All of God’s People are One in Christ

by Pastor George D. Cutler

Grace Gospel Ministry

According to Colossians 3:11, one “is not a Greek and a Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, a barbarian, a Scythian, a slave, a free man; but the all and in all -- Christ.” Here, scripturally speaking (and this is the only expression that really counts), the Church, i.e., the Body of Christ, is the only entity where all racial, national, social and economic distinctions are entirely non-existents (Romans 1:14-16; 10:12-13; I Corinthians 12:12-13; Galatians 3:27-29). The “New Man,” who is a component of the Body of Christ, is void of any physicality, as he is filled unto the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19; Colossians 1:23). Hence, the exclusive focus is the image of God and being filled with the fullness of God, which evince being joined together and synchronized in ONE Body (Christ). With this documentation in place, it is clear that God from the beginning decreed inclusion of all ethnic diversities in the church. Thus He foreordained that there would manifestly be distinctions of races in the world but such has no correlation in regards to His elect, in that even the eternal inhabitants of the earth are ultimately drawn from all tribes, people and languages ……….“standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). The fact that this diversity is durable, thus testifies that God is delighted in the way that His glory is refracted in different ethnic groups and cultures.

The fact that these ethnic differences are all manifestly rooted in one original set of parents (Adam and Eve) dictates against exalting and valuating any group over another or demeaning any group under another. All humans are equal in all things, including their depravity. Hence the Body of Christ’s exclusive focus is on the image of its head and this should be more important and decisive in spiritual relationships than the differences of physical diversities are. Human origins are only temporarily common in Adam and the Scriptures consistently warn against using diversity as the means of either boasting or belittling those who have received the nature of God. Differences are and can be good and important in certain expressional operations, i.e., assignment of genders and age distinctions but they are only incidental to ones call and placement in Christ. In the culmination of the Antediluvian Age (the period before the flood described in the Bible), all human lines flowed from the identification of the sons of Noah (Shem, Ham and Japheth) and thus have flowed into far more diversity than three ethnic types of human beings. Just to give one example: Genesis 10:6 states, “The sons of Ham [are] Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan…..” The ethnic and “racial” differences between those of the Canaanites, Cushites, Egyptians and others so documented were significant enough to be scripted in the Word of God. In other words, “race” is a fluid concept but its boundaries are strictly consigned to God’s purpose of calling out of such in the establishment of a covenant people (Israel) with whom He had eternally instituted in an earthly relationship to the praise of His Glory. God was delighted in demonstration that His election was from eternity and thus entirely independent of the plethora of all variations in human beings.

Moreover, the scope of diversity of the human race is mitigated by the fact that all of mankind have emerged as depraved creatures. Hence the scope of depravity is so huge that there is no serious possibility that any merit of worthiness could ever be extracted from anything sourced out of humanity, hence this fact alone reduces any influences of the diversities of humans. In fact, there is more likelihood that ethnic typology rather certify that all are emphatically the same. Those who utilize such terminology as “God’s ordained diversity,” fail to realize that all such identification modes are absorbed in the manifestation of God’s eternal purpose. In this light, no validation of diversities in humans is justifiable for the destructive purposes of men. In documentation of the Scriptures, God commanded that the so-called original three “races” should diversify increasingly rather than be preserved after the flood, as He set in motion a process of increasing diversification of ethnicities (Genesis 10:5). This is testimony that God ultimately is not concerned with limiting diversity of people but His eternal plans exude the multiplication of increasing diversity in authenticating the fact there that there are only menial differences in the human race, none of which evince any merit!

Expressions of multiple diversities in the human race exclusively exist under God’s  providence in the manifestation of His eternal purpose. God’s ultimate glory instigates peace within the diversity of those whom He has without defined exception united into one through the imputation of His righteous nature. The greatest testimony of the Body of Christ is that it is comprised of these diversified groups who were once “outsiders,” which have all now been blended into Christ as “insiders.” Those having been called in eternity into the family of God, are no longer identified by diversities of race but “New Creations in Christ Jesus” (II Corinthians 5:17). In Christ Jesus, no one is identifiable in the flesh, as all suspicions, prejudices and hostilities have died away and something beautiful is now manifestly exuded in reconciliation, respect and harmony in ways that are incomprehensible to the human intellect. These diversities of differences, which were once manifested as so destructive, are all absorbed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, at the center of all in the church. Diversity for diversity’s sake alone is meaningless even when it is popular or politically correct. God’s people must only be interested in moving in the visible experience of Christ being all and Christ being manifestly in all. When Jesus Christ is all and in all, ethnic differences transition from barriers to blessings, as even “barbarians” and the most distant of those that Paul identified, i.e., “Scythians,” are in the new “race” the church. The head of this race is no longer Adam but the “last Adam” (I Corinthians 15:45), who is Christ! God’s eternal purpose in this new “creation” of elect humans is that all ethnic groups were originally included. This eternal work of God evinces a master-plan of inter-ethnic marriage in this new creation, as demonstrated through the manifestation of diversified humanity, which was from the beginning, swallowed up in the essence of unified Deity (Ephesians 3:1-10).