Regarding Race

This post is prompted by an article that I saw posted a little while back regarding mixed marriages.  I gave it some time to ruminate, and after much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is my firm belief that one should indeed marry only within his or her own race.  Now, before you start picking up stones to throw at me, please read on and see if you agree.

It is fashionable today to say that “there is only one race—the human race.”  Things like ethnicity, culture, faith, etc. do not matter.  What matters is one common humanity.  After all, our DNA is pretty much 100% identical no matter what ethnicity you are.  The accidentals like dark or light skin are just that.  Accidentals with no meaning beyond aesthetics.

In a biological sense that’s true.  All mankind does share the same basic physical makeup.  And if physicality was all there was, they would be right—there is only one race, the human race.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

On the other hand, we have the reaction against these modern views of anthropology.  There are some who believe that ethnic groups constitute race, and that these races ought to remain distinct and separate.  As such, there should be no marriage or mixing between the various ethnic groups.  Some even appeal to the Bible for such a position (yes, the article I saw was from this site).  After all, God divided the peoples into many tongues at Babel, and thus created ethnicity.  Who are we to try to reverse that?  That would be like trying to rebuild the tower of Babel.

I would propose what I believe is a more Biblical view—that there are only two races.  There is Adam’s old humanity which fell with him into sin and death, and there is the new humanity in Christ that is raised to life and righteousness.  For in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free.  All are one.  In Adam all die, but in Christ are all made alive.

To be in Christ is to be not only a new person as an individual, but a member of a new humanity, born of water and Spirit.  The old man and the former race is no more.  For the believer is a part of that New Creation.

As for Babel, that was a curse upon the old Adamic race.  God reversed that curse at Pentecost, when the confused languages of the many peoples became no impediment to the spread of the Gospel.  The scattering of nations is finished for all united in the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Any attempt at a united humanity apart from Christ as the old Adamic man is indeed a rebuilding of Babel.  Because only in Christ can true legitimate unity be found.

And so, I say again, one must not be joined to another outside of one’s own race.  If you are a member of the new humanity in Christ, how can you even think of being united to one of Adam’s lost race?  And if that person from across the Pacific is your brother, how can you even think of him as a foreigner to you?

Perishing Apart from the Law

This is actually an observation that I had when I was writing a paper on Romans 5:12-21  a few years ago.  I’ll start by laying out the two verses I want to look at here:

. . . for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted (imputed) where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam . . .
Romans 5:13-14

I think sometimes people just pass over these verses without really thinking about them and trying to understand what Paul is really saying here.  I know I did before writing that paper.  After all, as a Reformed Christian, I would skim over Romans 5 and think, “Oh yeah.  Imputation of Adam’s sin.  I know that.”  And then move swiftly along.

When I took up that section for my exegetical study, I thought I knew exactly what I was going to find.  What a surprise I had!  I might write later posts about some of the other things I discovered in that study, but I’ll just concentrate on verses 13 and 14 here.

First, I think it is clear that Paul is speaking here specifically to Gentile believers.  That is not to say that the text has no relevance to the Jews, but he is clearly zeroing in on a state where one is not “under the law.”  He has made this distinction before in Romans, and he maintains it now for the sake of the Gentile who might say “But what has the Torah to do with me?  Why does God yet condemn?”

In answer to this, Paul makes clear that sin was in the world even “before the Law was given”—that is, in the period of time between Adam to Moses—and that this sin was enough to condemn, even apart from the Law.  However, Paul also make clear that there is a qualitative difference between the sin of Adam and the sin of those between Adam and Moses.

This brings to mind Romans 2:12, where Paul tells his readers that all are under condemnation.  Those who sin apart from the Law will perish even without it.  Those who sin under it will be judged by it.  Note that it is possible to sin apart from the Law; this is a clear reference to Gentiles and Jews.

Here’s the real kicker though, and the part that really challenged me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about Romans 5.  Sin, Paul tells us, was in the world “before the law was given,” but is not “imputed” apart from the Law.  From Adam to Moses was the period “before the law was given.”  So if we give the text its due, we must conclude that sin was not imputed to sinners from Adam to Moses.

Now, if we take the text to mean what it says, we must either rethink our traditional systematic definition of the theological term “impute,” or we must adopt a weird interpretation that says that those between Adam and Moses did not receive condemnation of Adam’s sin.

If we take the context into account, then we must also recognize that Paul is likening his Gentile readers to those “before the Law was given.”

I will not attempt to define “imputation” in this post.  I’ll save that for later.  I just wanted to encourage everyone to take another look at Romans 5 here.  Because how we read it has broad-sweeping implications for how we read the rest of the book.  Romans 7, for instance, where Paul says (whether of himself or of another is another related discussion), “I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”

” . . . apart from the Law. . . .”  Hmmm . . . we’ve heard Paul use that kind of language before, haven’t we?