Why the Gospel is Necessary for Racial Reconciliation

Richard J. Mouw in The Kings Come Marching In writes:

“…an appeal to the fact of God’s creation of the human race is, in itself, inadequate to establish a basis for racial justice. The perpetuators of injustice can argue that God did indeed create all people out of ‘one blood.’ But, they can go on to argue, sin has altered the original situation. In response to human rebellion, God has decided to keep people within their own ethnic and racial groups [speaking of Babel in Genesis 11]…. The only effective way of countering this kind of theology, it seems to me, is to point to the work of the Cross….We cannot ignore the Babel account or the provisional divisions of the race that God introduced in response to the pretensions of the tower builders. But through Calvary and Pentecost God has begun to ‘lift the veil.’ In Jesus Christ the barriers of race and clan and tribe and tongue are being abolished. Redemption restores the work of creation, and in doing so it also repairs the damage done by sin.”

[HT: Danny Slavich]