Ethnic Diversity

To All Peoples

Jesus sent His followers to make disciples of all the nations or peoples of the world. As John takes us into the throne room of heaven, we see the fulfillment of Jesus' mandate. There, standing before the Lamb (Christ) is a crowd so large that it cannot be counted, made up of “all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues” (Rev. 7:9).

Actually, two groups are present—representatives from God's people, the Jews (Rev. 7:3–8), and countless Gentile believers (Rev. 7:9–10). Just as Jesus said it would, the gospel has spread out from Jerusalem to reach people from “the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Now Jews and Gentiles have come together to receive the salvation that God has promised. Now God dwells among His people. Jesus is their Shepherd, supplying all their needs (Rev. 7:14–17).

In response to this spectacular, worldwide, multiethnic salvation, the creatures of heaven and earth fall down before God in worship and song (Rev. 7:11–12). What a breathtaking picture this is!

But of course this vision lies in the future. For now, we live in a world wracked by ethnic divisions and racial prejudice. Yet knowing that God intends to populate heaven with people from every ethnic background has important implications for those of us who claim to follow Christ. If God's heart reaches out to the whole world, then our hearts need to as well.

The Antioch Model

Even though first-century Christians made regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem and met annually in the upper room, the city of Antioch—not Jerusalem—was the center of early Christianity. In fact, modern churches might consider Antioch as a model for what God's people ought to be and do.

Like most cities today, Antioch was racially diverse and culturally pluralistic. As a result, when the scattered believers arrived there (Acts 11:19–20), they had to wrestle with how to make the gospel meaningful for a diversity of groups. Four factors help to account for their success.

They saw ethnic division as a barrier to overcome rather than a status quo to be maintained. Antioch walled off the four dominant ethnic groups of its population, Greek, Syrian, African, and Jewish. But the gospel breaks down walls of separation and hostility (Eph. 2:14–22) and brings diverse peoples together in Christ. We know that the Antioch believers broke through the ethnic barriers because…

They soon had multiethnic leadership. The church employed and deployed pastors, teachers, and evangelists who reflected the composition of the community

They sent out ministry teams. Just as the church at Antioch had been established by believers fleeing from Jerusalem, it, too, sent out ministry teams to tell the story of Jesus. Paul used Antioch as his base of operation for three successive tours (Acts 13:1–3; 15:36–41; and 18:22–23). Moreover, Antioch served as a crossroads for travelers from the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys to the east, Asia Minor to the north, and Egypt to the south. So the church was able to maintain an international outreach in its own hometown.

They joined together to accomplish projects of compassion. A famine in Judea became an opportunity for the multiethnic Christians at Antioch to serve their predominantly Jewish brothers in Judea (Acts 11:27–30). Paul recognized how powerful the “politics of compassion” could be at uniting otherwise disconnected churches. “Remember the poor” became his rallying cry to bring together believers in Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Galatia, and Rome with those at Jerusalem (Acts 20:17–18, 35; 2 Cor. 8:1–9:15; Gal. 2:10).

Overall, Antioch became the model for how the church ought to function when surrounded by diversity and cultural pluralism.

Out of Many, One

The city of Colosse included people from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Col. 3:11):

• Greeks, whose cultural heritage dominated the Roman world;
• Jews, who prided themselves as “God's chosen people”;
• Barbarians, who spoke no Greek and therefore lacked social standing;
• Scythians, a crude, cruel warlike people from the north; and
• slaves, menial workers at the bottom of the society.

Members from all these groups came to faith and joined the community of believers at Colosse. But their ethnic prejudices created problems, which Paul listed (Col. 3:8–9). He pulled no punches, calling them by their ugly names: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language, and lying. Paul challenged his culturally mixed group of readers to shed such behaviors like an old set of clothes and put on Christ instead, who “is all and in all.” He was possibly reminding them of a first-century baptismal creed that reminded new converts that they were joining a new family in Christ.

God's family has no place for prejudice. Radically new ways of relating to others are called for (Col. 3:12–17). If believers today lived out these ideals, we would see God change our churches and begin to transform our culture.

God's Rainbow

Societies and their systems tend to encourage people to divide along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines, or else to abandon their distinctives by assimilating into the dominant power group. Paul called for a different approach. He didn't ask Jews to give up their Jewish heritage and become Gentiles, nor did he ask Gentiles to become Jews. Instead, he affirmed the rich ethnic backgrounds of both groups while challenging them to live together in unity (Rom. 15:7).

That kind of unity is costly, and the attempt to practice it is always under attack. Yet that is the church that God calls us to—a diverse body of people who are unified around Christ. Our backgrounds—whether Japanese, Anglo-Saxon, African, Middle Eastern, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Italian, or whatever—are God's gifts to each of us and to the church. He has placed us in our families as He has seen fit. We can rejoice in the background He has given us and be enriched by the background He has given others.

Jews, Gentiles, and Jesus

At the time Jesus was born, Hebrews saw the world divided into two types of people—Jews and everyone else. Jews regarded foreigners (known as Gentiles, or “nations”) as morally unclean and spiritually lost. Jews were God's people; Gentiles were not. The attitude was well expressed by Peter upon meeting Cornelius, a Roman centurion: “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation” (Acts 10:28).

The roots of this separation stretched deep into Israel's history. One important development occurred in about 450 b.c. when a remnant of Jews returned from captivity in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. Their leader, Ezra the priest, called for purification from all pagan influences, such as foreign-born wives (Ezra 10:2–4).

Later, after centuries of domination by the Greeks and Romans, Jews developed a hatred for all Gentiles and tried to avoid contact with foreigners. According to Tacitus, a Roman historian, “they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies” (Histories, 5.5).

In Matthew's Gospel we see a recognition of the tension between the two groups. He presents Jesus as the long-awaited Christ of the Jews (Matt 15:24). Jesus fulfilled numerous Old Testament messianic prophecies (for example, 1:23; 2:6, 14, 18, 23). But Matthew also shows Jesus breaking through the Jew/Gentile wall of hatred and separation. Jesus dealt with Jews and Gentiles alike, shattering the caste system of His day—and shocking His Jewish brothers.

What ethnic or racial walls would Jesus tear down in the modern era? Perhaps He would have joined black slaves in the United States and lived among them as an equal. Perhaps He would have violated the customs of segregation and eaten with blacks in white restaurants earlier in this century. Perhaps He would open His door to Haitians in Miami, Chinese in Vancouver, or Vietnamese in Houston. Perhaps He would make friends with Palestinians in Israel, or reach out to Moslems in Iraq and Iran. Perhaps He would heal both Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Racism and ethnic hatred have never been God's desire. They come from the sin of men and women. Jesus repudiated such sin wherever He found it. As Matthew shows, His heart is for all the nations.

The City as a Melting Pot

Many cities today are called “melting pots” because of their large number of immigrants and the tendency of ethnic groups to assimilate into the larger culture over time. Jerusalem was, and always has been, a melting pot of cultures. But around 588 b.c., the city became a melting pot of a different kind.

The Babylonians began a siege then that lasted for about two years, with one brief respite, and culminated in the fall of the city. Hundreds of miles away in Babylon, the Lord told Ezekiel to utter a parable about a pot of stew (Ezek. 24:3–5). Jerusalem was portrayed as a stew pot full of water, choice meats, and spices, with “fuel bones” (logs) blazing underneath.

Some believe that Ezekiel's parable was based on a folk song commonly sung by women as they prepared their food. The Lord may have turned a well-known ditty into a powerful spiritual lesson.

The illustration provided a recipe for cooking up a yummy stew. But the parable introduced a problem in the preparations. Scum (or rust) in the pot was spoiling the stew so that no one would want to eat it (Ezek. 24:6). By analogy, the sins of God's people in Jerusalem had made them odious and distasteful. The Lord's remedy was to “turn up the heat” (24:9), so much so that the water would eventually evaporate, the meat would burn up, the pot would turn red hot, and the scum would burn off (Ezek. 24:10–11). Thus God would cleanse the city of its impurities. That was essentially what the Babylonian siege accomplished.

In thinking about cities today, the image of the boiling pot is still appropriate. If a city is relatively healthy, it can stand a certain amount of “heat” and even profit from it. To some extent, heat and pressure are necessary to fully cook the diverse ingredients and meld them together into an enjoyable, nutritious meal. On the other hand, when a city ignores its problems and allows spiritual and moral decline to go unchecked, an increase in heat can be explosive. In the worst case, it can lead to meltdown.

That is what happened to Jerusalem when Babylon conquered it. What steps are you and your community taking to ensure that you avoid a similarly bad outcome?

For more on this topic, see BARRIERS, “Breaking Down Ethnic Walls”.