Race. Grace. Justice. Jesus. Намуна

Race & grace

Thank God that Jesus wasn’t racist.

I don’t know about your family tree, but my roots don’t reach back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. I am what the Bible would call a “Gentile.” Yet my race didn’t stop Jesus from redeeming me.

If you could speed read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), you would find out that Jesus focused his ministry on his Jewish neighbors, but his love was evident for Gentiles too. When the Persian Magi came to worship Jesus, he didn’t shout, “No!” (as toddlers tend to do). When he fled from treacherous King Herod to Egypt, Jesus didn’t dig in his toddler heels at the border, refusing to live among “those people.” When a Roman soldier asked him for help and a woman from modern Lebanon begged him for mercy, Jesus didn’t throw up a little bit in his mouth.

Because Jesus wasn’t racist.

In fact, in John 3 and John 4, Jesus went on the record when it came to race. In John 3, as Jesus dialogued with a fellow Jew, we read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The world. Whoever. Nothing racist about that!

Then in John 4, Jesus “had to go through Samaria,” a region that most Jews avoided due to its ethnic and religious diversity (John 4:4). Even a local said to Jewish Jesus, “‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans” (John 4:9). But associate Jesus did. In fact, he did much more then associate, spending days with the Samaritans and offering them grace and salvation.

Because Jesus wasn’t racist.

I love those simple stories because they remind us that Jesus didn’t let differences stop him. Jew or Gentile, Roman or Samarian, his mission was to seek and save the lost from every nation. 

In other words, there is grace for every race.

Isn’t that good news? I don’t know your story, but I have so many regrets when it comes to the racial sins of my past. I wish I could say I have never told a racist joke or done a cruel impression or repeated ignorant assumptions. But I have. I’m grateful that smartphones weren’t invented in the 80s or the ugliness of my sins might be recorded for you to see. I can only imagine what you would say . . .

And even as the years have gone by, I still haven’t arrived at racial perfection. I long to be anti-racist and to always stand up for truth and justice, but I sometimes fail to do the things I love and give into the sins I swear I will never commit again, just like Paul confessed in Romans 7.

You too?

If so, don’t forget God’s grace. Jesus sought out Samaritans, and he sought you out too (maybe that’s why you’re reading this today). He longs to change you, but even before you change, he longs to save you. That’s why he loved the world so much that he gave his life on a cross. Not just for Jews but for the entire world.

So take some time to meditate on the kind of people whom Jesus loved. Not just so you can love them better but also so you can better know how much Jesus loves you.