This is my fourth post in this series. I am addressing how the gospel of Christ offers a cure to the pathologies of racism and tribalism.
- #1: All Gentiles are born “strangers and aliens”
- #2: The atonement kills hostility between peoples
- #3: The “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”
“To whom do we belong?” Is this THE question, THE issue of our time?
To whom do we belong? We often answer this question automatically: I belong to a family.
The bloodline, the DNA, the family story into which one is born is a relentless identity-shaping force in our lives. This is true for good and for ill, blessing and cursing, and everything in between.
Beyond family, I and my family also belong to a land. We have a place called “home” in a particular neighborhood with a particular landscape and certain kinds of people with our own culture. It is where I am familiar to others and where I feel at home. I belong to a region where I work—a city or town. I also belong to a larger land called a nation. Finally, I belong to the human family. Of course, there are exceptions to this. People can be at home while at the same time, feel lost or isolated. People can also move from their homeland by choice, or be forced out by war, famine or other disaster.
But let’s return to family. The question, To whom do we belong? is a question about our core identity, our source of honor. Another term for honor is “social capital.” I like to ask: Where does our honor, our social capital, begin? From a social perspective, it begins with family.
In light of the vital importance of the bloodline family in our lives, let’s consider what Jesus has to say about family in Matthew 12:46–50.
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:46–50 ESV
I have written about this Scripture passage before. In The Global Gospel, I describe an honor-shame dynamic called Name/Kinship/Blood. I refer to this very story about Jesus. I observe that Jesus is teaching that there are two dynamics relative to the family of God—a narrowing dynamic and an expanding dynamic.
Rather shockingly, Jesus is redefining family for the Jews, the people of God. Jerome Neyrey calls it a “new index of honor.”1 In other words, Jesus is teaching a new way of measuring honor. No longer is it satisfactory to think that being ethnically Jewish automatically means that one has the honor status of being part of God’s family. Jesus narrows the criteria for membership in God’s family considerably. Pointing to his disciples, Jesus says, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Doing the will of God—obedience to the teachings of Jesus, e.g., the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)—became the deciding criteria; this is the narrowing dynamic.
But Jesus expands the concept of God’s family as well. Being a member of God’s family and possessing the corresponding honor of being related to Jesus is now available to anyone and everyone; indeed, it is available to “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven.” This “new index of honor”—this new way of defining who was an “insider”—deeply challenged the status quo view of family.
Jesus’ teachings turned upside-down the traditional understanding of people of God, family, and father.2
Are the words of Jesus concerning family really that challenging to the status quo? Here’s what N.T. Wright says:
“In the peasant society, where family relations provide one’s basic identity, it was shocking in the extreme in the first century Jewish culture, for which the sense of familial and racial loyalty was a basic symbol of the prevailing worldview. This saying cannot but have been devastating. Jesus was proposing to treat his followers as surrogate family. This had a substantial positive result: Jesus intended his followers to inherit all the closeness and mutual obligations that belonged with family membership and a close knit family-based society. But this was not just extraordinarily challenging at a personal level. It was deeply subversive at a social, cultural, religious, and political level.”3
Yes, Jesus is teaching something here that is profoundly challenging: It is “deeply subversive at a social, cultural, religious, and political level.”
What does the family have to do with racism?
RACISM is “the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called ‘races’; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others.”4
When doing the will of God becomes the criteria for membership in God’s family, it subverts traditional ideas of superiority and inferiority, inclusion and exclusion. Therefore, being part of God’s family—doing the will of God—subverts racism. No longer is the Christian permitted an attitude of inferiority or superiority toward another follower of Christ (nor any other human being) because of skin color, nationality, race or ethnicity, education or wealth, or other measure of social status.
In Galatians 3:28–29, Paul contributes to Jesus’ teaching about family. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Paul creates theology from the life and teachings of Jesus. Paul is describing a new kind of humanity—a new kind of family that transcends the boundaries of the bloodline family.
Paul has relativized the family—the most basic unit of social organization. In so doing, Paul also relativizes other social units and other markers of social status. This includes: skin color and race. Family name, wealth or poverty. Citizenship and nationality. Level of education. And any other source of ascribed honor or achieved honor. (See my previous post on how and why knowing Christ relativizes other forms of social status.)
It is noteworthy that in Gal 3:28–29, Paul uses the honorific ‘family language’ of Abraham. When Paul writes, “you are Abraham’s offspring”, he uses the Greek word, σπέρμα, or sperma. The ESV translates sperma as offspring; the NIV and KJV translates sperma as “seed.” Doesn’t this refer to the male “seed”—vital for creating a new life?
Paul is conveying a powerful truth about family. Being in God’s family, being in relationship to others doing the will of God (sisters and brothers)—regardless their race or other social marker—this is more vital (not less), more important (not less) than bloodline-family-relations. This family is more durable (not less). This family is eternal, in Christ the risen Lord and King.
A traditional proverb says, “Blood is thicker than water.” But according to Mat 12:46–50, Jesus is saying, Doing the will of God is thicker than blood. Here is the principle:
The ‘thickest’ unifying family dynamic available to the human race is doing the will of God together in relation to Christ.
This is another way that the Bible undermines racism.
To whom do we belong? If we do the will of God (Mat 12:46–50) in Christ (Gal 3:28–29), we belong to the family of God.
LEARN MORE: Much more could be said about this family-of-God-priority. There are difficult questions. For example, what about Christian leaders who mistreat their family because they are overcommitted to their ministry—isn’t this problematic? For additional perspectives on this, I highly recommend The Bible Project podcast, “Family of God E6 / Jesus and the Gentiles.” The entire podcast is excellent, but the discussion about Mat 12:46–50 begins at around 42 minutes.
FREE VIDEO CURRICULUM—Journey of Discovery in Honor, Shame, and the Gospel: Check out the 12-lesson video curriculum here. Made available through Mission ONE, the video class offers two free 60-page downloadable study guides available at the YouTube page.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Jerome Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 57.
2. These three paragraphs are largely taken from: Werner Mischke, The Global Gospel: Achieving Missional Impact in Our Multicultural World (Mission ONE, Scottsdale, AZ, 2015), 152.
3. N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2), (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 278. The author of this blog post first heard this quote from N.T. Wright in the podcast “Family of God E6 / Jesus and the Gentiles” from The Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/podcast/series/family-of-god, accessed 18 January 2021.
4. Definition by Audrey Smedley in Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/racism, accessed 18 January 2021.
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