Questions for Further Thought

1. Why is racial harmony not an option for believers?

2. How do we heed the the command to "abhor" evil (v. 9) and still be innocent as to what is evil (Romans 16:19)? Why is this so important?

3. What is the significance of Revelation 5:9-10 when we think about racial harmony?

4. What are ways that we can practice this text (Rom 12:9-10) in our church, our shepherd groups, our families etc.? 

Romans 12:9-10

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 

Personally, racial harmony is not an option: 

• Due to ancestry, since I am three-fourths African American, one-eighth Irish and one- eighth unknown (my Dad always said, Native American)
• Due to marriage, since my wife, Kathy, of 31 years is Norwegian, Bohemian, and German
• Due to adoption, because into our marital mix we intentionally adopted our African American daughter
• Due to our being host parents for two Korean young women in recent years
• Due to the demographic realities of our city, our schools, our church and our world
•  Due to the teaching of the Bible: 
  • That God created all human beings for his glory, in his own image, from one man 
  • That God purchased us for himself from every tribe and tongue by the death of Christ. 
  • That God has united us in Christ as one household as dearly loved children, in one family, a chosen race, a people belonging to God 
  • That Christ calls us to love one another as he has loved us (racial harmony)
  • That Christ calls us to love our neighbors as we make disciples of all nations (Racial justice and world evangelization).

Racial harmony is not an option at Bethlehem. It is one of the core values for our church life. In our “10 dimensions of Church life”, which applies to all our campuses and all of the churches that we plant, we value “intentional efforts to display love across racial and cultural lines and be a church that models the fruit of that love.” On the authority of the Scriptures, if you are a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, I can say it is not an option for you either.

My aim is your heart, that God might increasingly enlarge your heart to love believers of different ethnicities with authenticity, discernment, affection and honor. Toward that end, I want to apply the five exhortations of Romans 12:9-10 specifically to racial harmony.  I’ve summed them up under four headings: authenticity, discernment, affection and honor.

Background of Romans 12

The Apostle Paul, in our text, addresses Christians of the church in Rome specifically concerning their relationships with other believers. Paul’s point is not to deny our responsibility to love our unbelieving neighbors, but to give special attention to love our brothers and sisters in Christ within the church.

As many of you know, in the first 11 chapters of Romans, Paul spells out the doctrines of God’s sovereign grace to us in Christ in glorious detail. Then, in chapter 12, Paul shifts to the impact of God’s mercy on our how we are to live when he says: "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2)

In verses 3-9 he describes the fact that the church, is made of believers of people who are different from one another due to diverse gifting.  Then comes our text in which Paul names several nitty-gritty ways we are to live in relationship to one another with a new mindset that accords, not with this world, but with God’s mercy (v. 1) and his “good, acceptable and perfect” will of God (v. 2) As I said, my aim is that (whether you worship on the North, South or Downtown Campus) God might increasingly enlarge your heart to love believers of different ethnicities with authenticity, discernment, affection and honor. Let’s take them one at a time.

Authenticity

The first exhortation is, “Let love be genuine” (vs. 9). By the way, this may well be the heading for all of these short exhortations. What does the word “genuine”  mean? It means “without hypocrisy”. A “hypocrite” commonly used to refer to dramatic actors in a play. So let love be genuine means this: Don’t fake love like an actor in a play. Don’t love like Judas when he betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Our lives are real, may our love be authentic, real, genuine, sincere, and without pretense.

What might that look like? On October 10 last fall, a Palestinian Christian woman named Shadia Qubti stood before the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization and described how, through the reconciling work of Christ, God had given her genuine love for Israeli believers:  

In that encounter with Israeli messianic believers that I realized and understood that through Christ, I was reconciled to God. And as a follower of Christ, I have the responsibility to reconcile with my enemies…as a Palestinian, it is very difficult to reach out to my enemies. But as a Christian Palestinian, I have the ability to do that because Jesus gives me the eyes to see them, as he sees me. Jesus gives me the confidence to go against my society. He gives me the power to embrace them. Today when I meet Israeli messianic believers I feel close, I feel comfortable and most of all, I feel that I am home…In the messiah, there is room for all of us. He calls us to be one family. Reconciliation has changed me. Reconciliation changes my enemy. Only then can we become the greatest witness, the living stones, and only then can reconciliation change those around us.

Bethlehem, let love be genuine.

Discernment 

Under this second heading “discernment” I put the next 2 exhortations: “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (vs. 9). Negatively, we are urged to “Abhor what is evil”. What does it mean to “abhor”evil? It means, “to have a vehement aversion to evil” or, “to be horrified at evil.” And the tense makes clear that this is a way of life, not a one-time thing. Why is that exhortation in this passage? Because, within God’s sovereignty over all things it remains true that, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). The Psalmist writes, “O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10a). Likewise, if you love people you will hate the evil that you see in the world. 

Closing your eyes to evil is not love. Numbness to evil, or even a tolerance for evil is not love. Love is discerning. You are not a loving person if you do not abhor what is evil. Racism is evil. There are varied definitions of racism. When I speak of “racism”, I am using it in the sense that that “race” as a social construct (not as a biological construct) has been used throughout human history to exclude people, and treat people in evil, unloving, dishonoring, and dehumanizing ways.

Like a metastasized cancer, the sins of racism are all over humanity. D. A. Carson compiled a very brief survey:

Quite apart from the black-and-white variety engendered in the West by the tragic history of slavery, racism surfaces all over the world. Most Chinese parents would not want their daughter, for instance, to marry a European-American lad; most Japanese think that Koreans are a step down. The list is endless. Add the tribal conflicts in Africa, of which the genocide in Rwanda is merely… [a] notorious recent example; add the myth of Aryan supremacy that demanded not only Lebensraum (the taking territory of other nations), precipitating World War II, but issued in the Holocaust; add the slaughter of a million and a half Armenians at the beginning of the twentieth century; add the Russian slaughter of Ukrainians and widespread non-Russian Slavic distrust of Russians; add the horrors of apartheid, now abolished in law but a long way from being totally overcome; add the treatment of Aboriginals by Australian Caucasians; add the treatment of “Indians” in the Americas (North, Central, and South) by Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, and the Hispanic countries. The list is endless. (Carson, Love in Hard Places, 88-89) 

Add the fact that genocide is taking place now in 8 nations, and on the brink of breaking out in 8 more.  Add the undeniable, yet rarely studied, link between racism and the 12 million victims of human trafficking. Add to that the link between racism and abortion. 

With globalization on the rise and increased immigration, we are experiencing increased ethnic diversity as never before. However, if human history teaches us anything, except for the grace of God, ‘racism’ will continue in it’s overt expressions like murderous genocide, and it’s covert expressions like anger and contempt for others because of the sinful depravity of man. 

Bethlehem, Abhor what is evil. Look at it and be horrified.

The word translated “hold fast” means “to glue or join together”. It means “stick to what is good’. The word is used of sexual union in 1 Corinthians 6:16, in that sense we might say, “cleave to what is good.” It is a great failure when in the cause of racial harmony in the church or racial  harmony in the world, when we take on a false sense of “justice” in doing unjust things to strike out against those who may have sinned against us, or wronged us. I have been in situations where, in the cause of racial justice, injustice is done and in the name of racial harmony or racial justice. The fires of hatred are fueled. Resentments nursed. This is the Achilles heel of progress in racial harmony is self-justified evil in the name of love and justice. 

In the cause of racial harmony may we always stick to what is good, like Louie Zamperini. The book Unbroken tells the story of Louie Zamperini, a young, Italian-American officer in the Army Air Force during WWII. In May of 1943 his plane crashed, and after several weeks in a life raft he spent more than 2 years in a Japanese POW camp. One day with his temperature hovering at 103 degrees fahrenheit due to starvation and dysentery, Louie was singled out for another wave of dehumanizing abuse by particular one guard, nicknamed “the Bird”. A fish had been stolen by starving POWs, and Bird singled out Louie and 4 other officers for punishment: all of the other POWs would be required under threat of punishment to punch each one of the officers in the face with “maximum force”.

For the first few punches, Louie stayed on his feet. But his legs soon began to waver, and he collapsed. He pulled himself upright, but fell again with the next punch, and then the next. Eventually, he blacked out. When he came to, the Bird forced the men to resume punching him, screaming, “Next! Next! Next!... The sun sank. The beating went on for some two hours, the Bird watching with fierce and erotic pleasure. When every enlisted man had done his punching, the Bird ordered the guards to club each one twice on the head with a kendo stick. …Louie’s face was so swollen that for several days he could barely open his mouth. By Wade’s estimate, each man had been punched in the face some 220 times (290).

After the war, Louie Zamperini’s life became increasingly characterized by alcoholism, terrifying nightmares and rage. His marriage was hanging in the balance. Right then, in September of 1949, Jesus called Louie to himself at an evangelistic meeting in Los Angeles led by a young evangelist, Billy Graham. The next morning, Louie, 

woke feeling cleansed. For the first time in five years, the Bird hadn’t come into his dreams. The Bird would never come again…In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept.” (A few months later it dawned on him) …something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was [finally] over.” (Hillenbrand, Laura, Unbroken. New York: Random House, 2010, 379)

Bethlehem, hold fast to what is good.

Affection

In the third exhortation, Paul urges us to “Love one another with brotherly affection” (v. 10). Two key words here are taken from the context of family life. The word for “love” is “philadelphia”. It means, “brotherly love”. It refers to the deep love between family members that is characteristic of a healthy family. The word “affection” describes the natural affection we have for relatives, or the love a parent has for a son or daughter. Among the metaphors for the church in the NT, we must not loose the fact that the church is a family, God’s “household”. And as love and affection unite our families, so love and affection are to unite our church.  We ought to feel familial affection for one another in the church. The love and affection you have in your family life (or should have in your family) is the love and affection Paul urges us to here. 

What might that look like? I think Bethlehem is a good example. Don’t miss the fact that, though we have a long way to go, Bethlehem abounds with these kind of relationships of kinship that crosses ethnic and racial lines and categories. Larry is white, Carl is black. Carl was about to leave because no one would talk him. But Larry talked to him, and now the lead the Racial Harmony Roundtable. They met here at Bethlehem! Another example is the love I have for Luis Mendez. We met here at Bethlehem! There so many examples of this brotherly affection.

Bethlehem, love one another with brotherly (and sisterly) affection.

Honor

The fourth exhortation, and our last, is this: “Outdo one another in showing honor” (vs. 10). Or literally, “in honor, go before one another”. The phrase is a little unclear. The sense could either be, ‘honor others more that yourself’. In that way, it would be much like Philippians 2:3 “in humility count others more significant than yourselves”. Or the sense could be, “take the lead in honoring one another” — almost as if it were a competition. Go before one another. Don’t wait to be honored; honor others. Go first. Set an example by honoring others. Either way, exhortation to us is be a community that shows honor to one another. That interpersonally, we speak with respect and treat others as valuable people— undercutting our sinful propensity to self-exultation and pride. 

On the same day that the Civil War ended, April 9, 1865, Rev. Galusha Anderson, preached a memorial sermon at the Second Colored Baptist Church in St. Louis to honor my 3^rd Great Grandfather, Rev. J. R. Anderson who had died unexpectedly at age 43. Galusha Anderson was white and had been the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in St. Louis. J. R. Anderson was black and had been the pastor of 2nd Colored Baptist Church. They had been friends. They had refused to be divided by race. The biblical text for the memorial sermon was Matthew 25:21, “His Lord said unto him, well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Here is an excerpt of the memorial sermon, 

While it might seem presumption, for ignorant men, to apply these words to many even professed followers of Christ, there are a few whose faith and works are so conspicuous that we run no hazard in anticipating their eternal destiny….

We speak, however, of no favored child of the earth. He was not born a prince or a king; he was no heir to accumulate wealth, but the son of an enslaved race whose lot has long been one of thankless drudgery, — a race on whom the oppressor declared the curse of God against Canaan rested, predoomed to be only hewers of wood and drawers of water, to be bought and sold like cattle in the market; that possessed “no rights that a white man was bound to respect” [a quote from the Dred Scott Supreme court decision in 1857]; whose intellect was to be not only neglected, but, by cruel enactments, to be legally bound in fetters of ignorance, while their muscles were to be developed and trained to move at the touch of the master’s hand. Such was the origin of him whose career we gladly commemorate by the services of this hour…

[Ending] Such a life as this blows into ten thousand fragments all those teachings born of slavery, that the negro is incapable of great manly achievement. Here was one, purely African, who in the teeth of opposing influences attained a success, which the white man, with all his boasted advantages, might covet. May his mantle fall on us. May we attain to his humility, discretion, charity and unfaltering faith, so that when we shall stand by his side in the presence of our Judge, where there will be no distinction of races or color, we with him may each hear the glad welcome, “Well done good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”.

 Conclusion

This is the word of God for us this racial harmony weekend. The aim of this charge is that from a pure heart, you and I might, 

There is a direct connection between this—our love for one another—and evangelism. John 3:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

• Imagine how the barriers to the gospel might fall among Native Americans who have been so betrayed by countless broken treaties; if they might see that our love for Native Americans is authentic, in and outside the church.
  
• Imagine how minorities among us might increasingly feel understood, if we love with discernment, abhorring the evil of all the racist, exclusionary sinful behavior that has happened to them.
•  And imagine the spreading of the gospel and the glory of Christ if we were to link arms together in overcoming evil with good, displaying reality of God’s forgiveness to us in Christ as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
• Imagine how high the tide of our relational culture would rise across the board; if the ethos and flavor of our love for one another was brotherly (and sisterly) love rather than mere acquaintances sharing the same space in the pew. 
• And imagine a culture of honoring one another at Bethlehem. Where we honor one another in general, especially crossing ethnic backgrounds. Imagine a verbal tide of God-glorifying, verbal appreciation of the unique contributions and gifts each one of us is to the Church. 

On Monday, I’ll post some practical suggestions my blog, wilderness mercies on blog spot and an up coming Bethlehem Star. 

I am hopeful about racial harmony because the gates of hell, nor the fiery darts of Satan, nor the sins of humanity will prevail against us. My hope is in God who began a good work in us and will be faithful to compete it on the day of Christ.