One in Christ: The Implications

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'You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal 3:26-28).

'Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all' (Col 3:1).

These radical statements of Paul oppose the world's understanding of divisions between people in a way that only the most extreme of modern ideologies approach. At a stroke, he deletes all customary divisions of humankind and sets up a new master distinction: between those 'in Christ' and those not.

This distinction differs importantly from the others. First, it proclaims a reconciliation of all the others in our reconciliation to God in Christ Jesus. Since the unrecognized problem behind all the other divisions is the hostility between fallen humanity and God, this view alone will succeed in destroying those divisions.

Secondly, the dividing line which Paul uses is not a matter of physical but of spiritual birth, and so can be fully crossed, simply by faith.

In the act of declaring this, Paul also declares that religious ethnicity doesn't matter; that social status doesn't matter; that gender goesn`t matter; and that race doesn't matter. 'What counts is a new creation' (Gal 6:15). This removes all reason for all hostilities but one - the hostility between light and darkness - and allows us to say, 'From now on we regard no-one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation' (2 Co 5:16-18) - 'For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility' (Eph 2:14).

Religious Ethnicity Doesn't Matter

For the Jew, the distinction between Jew and Gentile was a primary fact of the universe, symbolised in the wall in the temple which kept Gentiles on the outer fringes - on pain of death. Proselytes, if they submitted both to circumcision and to baptism to remove their Gentile uncleanness, could come partway over, but even they had to pray to 'the Lord, the God of your [not our] fathers'.

No doubt judaizing teachers had made Paul's Gentile converts uncomfortably aware of this distinction; hence Paul's attention to refuting it in his letters to the primarily Gentile congregations at Galatia, Ephesus and Colossi.

This is the historical meaning of Paul's statement, but to take it thus far and no further is interpretation, not exposition. Religious ethnicity is still a major issue causing violence and death in at least four important trouble spots today. Sri Lanka has its Buddhist Sinhalese and its Hindu Tamils; India-Pakistan sees conflict between Hindu, Muslim and Sikh; Ireland between Catholic and Protestant; and the Holy Land itself between Jew and Arab. I say 'religious ethnicity' because the issue is not generally a religious one as such; religion is an element of ethnic identity for the parties involved, who are divided by historical, economic and sometimes racial factors as well.

But the religious label is seen as the centre of division. If we go to these people and declare that the solution to their religious feud is found in another religion we will be very properly laughed at. But if, instead, we go to them and demonstrate that the wall of hostility between them is broken down in Christ Jesus, through whom they can be reconciled to God and to each other, we will be bringing good news indeed.

Charles Colson, in his book Life Sentence, provides an example of this. Men from opposite sides of the Irish conflict, having found Christ while in prison for their violent activities, found also that their oneness in Christ meant the end of division into 'Protestant' and 'Catholic', and cancelled five hundred years of conflict over political, cultural, racial, land-related and religio-ethnic issues. Elias Chacour's Blood Brothers shows the same thing operating in the Middle East conflict, as does the formation of an Israel affiliate of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students - where Jewish and Arab students are one in Christ.

Social Status Doesn't Matter

The modern West has no equivalent of the absolute division into 'free' and 'slave' which underlay the whole of ancient society.

Again, the division could be partially overcome. A slave could be freed, but he did not thereby become a free man - only a 'freedman', a citizen under Roman law (though not Greek law) but without full civil rights. But in Christ, this was no longer so.

Paul writes to Philemon with regard to his runaway slave Onesimus, who has become a Christian under Paul's ministry and is now returning to his master. 'Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good - no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother . . . as a brother in the Lord' (Phm 15-16). All those in Christ have been freed from slavery and enjoy full citizenship in the heavenly kingdom and full sonship in the family of God.

James reminds us that 'the brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower' (Jas 1:9-10). Those things that mark worldly position are worldly, not eternal, and so have no significance in Christ.

When the chief of police of a large South American city goes each week to sweep out the building where his Pentecostal church meets, we are surprised. But that is part of how the Gospel works. Each of us is the Lord's slave and the Lord's freedman (1 Co 7:22). Derek Prince, from an upper-crust English family, educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, a professor of philosophy, found when he became a Christian that his people were not those who had the factors of class or background or education in common with him, but impoverished blacks in a little Pentecostal mission in Johannesburg. (Inspirational Tapes No 9269.)

Race Doesn't Matter

'Barbarians', to Greeks, were non-Greek-speaking and hence uncivilised people. Scythians were a savage, brutal people from north of the Caspian Sea. To Paul, even these, in Christ were on the same footing as anyone else.

Surely, though, these are more cultural than racial distinctions? Not really. There was little racism of any kind, including that based on skin colour, in the ancient world, but what there was took this form - akin to modern racism in the implicit assumption that the racist, and all those without exception of his 'superior' culture, is superior to the people of an 'inferior' culture - again, without exception on the grounds of personal merit. The Ethiopian (that is, Sudanese) eunuch and probably Paul's two associates, Simeon Niger (black) and Lucius of Cyrene (in North Africa), are examples of the New Testament church's lack of concern over skin colour (Acts 13:1).

As for the modern church, again in Charles Colson's Life Sentence we find a story of barriers broken down in Christ. This time it is the meeting of Tommy Tarrants, former hit-man for the Ku Klux Klan, with Eldridge Cleaver, former leader of the Black Panthers - a militant black Marxist group. Both had become Christians while in prison, and they were able to shake hands, eat at the same table and participate in the same prayer group, their racial hostility swallowed up in the sacrifice of the Cross.

Gender Doesn't Matter

Even the universally recognised, basic distinction between male and female is overcome in Christ, Paul declares. Recognizing that, in the world, men and women are in different situations, he makes recommendations for them which appear different, but in fact are different approaches to the same rule: 'Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ' (Eph 5:21).

But it is the same rule for both, and it is 'submit to one another'. He also deals with slaves and masters separately, but, as with husbands and wives, his intention is to bring them from their different positions into mutual submission in which they have equality.

This is an inexpressibly radical idea for the first century. Both slaves and women were objects, with no more rights than an animal, considered naturally inferior and deserving of no consideration; the only way to treat them was to keep them in subjection. But there is a vast difference between subjection and submission; Paul addresses women and slaves as volitional, rational beings capable of deciding to submit willingly for Christ's sake.

More importantly, he accepted them as partners in his ministry and commended them for their faithfulness and hard work - though as a rabbi he had been forbidden to speak to a woman in public. Peter, too, tells the recipients of his letter to treat their wives with respect, as the weaker partner and as heirs with them of the gracious gift of life (1 Pe 3:7). (There is no reason to take 'weaker' in anything other than a literal, physical sense.)

This means, on the one hand, that it is wrong to accuse Christianity of being anti-woman, but also, more importantly, wrong to regard gender as the central issue in every field of human endeavour. In Christ, it doesn't matter. This also means, on the other hand, that western society - indeed, human society in general - is wrong in expecting every relationship between a man and a woman to have sexual elements.

In his book Eros Defiled, John White points out the intitially surprising fact that one of the most attractive features, for a non-Christian, of student Christian groups is the free and easy relationship between the sexes. He cites the tragic story of a young man who, although not himself homosexual, joined the university gay society so that he could meet women who would not expect him to take them to bed. This is a falsification of human relationships, a reduction of personhood to a set of organs, and it, too, is done away with in Christ.

General Implications

The most distinctive thing of all about the relationship between two people in Christ is that there are three people involved in it. They do not simply relate to each other, but each relates to God, who relates to each, and because their relationship with God is now right, they are also able to relate rightly to each other - and to God in each other. This is the true 'eternal triangle'.

Graham Polkingham has perceptively observed that the primary dimension of relationship with any other Christian - whether his wife, his son, his neighbour (male or female) - is that of 'brotherhood' in Christ. His wife is his 'brother' first and his wife afterwards. This takes into account the fact that our horizontal relationships are ordered by our vertical relationship to God as Father, which puts us all on the one level.

Paul's teaching, if anything, goes further. His favourite description of a believer is 'in Christ'. We are all one in Christ Jesus; but more than that, Christ is all, and is in all.

If Christ is all, and is in all, then all are equal. For all are in Christ, and Christ is in all, and there is no distinction; all have clothed themselves with Christ, so that when we look at them we see not them but Christ. In a sense, we are Christ to each other - though we must be careful here, since this truth is receiving so much emphasis currently that someone is likely to overbalance soon and fall into error. But if you are Christ to me, how can you be less important or less worthy than me? You are more.

We are part of Christ, and so part of each other, one as he and the Father are one (Jn 17:20-23). To allow your religious ethnicity, your social status, your race or your sex to prejudice me is sin, for you have been crucified with Christ, and you no longer live, but Christ lives in you (Gal 2:20).

So, in speaking up on racial and other divisive issues, do we deny the gospel? Not at all; with this perspective, we fulfill the gospel. Paul has shown us the distinction that blots out utterly all other distinctions because it is eternal and penetrates to the deepest levels of being - because it is founded in the direct action and in the very nature of God himself.

This alone, unlike all other distinctions, does not leave two hostile camps facing each other, sealed off by a wall; those outside may be hostile to those inside, but those inside love those outside, and work with longing to convince them to come in - which each one of them is free to do, for all now inside were once themselves completely alienated from the holy God.

Proclaim this in the nations, and you will be heard!