Being the first of such posts, I feel the need to set forth a few qualifications regarding the “A Word from Our Pastor” section of the Big Sandy First Baptist Church website. First, these posts, though they discuss very specific issues, are not necessarily in response to anything witnessed or heard within our local church family. I hope this can be a platform in which many topics can be addressed with the specificity they deserve and simply where things that need to be said, are said. While I love preaching the word, sometimes there are things that need the heightened clarity that writing can afford. Though these are not in direct response to issues within our church, I do pray that they help unite us more and more as a family of believers under the banner of our Lord Jesus Christ. Second, there will not be a publishing schedule for these posts. They will simply be the result of prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. With these qualifications in mind, please consider my ponderings that follow.
The word of God is always timely, whether we recognize its timeliness or not. I have often been hesitant to speak on social issues not because I don’t have thoughts or opinions (of which I often have many), but because I have questioned the value that my words can contribute at such crucial times. After all, my words are fallible and like the grass and flower, they will wither and fade. However, the word of God will endure forever, and the word of God is always timely. That is why I sense no irony nor see any coincidence in the fact that the text of my sermon for this Sunday, May 31st is Galatians 2:11-21. As a church, we began our current series three weeks ago and God has sovereignly brought us to this specific passage for this specific week. Before you continue reading my words, take a moment, pull out your Bible and read God’s word in these verses for yourself.
Alright. Let’s go. So, in this text (which I am by no means exhausting) we find the apostle Paul confronting the apostle Peter. Why would such a confrontation be necessary? Well, Peter was having an internal identity crisis that was manifesting itself in a very public and prejudicial way. Peter, a born-and-raised Jewish man had come to grips with and even rejoiced in the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ was for the Gentiles (everyone not a Jew) as well as the Jews. God had revealed this to Peter Himself (Acts 10) and it was verified among the other apostles (Gal. 2:1-10). Though Peter had come to grips with this (glorious) fact, he was still struggling with the implications of it. He had been taught his entire life to limit his associations with Gentile peoples and to certainly not break bread with them. In the opening verses of this text it seems that Peter has moved past this and is enjoying his Christ-given liberty and was regularly sharing meals with Gentile believers in Antioch. But when other Jewish believers came from Jerusalem, Peter suddenly distanced himself from his Gentile brothers and sisters to guard his reputation as a Jewish man. In a moment, he let his Jewishness trump his Christ-likeness, and Paul calls him out on it. Paul confronts Peter’s hypocrisy with a heartfelt monologue that emphasizes that Peter (and all believers) is justified by faith alone and not by the keeping of the law or by the retention of his Jewish identity. At the climax of this monologue we find in a verse the beautiful yet unyielding truth of the gospel, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
While this passage confronts the general sin of hypocrisy, God saw fit to inspire Paul to accomplish that using an illustration of a specific manifestation of Peter’s hypocrisy: racism. The word of God is always timely. I want to be very clear, racism is sin and there is no place for racism or any level of racial prejudice in the heart and life of a believer. When Christ died on the cross, He died for the sins of people of all races, colors, tribes, and tongues, and when Christ rose from the grave, He secured salvation for people of all races, colors, tribes, and tongues. The same Christ that died and rose again is the same Christ who lives in us and compels us to love and share the gospel with people of all races, colors, tribes, and tongues. I was born in the South and grew up in the Bible belt; part of a Christian family, and I have heard more than once (sometimes within my own family) the phrase, “It’s just the way I was raised.” Listen, the way I was raised needs to be put to death on the cross so that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Peter was raised a certain way, too, but that didn’t justify his sin and it won’t justify ours.
Now, eradicating racism from an entire society is a tall task that cannot be accomplished easily. But the place to start is obvious: the Church, the body of Christ. You wouldn’t clean your floor with a vacuum that is already full of dirt. Let’s call sin sin – even the one’s we like and even the one’s we were raised to believe were okay. Let’s treat it as we would a tumor on our own body and take drastic measures to remove it. Let it no longer be us who live, but Christ in us. Let us see the world the way He wants us to see it. When we witness racial injustice let us call it the evil that it is, let us anguish in and mourn the deaths of all of God’s image bearers, and let us be all the more emboldened to share the good news of God’s grace with a world that desperately needs it.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Andrew
