RAAN and Feeling "Safe" Worshipping with "White People"

And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line. I'm doing some advertising here. I hope Joe Thorne's watching. If he's not, he will be eventually. But, you know, I got down to New Zealand. And man, I'll tell you something.

Need to pray for our brothers and sisters in New Zealand. Did y 'all see that video? Did you see the video of that, the golf shop? That's Wellington. That's where I was. Okay. I slept through a 4 .4 on like Sunday morning or Saturday morning.

I forget. I didn't even wake up. Which sort of bummed me out because everybody's like, oh, that was sort of cool, you know. Yeah. Okay. That's huge. And I would, huge, huge. And I would have been out in the street.

And I bet you that I bet you the flights were canceled. Oh, it would have been a mess. Would have been. Now it's on Monday. So exactly one week. I would have, I'd still be there. Wow. Anyway, get to Wellington and I see Joe Thorne has this shirt and he gives it to one of the elders, you know.

And I didn't, I didn't get one. So I had to buy one. It's okay. I'm not hurt. But people say, well, now why would you wear somebody else's shirt? We're not in competition. That's what's so cool. When you're doing what you've been called to do and you know what it is the Lord's called you to do and gifted you to do, you're not in competition.

I'm not in a competition with Joe Thorne. You know, I was on his webcast. Would have been nice to give me a shirt then. But anyway, I was on his webcast and, you know, I sat down in his hotel room and we did our thing and he talks about his stuff.

And I don't, I really doubt Joe has ever done a program specifically on Codex Bézier Canterburgiensis' lacunae in the page containing John 2028 and what this might mean in Muslim apologetics. Probably not something that he'd have a whole lot of interest in doing.

And so we're not in competition. So, you know, people are always going, man, I'd like to have some other things to listen to. I can only listen to, and I understand this, can only listen to so much of the dividing line because I can only listen to so much of it too.

That's pretty much only when I do it. But anyway, so doctrine and devotion, you got to Joe Thorne, really good brother. We, he's one of those guys we had never met. We sit down to dinner and it's just like, click and, and you click, you know, there's just that connection.

And I think that's wonderful. Just weird that it had to happen on the other side of the planet when he's actually from Illinois. But there you go. And it may be the next time we see each other on the other side of the planet.

So anyway, lots and lots and lots of stuff to talk about today. We'll probably open the phones later on, just so you know. Maybe, possibly, we'll see. In fact, probably will. You know, I've had a lot of people suggest, you know, it's nice to have the phones open once in a while.

Yeah, I know, I know. And I know, I know that I need and I want to go back and finish up the response to Brownson on Romans 1. We sort of got to the key issue, and it was sort of like after that, it's just sort of like, but we need to do it and put all those videos together in one place.

I realize that that needs to be done. That's, that's important. And so we got to do that. During the cruise, an unbelievable radio broadcast came. And by the way, I listened to the N .T. Wright, Tom Schreiner, Unbelievable program this morning.

And once it comes out on either Audible or Kindle, I will probably listen to N .T. Wright's new book. What's it, The Day the Revolution Began, I think is what it's called, something like that. Um, it was an interesting conversation.

If you go over to Unbelievable, in fact, it was interesting, one of the letters that Justin read toward the end of the program, this guy was saying he was listening to Unbelievable because he heard another podcast playing segments of the Bart Ehrman, Richard Balcom stuff.

Well, who might that have been? Yeah, that was us. And so once again, Justin gets a listener from our recommending the program. So anyway, it was interesting. And, you know, Wright's just a great speaker.

And Tom Schreiner's not as good a speaker. And he'd say that he'd said he'd said immediately, Oh, yeah, no, no, no question about that. So you need to look past that and listen carefully what's being said.

But it was, it was a good conversation on the issue of the atonement and penal substitutionary atonement and stuff like that. You know, I like hearing N .T. Wright saying, I believe in penal substitutionary atonement.

And so often with Wright, it's like, yeah, I hear what he's saying. But there's just, I don't know, something there. Anyway, you might want to listen to that. It's interesting. And so we've got some, hopefully, probably next week, got some announcements to make about some cool upcoming stuff.

Cool upcoming stuff. Can't pull the trigger quite yet. And there's one thing we're working on. Hmm. If it happens, it will be what was Saddam Hussein's phrase, the mother of all wars, this will be the debate of all debates.

No two ways about it. If Michael Fallon can pull this one off. It's gonna be gonna be something. We're gonna try to do a program on Thursday. I'm gonna do it via Skype. I'm gonna be in Tucson. This weekend is El Tour de Tucson.

I don't mind telling people. My son doesn't think I should tell anybody where I'm going. I'm not sure how they would show up if they don't know where I'm going. But and I'm not Eric Cantor, but he's, you know, the big safety minded, you know, defense dude.

But I don't care if people know I'm doing El Tour de Tucson, because there's like 9 ,500 cotton spandex clad people wearing Oakleys and helmets. And we all look identical. So that's probably the safest place I could possibly be.

Well, except for all the crazy people riding bikes around me. But I'm gonna be down there and I'm gonna be at, I'm gonna be speaking this weekend at Faith Community. As I've done, wow, I think for like three, maybe four years now.

And I love doing it. I sort of feel bad just contacting him and say, hey, I'm coming down for El Tour if you'd like to. Oh, come on. Yes. Okay. All right. Cool. Love it. They're very generous, very kind folks.

And the folks always receive the ministry well there. And that's Saturday night and twice on Sunday. So three, three sermons. That's always a challenge, man, I can tell you. And I guess I discovered that there are certain people who remain nameless.

That if you have more than one service in your church, you're not a church. Yeah, there's a major group out there that says if you have more than one service, that you're not actually a church. That each service should have its own elders.

So it should be its own church into itself. No, I'll tell you later who that is. But don't say it too loud. Here, we can actually chat with each other via the phone thing. Yeah. So anyway, don't you wish you could see what's on the screen?

No, not at the moment. All right. So one of the... Wow. How do I even begin on this? Oh, by the way, please, just because I'm wearing this t-shirt, please do not hold them accountable for anything that I say today.

Differentiate. I almost took it off and put a regular shirt on because I'm going to talk some controversial stuff and then it's like, don't really have time. So Joe will just have to take his lumps for allowing anybody to buy a shirt.

That's where the issue is. I was asked to listen to a webcast. We all know that in the not yet quite weak sense, the election, the response from the losing side has been. What's that? Childish. Yes. There has been a tremendous amount of demonstration of rank immaturity on the part of many.

Of course, I think anybody that needs a safe space needs to grow up and that kind of stuff. But there's been a lot of discussion, a lot of argumentation, most of which has not been overly helpful. Obviously, last evening, we got some of our first indications.

People are trying to just disrupt me in channel, which I find very disrupting. Anyway, I don't have Merck set up, but I could do a massive banning of people. There have been people who said, don't talk about it.

Don't go there. But we don't yet know what Donald J. Trump is going to do. We knew what Hillary was going to do. Hillary was a known quantity, corrupt, evil, anti-Christian worldview. The candidate from Planned Parenthood didn't have any questions at all about where Hillary was going to go, what she was going to do on her first day, anything like that.

Fact of the matter is, we don't have a clue. Nobody does. Because one of the main reasons that I opposed Donald Trump in the primaries and would have preferred almost anybody that ran in the primaries to him was this.

He has no formed worldview. You look back at his interviews in the late 90s, things like that, pro-abortion, just your standard New York secular rich guy type thing, very surface level. And we were told he's changed and all the rest of that stuff.

Well, so we got our first indication from the 60 Minutes interview last night. Well, that homosexuality stuff, it's gone. Supreme Court, that's settled off. That's done. But I'm going to appoint pro-life Supreme Court judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

If a Bergefell is established law, why isn't Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is 40 years, more than 40 years. Bergefell's last year. How can one be settled law and the other's not? And how do you choose a jurist that has a worldview that would have them overturning Roe v. Wade but not overturning a Bergefell?

Oh, but that would require a consistent worldview thing. And that's the problem. I've never gotten any indication that the man ever even thinks about such things. That was one of my, that was why I called him the Las Vegas candidate.

Well, roll the dice. Roll the dice. We'll see what happens. If you voted for Donald Trump, roll the dice. Now, you've seen the signs of people saying your vote was a hate crime. Now, there are people who are saying if you voted for Donald Trump, you're guilty of a hate crime.

Wow. Don't recall this type of thing happening in the past, but it's happening now. And who you voted for, that used to be between you and God, pretty much. It was almost something you didn't do. You didn't ask people that.

Well, would you like to? It's almost like you're expected to answer that question now. And in the olden days, you didn't do that. But now you're being told if you support one side, then you committed a hate crime.

Now, some of us tried to warn about this before it became two candidates. Tried to say that this is going to create all sorts of problems if you go this direction. This man does not represent enough of us.

Didn't get listened to and somehow he won. Now, I firmly believe that he won primarily because I do not believe there's some groundswell of people who love Donald J. Trump. I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a second.

I think it was a combination of two things. But, well, the primary thing was Hillary Rodham Clinton. Those of us that are older remember the scandal-plagued bordello that was the White House under Bill Clinton.

And anyone who's done much in the way of digging into things, even the left said she's just not a likable character. Everybody knows she treats her secret service agents like dirt. Military, same way.

Can swear like a drunken sailor and does very often at everybody around her. And so we all knew that there was the public, and of course then the emails just revealed that this was the reality. There's a public Hillary Clinton and then there's the real one.

And all of us are just sort of naturally turned off by someone who's completely different. I sort of like the fact that when I go travel, one of the things that people say to me when they meet me while we're traveling is, you're pretty much same on the dividing line as you are in real life.

It's like, yep, you get what you say. WYSIWYG! I remember when we got our first WYSIWYG graphic design word processing program. I forget what it was called now. It wasn't Ventura Publisher, but it was something else.

It was even less advanced than that. We did the Roman Catholic tracts for the Pope's visit here to Phoenix on that. Nine pin dot matrix just... But hey, back then, that's what you did. Anyway, WYSIWYG.

That's the way I am. And most of us sort of like that and other people too. But everybody knew that that's not what Hillary Clinton was about. That with Hillary Clinton, your public persona and your reality, very different things.

Anyway, you put up a candidate that was absolutely reprehensible on every level. One of the most corrupt politicians America has ever seen. And for many of us, one of the strongest arguments was this woman's not only against religious liberty, she's not only against the Christian worldview, she is bought and paid for by Planned Parenthood.

And there are a lot of us that really find Planned Parenthood to be the modern incarnation of the cult of Mueller. I mean, it's just that disgusting. And so, Donald Trump got a lot of votes from people who just were completely repelled by this individual, their worldview, their history, their corruption, their dishonesty.

Not because they've thought anything positive about Donald Trump, but they decided, you know, hanging or get shot, which ones? I think getting shot might be faster. So let's go that way. You know, it's just which of my two poisons am I going to go with here?

That's pretty much what happened. And so, the number comes out to be that 81 of white evangelicals, it's funny, I could not find a single, I didn't have a whole lot of time this morning to look. I did look though, could not find a single statistic about black evangelicals.

Maybe they didn't collect that information. I can't imagine that almost every... No, no, there's not an assumption there that there aren't any. No, not at all. I think, if I recall correctly, about 80 some odd percent of the black vote went for Hillary Clinton, that Trump did better than Romney did, interestingly enough.

But still, similar numbers between white evangelicals and blacks as a whole for different candidates. Now, do you know what makes an evangelical today? And do you trust a pollster to accurately identify the evangel?

I don't. Because the people they identify as evangelicals, I just go, really? Seriously? No way. Non-Trinitarians or things like that. Obviously, the word itself is only mildly useful any longer. But for some reason, it has been accepted in totality with this 80, 81 of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

And twice now, just now, once in Channel and once in Twitter, one guy says, I asked leading black evangelicals about those statistics and they declined to answer. And then in Channel, almost identically, URLs popped up.

Evangelicals remain complicated. They don't want to identify themselves as evangelicals. Okay, well, it makes sense. So, I can't give, I can't countersight anything as to how many conservative, believing black brothers and sisters voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton or Donald J. Trump.

I don't know. Evidently, the information isn't out there. Okay, since we can't go there, I was directed to a podcast and I'm going to play a portion of the podcast. I'm going to comment on a portion of the podcast.

I'm going to try to keep this brief because I've invited the person making the comments to join me on the dividing line. Probably next week, but certainly don't want to do it Thursday. If I'm doing it by Skype, that wouldn't work.

But maybe next week, if he chooses to do so. I listened to all of it twice this morning. It was a long ride. Listened to it twice and there'd be a lot of people would say, oh, don't touch this again. Didn't you learn the first time?

Well, I don't want to go through what I did in May, but if this was any other issue, if, well, let's listen to it first and then let me give you the counter citation. And we'll figure out from there what we're looking at.

You got queued up. I've got it plugged in.

Here we go. Well, there we go. Would I go to my pastor, especially how would an African American in a predominantly white church go to their pastor and even begin to have the discussion of the pain that they're feeling?

With kind of an understanding that based on those statistics, that pastor may have been a Trump supporter. You told me to be honest, right, Beau?

This is honest. So I'm going to say where I am. And so I'm really can only definitively speak for me, but I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to say that there are many other Black Christians who may feel the same way.

And this is probably going to surprise a lot of white people and maybe even feel offensive to them. But here it is, just the raw, honest truth. I really, this Sunday, don't feel safe worshiping with white people.

I go to a church that is predominantly white and Reformed. I am part of a denomination that is overwhelmingly white and Reformed. And I know dozens and dozens and dozens of people personally who are great people individually, good relationships with them, generous, all of those things.

But right now, I feel betrayed by the church. Not the church universal. I know that Christ is still the cornerstone. I know that in an eschatological sense, nothing will prevail against the church and that this is my home.

We are Christ's bride, and that hasn't changed. And certainly not because of a little thing like a presidential election. However, let's be real. We live in the real world. On Sunday, I have to go to a physical building with a local congregation filled with people who, just like me, are sinners.

And I know for certain that in many of the congregations in which I've been a member or worshipped in, there are folks who were overtly, outright, boldly Trump supporters and are happy right now. And I cannot emotionally bring myself to be comfortable with that.

And going in on Sunday morning and singing songs and praying with this group of people who seem so out of touch with my experience of America.

It's painful, right? Because we hear the stats, we hear the talking about evangelicals turning out. And for many of us, we think, well, that's like a false evangelicalism, right? That's a misrepresentation of the gospel.

Surely these are not the true Christians. But as you just kind of painted a picture of, I mean, in your very church, I mean, this is happening. And this is, of course, happening across the nation where many don't feel safe.

So how do we process this reality of being in community with people that we are not in community with?

Okay. I wanted to stop there. Being in community with people we are not in community with. Back in May, Hornet's Nest was kicked over because I dared wander into an area that my melanin count does not qualify me to wander into.

And we lamented the reality of ethnic Gnosticism, the idea that you have to experience what I experienced to be able to say anything, criticize anything, be concerned about anything. And what's really concerning me here is this is becoming a gospel issue.

If you didn't hear gospel issues in that, you weren't listening. You weren't listening. How can you be a part of a community that you're not a part of the community? So which community is being seen? This is Jamar Tisby, is the speaker, and then someone else is interviewing him, sort of.

And he's one of the primary people in RON, the Reformed African American Network. Remember, RON went after me for a 540-word article. And which community is primary here, the body of Christ or the ethnic community?

And in that question, there's no question what the answer is. The first and primary is ethnic. The ecclesiastical is secondary. And to me, that is dangerously unbiblical. Dangerously unbiblical. I don't understand it.

In fact, I was thinking about being down in in Wellington. And in the church there where we had the conference, it was sort of a, I don't know how to describe it, they rent it from a, it's actually a music studio.

And so it's sort of dark. And it's black and gray. And I was thinking about the people that I met there. I was thinking about one particular fellow in a wheelchair. And I really spent some time with him.

We talked with him, chatted with him, and really sort of went on my way to greet him and stuff. And I was thinking, was he black? I don't remember. In fact, I started thinking about everybody that was there.

And see, down in New Zealand and in Australia, they have their own native populations. You have to be very careful about the aboriginals in Australia and the Maori in New Zealand. And there's actually sort of like rules as to what you can and cannot do and stuff like that.

The only time I ever thought about race or ethnicity at all, in the entire time I was in New Zealand, was when I was rowing in the little gym. And there was TV. And I tried to find something to watch.

Rowing can be somewhat tedious. And it turned out that the TV station was a Maori station. It was the local indigenous people. And it was in the Maori language. I may even be mispronouncing it, but it was in that language and had subtitles.

And about the only time I ever thought, when I was in the church, I'm sitting here thinking about people who came up and talked to me. I don't care what color they are. I don't think about what their ethnicity is.

They're just brothers and sisters in Christ. I just don't understand this dedication to making race absolutely the lens. It's the glasses. It's, you know, it's just, I'm going to look at everything through this.

I will not. I refuse. You can't force me to do it. You can call me all the names in the world. And I know there are big names in evangelicalism that are pushing this stuff. I know. I know who they are.

Ain't going there. You can stop inviting me to stuff. Sorry. Nothing I can do about it. Because the gospel I understand says that the primary community I'm a part of is the kingdom of God. And everything else is secondary.

Everything else is secondary. I'm not a Scotsman first. I'm a Christian first. So, but what Jamar said at the beginning, some of you, I saw people on channel going, what, what, what, what, let's, let's try that.

Let's try that again. Let me, let me back it up here.

I'm going to say where I am. And so I'm really can only definitively speak for me, but I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to say that there are many other black Christians who may feel the same way.

And this is probably going to surprise a lot of white people and maybe even feel offensive to them, but, but here it is just the raw, honest truth. I really, this Sunday, don't feel safe worshiping with white people.

This Sunday, I do not feel safe worshiping with white people. Now, what Jamar needs to understand is most of what we're hearing is, so you think we're going to beat you up on Sunday? Because Donald Trump won the election.

I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but leave that aside. Because the 80 of what they call evangelicals, look, let's be honest, that's, they don't know who evangelicals are. That's a grossly inflated number, but leave it aside.

When we hear safe, we're not using it in the modern liberal socialist construct of safe spaces. What you're saying is, I think what you're saying is I won't feel comfortable. And later on, that's, I did catch it this time.

I was listening really carefully. You did use that term later on, wouldn't be comfortable. So the first thing is to us, that sounds like you're saying we're, we want to beat you up, which we just, we just go, huh?

Total disconnect, complete and total disconnect. And do you, do you not realize what you're saying about your brothers and sisters in Christ to make that statement? You know, you keep saying, well, you need to understand what our experience is.

So you, you get to basically say that we're murderers at heart all the time because of our skin color, our skin. And that's okay. Really? Okay. All right. Leaving whether safe means safe or safe means comfortable off the side for a moment.

Worshipping with white people. Let's, could, could we for just a second, put the shoe on the other foot for just, just a moment. I realize a lot of people say, nope, you can't. We're absolutely unique.

We have an absolutely unique, it's the ethic narcissism. Nope. You cannot, you cannot apply the same standards in reverse. Won't work. We just won't, we will not even discuss it. But, but here's the question I would have.

All through, and I listened, I said, I listened to it twice. I listened to it twice. All through this was this lamenting. And I kept wanting to ask, so you would have rejoiced that one of the most corrupt anti-Christian politicians ever to walk on the stage in the United States was elected.

A woman who would be absolutely certain to not only continue, but to promote the Holocaust amongst unborn children, amongst African-Americans, amongst black Americans, she would be certain to make sure to murder as many as possible, because that's what Planned Parenthood is about.

But you would rejoice in that? You wouldn't be lamenting that? I'm, I'm just, I'm left stuttering. I really am. I don't, I don't understand because the only, the only thing I could understand was you were saying, yes, I'm lamenting because Trump won and I wouldn't have been lamenting had Clinton won.

And I'm just left going, I'm lamenting both of them, but for different reasons. I'm lamenting Trump because we don't know where he's going to go. And we're going to find out that he said what he needed to say to get elected.

And I want to give him a chance. He hasn't even started yet. I want to give him a chance. But it was plain as a nose on her face that he's just an unregenerate playboy and he's going to act like an unregenerate playboy.

And we can expect, you know, we can hope that maybe some people around him might do something good, but scraps. It's the best we can hope for. But we knew what we were going to get with Clinton. All right.

So let's say for the fun of it, that Hillary Clinton won the election and the next day we fire up a webcast here and I'm lamenting and I am just shaking my head going, oh, I just can't believe this has happened.

And then I made the statement. I'll be honest with you. I just don't know if I'm going to feel safe on Sunday worshiping with Black people. If anybody said that in my church, and I'm stealing this from Rich because Rich mentioned this beforehand.

I think if anybody said it in Rich's church, they would be pulled over by the elders so quickly. What do you mean by that? What are you talking about? That's racist and divisive. What are you talking about?

Don't you all know we're all one in Christ? What do you mean you wouldn't feel safe worshiping with Black people? That's absurd. That'd be the first thing that would happen. Boom. And it should. How does anyone get away with saying this kind of stuff?

That's what I want to talk to you about, because I'll be perfect honest with you, Jamar. I find that absolutely sinful. I find it sinful. That's a sinful attitude. And what just leaves me, again, my naivete, what leaves me, and I know it's all because I won't buy the narrative.

Once you buy the narrative, then you discover that this isn't racism. This is just whatever. Let's do the only thing that actually should be done in a situation like this. Let's go to the word, please.

Can we do that? Colossians 1, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins, verse 14. It's textual variant there, by the way, but I'm not going to get into that. We've discussed it before. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Firstborn means one who has preeminence over. Because in him were all things created, whether in heaven or earth, visible, invisible thrones, lordships, rulers, principalities, or authorities. All things, not the pawn, not just the all things in an ungeneralized, but concrete reality.

All things were created through him and for him. Isaoton is also used, interestingly, of the father in this context elsewhere, over, I think it's in Romans 11. He is propontone, he is before all things, and taponta enato sunestic, and the all things in him hold together.

We've gone over this many, many times because it's one of the key Christological passages. Deity of Christ, creator of all things, antinostic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the archae, the origin, the source, or it could be the first in the sense of prototikos ecton necron.

He is the firstborn from the dead. In order that, we're talking here, again, I'm trying to get to a particular point, but just so we're not running past things, the Jewish mindset, resurrection, end times, but God has upset that traditional Jewish idea.

You have the resurrection of the Messiah. He's the firstfruits. He is the firstborn from the dead in order that he might come to have the first place protuon in all things because it pleased him, pleased the Father, that in him, that is in the Son, the incarnate Son, if you go back to verse, well, it's actually going to come out again a little bit later on, but you go back and he entered into flesh.

It was pleased that all the pleroma, the pleroma, sorry, there's no word right after, pleroma, the fullness should dwell in him. And here's the key. And De-Altu threw him by means of him to reconcile, to reconcile.

Reconcile what? Ta-Pon-Ta-Ais-Altan. Threw him to reconcile all things unto himself. Now, this has been somewhat of a challenging text for me because it's a proof text for the universalists. Universalists are people who believe that everyone will be saved, that there will eventually be the salvation of every single individual and many would go so far as to say Satan himself.

Threw him to reconcile Ta-Pon-Ta-Ais-Altan. So, how has Ta-Pon-Ta, and Ta-Pon-Ta has been used all the way through this, all of creation. How has Ta-Pon-Ta been reconciled to the Father? Well, we tend to think of reconciliation solely in soteriological categories.

We have been reconciled. Our relationship to God has been made right. How did he do so? Well, there is a singular word, singular, it's a hotbox, only one time used. So, it's one of those places where the Apostle Paul likes to sort of, the Apostle Paul had a German streak.

If you know the German language, Germans love to take multiple words and just pile them on top of each other in one word and just make this long, cool sounding thing that you can spit all over yourself with.

Well, he takes peace, the word peace, Irenae, poieo, to make, turns it into a participle. Having made peace, dia tu haimatas tu staru altu, through the blood of his cross. So, there's something about reconciliation that has to be defined by the making of peace.

That has to be defined by the making of peace and this happens through the central act of the incarnate Son of God, the God-Man. He made peace through the blood of his cross. And then he wants to make sure, Paul wants to make sure we understand, through him, whether ta epitaes geis, aeteta entoes uranoes.

So, it's the things on earth or the things in heaven. There has been a reconciliation. There has been something that is directly related to the blood of the cross that makes peace, that results in reconciliation.

Now, the Universalist says, see, there it is, everyone's going to be saved. Everyone's going to heaven. Well, I suppose this is all you had. If you only had this text, you could argue that. This very same apostle, very plainly, very clearly, teaches that that's not the case.

But he does teach that the judgment that is going to come upon those that are outside of this one who made peace, that that judgment will be a just judgment and that God will be justified. This is what theodicy means, theos in dikayo, to justify the justification of God.

That's what theodicy is about, that God will be justified in his having created in the first place. Because what's one of the big arguments? Well, if there could be people in hell, then why did God create?

Well, there's something about having made peace the blood of his cross that will allow for this reconciliation of all things. And my understanding is what this means is in the self-giving of the cross, in the condescension of the son, in the perfect bearing in his body of the wrath that was due to his elect people, you have not only the grounding of their own peace with God, but you also have in that self-giving of the son, the foundation for the justice of the judgment of God.

And this is the sense in which there is peace that is made. That peace is because there's no injustice. We've said many, many times, you either receive justice from God, the just penalty of your sins, or you receive mercy and grace.

Mercy and grace are not in the categories of justice. They are not in justice because God's law has been satisfied, satiated, his holiness propitiated, not just expiated in the work of the son upon the cross of Calvary.

Now, what does this have to do with what we're talking about right now? Well, it's that term, reconciliation. We're hearing a lot about racial reconciliation. What does that mean within Christianity? Well, I demand, I demand that the terms we use in our discussion be defined by God's word and not by socialists.

If you are going to demand that we take left-wing, leftist, socialist, Marxist theory and allow it to determine our exegetical methodology, I'm out of the conversation. Can't go there, won't go there, respect the word too much to go there.

Okay? Is that fair? I think it is fair because in no other area would we be asked to do this, in no other area. So there is a reconciliation and this is something that he has accomplished and it is through Christ, this reconciliation has taken place.

This is a reality. This then results in the bringing together of Jew and Gentile. Now, you want to have huge, massive cultural and ethnic divisions? Look at how the Jews looked at Gentiles. Look at how they treated Gentiles.

And Paul says, can't happen in the church. That's the whole thing of Galatians 2. The whole reason to stand up to the apostle who walked with Jesus and walked on water and was considered the leader of the apostles, probably the oldest, certainly the most mouthy.

Stand up to Peter when you, or the apostle Paul were called late and people lay their garments at your feet when they stoned Stephen. And yet you dare to stand up to Paul and say, you're not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel.

And he accepts it. This is the foundation of that. No Jew, no Gentile, you're all one in Christ Jesus. You're all one in Christ Jesus. And once you understand that that middle wall of separation has been broken down, it's been gotten rid of, then you need to understand that there has been a renewing.

There is a new creature and your community is defined by that new creature in Christ, not by anything else. It is not by the color of your skin. It is not by how much melanin you have. There is one race, the human race.