God's Answer to Racism -by Viola Larsen

It is the image of God in humans that sets them apart from all other creatures and prepares the way for Christ to take unto Himself human flesh and redeem people of all races. The biblical themes of redemption, the Incarnation, and the unity of humanity ("every nation and race") are constantly blended together in Scripture.
When Paul preached to the Athenians on Mars Hill he appealed to their common humanity as creations of the true God when he stated: "And He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:26-27). Genesis 10:1-32 names most of the nations that developed from the three sons of Noah. Derek Kidner, author of Genesis in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, writes: "Not every nation known to the Old Testament is enrolled here, but enough are present to make the point that mankind is one, for all its diversity, under the one creator. Possibly the seventy names (Lxx 72) influenced our Lord's choice of this apparently symbolic number of emissaries in Luke 10:1."[21]
Jesus Christ is God's answer to racism. Paul admonishes the Galatians that they are to make no distinctions among those belonging to Christ; they are to be as one: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27-28). In the Book of Revelation, where Christ is pictured as both "the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah" and "a Lamb standing, as if slain," the 24 Elders sing to His glory: "For Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth" (Rev. 5:9-10).
The church, those redeemed not by race but by the blood of Christ the Lamb, understand Christ as both lion and lamb, both sacrifice and King. Wilhelm Niemoller, one of the members of the Confessing Church in Germany during the time of Hitler, wrote of what it meant to confess Christ as the only Lord under that regime: "One of my friends concluded a sermon of his in 1934 or 1935 by saying: 'O Lord, Thou alone art our hope, apart from Thee, I know none!' He was arrested, put on trial, and later released. The enemies that listened to him had noticed that the Third Reich was put in a difficult position wherever the 'One Word of God' made its appearance."[22] The Neo-Nazi groups and those who feed on their hate literature are simply a part of the rising paganism in America. They are also an extreme example of groups who like to use Christian terminology while laying foundations on extrabiblical revelation. The need for present security, elitism, power, and a revelation not anchored in Christ and the Word of God is the mark of anti-Christian religion.
The believer's only haven is Christ. This means there is no present worldly security -- the believer is not an elite person. Instead, members of Christ's church are often the ones hated and despised by the nations. The only power given is that which Christ gives, so that His followers may be able to faithfully love, serve, and suffer in this present world. Finally, the believer finds racial pride to be sin, because the only exaltation a Christian knows is God's unmerited grace, freely offered to all in Jesus Christ.

Previously the director of Apologetics Resource Center, Sacramento, California, Viola Larson is a graduate student in history at California State University, Sacramento.