As part of our mission to equip the local church and Asian American Christians, we are posting sermon excerpts, devotions, and prayers from our SOLA Council members concerning racism and injustice. We hope that these words would be challenging and encouraging to believers as we fight against the sin of racism.
This video is a compilation of excerpts from a sermon given by Rev. Justin Kim, the lead pastor of Bethel English Church in Irvine, CA on June 14. You can watch the rest of the message here.
Below is an edited transcript of the video. Please note that some changes have been made for readability and clarity.
The horizontal reconciliation is made possible because of the vertical reconciliation. The cross should really radically change how we see people who are different from us.
What is the problem? The problem is the wall of hostility. Now the word hostility is simply the word for hate. In older translations, they use the word enmity, but it’s a word that means “hate.”
Now what has caused the hate between Jew and Gentile? And the reason is, according to Paul, ironically, it’s the law. So they were supposed to live according to the law, and then they were supposed to be able to show the nations what holiness looked. It was supposed to be a blessing. There were blessed to be a blessing.
We’re told the reality is that [the law] actually became the basis of the hostility. The Jews came to despise the unclean Gentiles because they didn’t have the law and didn’t have what [the Jews] got from God. So the Jews look down upon the Gentiles.
It seems like when God gives us good gifts, whether it’s talents or strengths there’s something in the human heart that takes those good gifts, those strengths, elevates it as an absolute value, and then we use that to look down on everybody else who doesn’t have what we have. It causes us to look down on them, which in turn causes you to despise them. The good gift becomes a basis for hostility.
This is particularly true not just between individuals but between the groups of people, races, cultures, classes of people. The way we get an identity, the way we define ourselves, the way we get our value and self-worth is by taking what’s good about us, what’s distinct about us, lifting it up, then taking a look at everyone else around us and judging everyone else, especially those who don’t have it, and then saying, “Oh, you know, we’re not like them. That’s who we are.”
The vision that I think God has given us to us is [one of] a whole new humanity. God’s purpose inside the church is to create one new human being. When you become a child of God, that is the most profound thing of all, Paul is saying. And so it creates as a child of God, your faith creates even deeper, more extensive connections. You now feel a greater, stronger connection to the people who also believe and have been through the same redemptive experience, have been convicted of sin, and now receive the grace of God. Therefore, the church actually becomes a new humanity, a new nation, a new people.
I am a Christian first, and I’m an Asian second. I am a Christian first, and I’m American second, Paul says because of that, God can finally do something that has never been done before. That is get over these horrible divisions in the human race that are keeping us from living in peace.
So God comes to Abraham, and he says, I’m going to save the world. But I want to make sure that salvation goes to all the families in the nations of the earth (Genesis 12). Moses, by the way, a Jewish man marries a Black woman in Numbers 12. God not only approves of it, but he punishes and disciplines the people who don’t like it. I bet you didn’t know that.
And so [God] actually says to Peter, in Acts10, using this Greek word which means that God is not someone who discriminates, that God is a respecter of peoples. In other words, he says, I don’t want you to do it either.
Do you know what that means? This is what he says: God does not show favoritism or discriminate on the basis of race or class but accepts from every nation those who fear Him and do what is right. In other words, it’s about grace and not about race. So the Bible says racism is a terrible thing. But what the secular world does is it goes after the mind and says, “We’re going to rebuke people, and we’re going to educate people until the racism is gone.”
It hasn’t worked. It has not worked. And it won’t work because the problem is in the heart. It’s in the heart. Guilting people or shaming people never brings about true inner transformation. The Bible tells you what that problem is: The Book of Genesis says that all human beings were created serve God, but we have turned away from him in sin. We want to be our own proudly independent people. We want to be our own gods.
Romans 1 says whether you believe in God or not, that all human beings know deep down that they should be serving God. We might repress it, but you know it. We know we should be serving God and we’re not, [so] there is a deep insecurity in every one of us.
Every one of us knows there’s something wrong with us. Everyone knows that there’s something off in our hearts. It’s fundamental. And therefore, instead of turning to God, we all are trying to do something to bolster that sense of identity — bolster that sense of being right and good. And we do it in many, many ways.
One of the main ways is we take what’s strong, we lift it up, and we make it an ultimate value. Then we looked down at everybody who’s different and we exclude them.
Because we’ve been hostile to each other, God should be hostile to us. Because we have destroyed each other, God should destroy us. Instead, the destruction came down on Jesus.
What the Gospel does is it goes after the heart. Christ died to create something the world had never seen before: People who hated each other coming together, doing life with one another, sharing meals together, and worshiping together, which by the way, is a picture of heaven and glory. There was no paradigm for that at that moment.
That’s the vision. The vision is a new humanity. And Jesus was not ashamed to call us brothers. He was not ashamed to identify with an inferior race, if you will. He didn’t see us as inferior, which is crazy. He went to the cross. He was not ashamed to call us brothers.
Jesus at the cost of his life said, I am not ashamed to call you as my siblings. When the cross comes into the middle of your life, there will be nobody around you that you will be ashamed of either.
Racism is out there. But you’re not going to change it by trying to shame people and things like that. In the church, at least, we should be different. We should see everybody regardless of their nationality, color of their skin, class, whatever, we should see them differently because of the cross of Christ.
There’s no way any one church can comprise the whole thing, but every church has to ask, “How do we stretch ourselves to be a little bit more racially and culturally understanding, accepting, embracing, loving, and inclusive.”
So how do we be more intentional about building relationships with others that are maybe different? How do we see people in the light of the Gospel?
Why wouldn’t we be willing to go all the way? Our churches go on missions everywhere, right? Why would we willing to go all the way to Japan, Africa, the South America to Jordan, to do missions, and not think of loving them and embracing them and inviting them here? People that are different from us — here?
How can we be gung ho and be zealous to preach the gospel and love them there, but not love the people here who are different from us, when they also need the Gospel? We cannot have racial reconciliation unless we first come to the foot of the cross, preaching the Gospel and believing and living out the Gospel brings us together.