice happening today and African slavery isn’t the only incidence of collective trauma, but these are horrors demanding our attention right now. The balm that needs to be applied here needs to be applied to every injustice and racial rift around the globe.


GOD OF JUSTICE

The God who sees, has seen it all. He has seen the collective suffering and also each individual travesty of justice, whether it was recognized or not. Just as God said that He had been paying close attention to what had been done to the people of Israel during their own 400 years of slavery in Egypt, He hears the cry of all the oppressed:

“I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their slave masters, for I know their pains.” (Exodus 3:7)

The first thing that God’s law addresses after the Ten Commandments is that slaves should go free. God is a God of freedom and slavery goes against all that He is. God rescued Israel out of Egypt, but it took a long time to shake off the shackles even as they journeyed with Him to the Promised Land. Liberation is often a painful process rather than a one off event.
God understands and He cares. He is a God of justice and compassion for the oppressed. All who love God and are seeking to be conformed to His image need to fit into this mould too – there is no room for complacency or disinterest when the oppressed cry out.

As God’s children, His ambassadors in this world, it is up to us to seek peace and pursue it. We can be vehicles to bring God’s justice and healing, and indeed, that is what we are called to be. Isaiah 58 spells it out very clearly – our religious fasting is no good if we are not prepared to take an active part in loosing the chains of injustice. But what does that look like?


HEALING RACIAL RIFTS

Closing our ears to the cries of the downtrodden is an offense to God. He is the God who hears our cry and sees our pain, and we need to be willing to be intentional about listening, learning, and deliberately opening our ears to others. We need to get in the habit of getting into another’s shoes and walking around in them for a while, trying to see what they see and feel what they feel. This in itself is an important step in helping to bring comfort and finding the way forward. Being seen and heard really helps. But can deeply entrenched trans-generational trauma ever be healed? Going back to epigenetics, it has also been found that since genetic codes can be changed by trauma, they can also be changed back, breaking the cycle:

“There’s a malleability to the system… The die is not cast. For the most part, we are not messed up as a human race, even though trauma abounds in our environment.” At least in some cases, Dias says, healing the effects of trauma in our lifetimes can put a stop to it echoing further down the generations. 5
Healing ultimately comes through repentance and forgiveness. This is the main reason why – even though black lives absolutely do matter – we cannot fully align with the BLM movement. Apart from their pro-choice, anti-Israel / BDS and anti-heteronormative family stance6, there is no goal of forgiveness or reconciliation in the BLM agenda. These things are prerequisites for resolution and healing, and are not optional according to God. Unforgiveness and bitterness will eat us alive and make us pawns in the enemy’s games. Peace, life, and blessing come through repentance and forgiveness. We must make sure we are giving no room whatsoever to the enemy in our hearts, and to give God first place. It’s up to each one of us to examine our lives and make these choices. As God said to His people in Deuteronomy 30, it’s up to us to choose what we want for our own lives and the generations to follow. It’s up to us to choose blessings or curses, God’s way or the way to destruction.

THE JEWISH / ARAB CONFLICT AS THE “TOP BUTTON”

Dr. Raleigh B. Washington of Promise Keepers once said that the Jewish / Arab conflict was like the top button of a shirt – if you get that one wrong, then all the others will be out of line. As a key advocate for racial reconciliation in America, he could see the spiritual significance of getting things right in the spiritual epicentre of the world. There has been so much tragedy and pain, so much horror and injustice along the paths of Israel and the Palestinian people, but we are seeing the great power of the gospel to change hearts. We have our hope in Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and His ability to heal broken hearts. We are not blind to the trauma of the peoples around us, both in the Middle East and in the nations, but we are witnessing first hand the power of God to restore long-broken relationships.

​Here at ONE FOR ISRAEL, we can testify to the fact that God can transform, heal, and bring life where there once was death and destruction. We have seen the great blessing that happens when we dwell in unity together. We declare to America and the world that there is hope.

​There is nothing “minor” about the prophet Micah other than the length of the book. In Micah, we find a beautiful path to repentance, restoration, and a promise of the birth of Christ. We know when and where he prophesied, and the effect his prophecy continues to have on us today. His power as a prophet and call to turn away from sin and towards the Savior continue to bring us hope, and shape who we are as believers. His name itself becomes a meaningful, as he summarizes his prophecy in Micah 7:18: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.” Micah’s threats are directed against idolaters, those who oppress the little man, priests and prophets who use their profession for financial gain, and leaders who pervert equity and abhor justice. The promises emphasize the importance of Zion, where Yahweh or his royal regent reigns over a kingdom of peace, and of the return from exile for Israel as well as for Judah. The book’s central theme is a concept borrowed from preexilic prophets that salvation will come to Judah and Jerusalem only when the people turn to Yahweh. Then they will not only receive divine favour, but the land itself will become fertile. we can draw a few conclusions about Micah’s self‑understanding and his relation to his fellow countrymen. The outline of his profile is the sharpest where he confronts his opponents: “But as for me, I am filled with authority, justice, and courage to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.” (Micah 3:8) What a testimony to fearless self‑assurance! Nothing in the other prophets comes close to it! One might suspect that this expresses the strained self‑glorification of a person obsessed with power. we are warned against such a misinterpretation by the commentary — like gloss which states that he possesses these gifts only along with “the Spirit of the Lord,” by virtue of the special divine authority which completely fills him. At the center of his gifts (between the gifts of “authority’ and “courage’) stands, according to his own statement, justice (that is, his view of justice).

​The Son of Man title (from Book of #Ezekiel) showed how Jesus emphasized his perfect humanity. In #Daniel, it depicts his #identity as the #Messiah — the anointed One from God and #promised #deliverer #foretold in the Hebrew Bible. Jesus- the perfect God-man would bring in God’s everlasting kingdom for both Jew and Gentile. Jesus had a deep conviction of special mission to the Jewish nation, who were God’s treasured possession (Exodus 19:5). He expressed this so strongly; and careful consideration of his words reveals his strategy: As Paul expressed-His mission was “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom1:16; 2:10). Jesus’ concern for Israel was shown in the instructions to the 12 disciples as He sent them on their first preaching mission. “Do not go in the way of the Gentiles,” He said, “and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). His ministry was restricted primarily, but not exclusively to the Jews (Matthew 8:1-13). Indeed, in the very same -context- is the prediction that the preaching ministry of the disciples would be extended to the Gentiles; “You shall even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.” Luke’s Gospel tells of a later preaching mission in which 70 others were sent out two by two (Luke 10:1). -Just as- the 12 apostles symbolically represent the 12 tribes of Israel, the 70 -symbolize- the Gentile nations (In Genesis 10, the descendants of Noah are listed, #70). Rabbinical tradition presumed that this was the total number of nations scattered over the earth after the Tower of Babel, and referred to the “70 Gentile peoples.” #Jesus used this means of #symbolizing his long-range #purpose. (The 12 were sent to heal the sick and announce the #nearness of God’s kingdom. The 70 were sent later on a “training mission” in preparation for their ultimate mission- to the whole world).