Jesus, Race, Gender, Pain, and Reconcilliation
God has called us to be ministers of reconciliation to all people – to all races, to all genders, to the confused, to the frustrated, to the marginalized.
This isn’t a call for preachers or for full-time clergy; it is a call to the entire Body of Christ. Wherever you are, you are challenged. I think we need a brain change. We need to change our way of thinking and understand that the highest call in the world is not to be a preacher, but to do the will of God. If you doubt me, just examine the life of Jesus and see what His emphasis was!
Whatever the will of God is for your life, that’s ‘‘God’s call.’’ If God hasn’t called you to be a preacher but you want to be one anyway, you will miss God’s highest for your life. I know a lot of people who are trying to be preachers when they are not called to preach. People who are ‘‘obedience-challenged’’ are a miserable lot. I also know a lot of people who don’t want to be preachers when that is what God has called them to do. The truth is that both groups of people are missing it: The highest call in the world is to do the will of God. The highest example of earthly obedience to a heavenly call is the life of Jesus Christ.
But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-5).
The Bible and secular historical sources all agree on the basics: Jesus Christ was a real person who was born in a certain time and place in history. He came into a very real family in a very real place, and His locus was ancient Israel, in what the British Empire would later call ‘‘Palestine.’’ (The Jews have never liked this word, which was derived from the Latin root, Palestina, meaning Philistine.) He was a Nazarene who was born under the Law in ancient Bethlehem, with a family lineage that could be traced in the Torah all the way back to the line of David (according to the flesh). All this can be demonstrated by history. He was born a male child, was circumcised, and was presented to the Lord in the Temple of Herod. He grew up and learned the family trade of carpentry while living with His earthly parents in perfect subjection to them until He was 30 years old. Since the heavenly Father sent Him, we can accurately say that God sent His Son in such a way that every human being on earth could identify with Him. Why?
But we do see Him who has been made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. He was faithful to Him who appointed Him (Hebrews 2:9-11,14-15,17--3:2).
According to the writer of Hebrews, our High Priest, Jesus Christ, can sympathize with our weaknesses and faults and feel what we feel (see Heb. 4:14-15). The issue of race, gender, or social standing has nothing to do with the Lord’s ability to feel our pain and sense of failure. He is our legitimate mediator who can totally identify with everything that we will ever go through in any way.
Our great High Priest understands gender confusion, even though we are afraid to even discuss it. He understands racism and sexism and the pain and rejection they breed. According to the inspired Word of God, our High Priest can be touched by our infirmity or feel our pain in every situation.
Don’t You Care?
Right or Reconciled?
I know of two occasions in Scripture where people challenged Jesus about whether or not He sympathized with their pain. The disciples wondered whether or not Jesus cared about their fears when a violent storm threatened to swamp their boat. Jesus was sleeping in the bow at the time, but the disciples were busy hoping they wouldn’t die. It must have been a terrible storm, because most of these men were expert fishermen and sailors who made their living on that same lake. The disciples got so upset that Jesus was sleeping while they ‘‘were drowning’’ that they shook Jesus and woke Him. Then they said, ‘‘Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’’ (Mk. 4:38). What they really said was, ‘‘Don’t You care that we are drowning?’’
In retrospect, it was a pretty silly question, but Jesus stood up and spoke to the wind. He didn’t act ugly; He just stood and told the wind to shut up (see Mk. 4:39). He didn’t say, ‘‘Now if you fools ever mess with Me and My nap again.’’ No, He responded to their challenge that He didn’t care with a challenge of His own: ‘‘Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?’’ (Mk. 4:40) When anyone decides to question the Lord’s ability to care, He has a right to challenge their faith.
The second instance involved Martha, the religious workaholic in the Gospel of Luke. I’m being a little rough on her, but she epitomizes the way many Christians approach Jesus Christ today. Jesus had entered her house as an invited guest and Martha was agitated that He was content to continue talking with her sister, Mary, while she ‘‘slaved’’ in the kitchen alone (see Lk. 10:40). She was in the kitchen rattling everything she could and probably throwing the things she couldn’t. She was developing a serious attitude problem. Jesus and Mary were having a great conversation as Mary sat at the Master’s feet, totally ignoring Martha’s temper tantrum in the next room.
Since Jesus obviously wasn’t getting the message, Martha finally stormed out of the kitchen and confronted Jesus by saying, ‘‘Don’t You care?’’ (see Lk. 10:40b). Jesus was gentle with Martha, but He made it clear that while He did care about her feelings, He cared about Mary’s soul and spiritual well-being much more. Then He told Martha to be more like Mary (I’m sure that went over well).
I’m Not Like You
In a Scripture passage describing the way some of God’s people thought He might be overlooking their sin, the Lord completes His statement with this remarkable sentence: ‘‘These things you have done, and I kept silence; You thought that I was just like you; [but] I will reprove you’’ (Ps. 50:21). The problem is that we think God is just like us. We expect Him to be partial, limited in understanding, or totally out of touch with our feelings and pain, but He isn’t. He can sympathize with us in every area of life.
At times I’ve become angry over the deceptive maneuvers and hypocritical actions of national political or religious leaders and I felt resentment and indignation rising up. I thought God hated those men and their evil deeds as much as I did in those moments, but then He would invade my thoughts and say, ‘‘Joseph, you think I’m like you, but I’m not. You’re not like Me, because I don’t hate or resent those men I love them.’’
Fresh thoughts of the Lord’s loving sacrifice on the cross and God’s mercy and grace flooded my mind and I began to realize that I didn’t get here on my own. My goodness didn’t bring me here and my righteousness didn’t bring me one inch closer to God. The only reason I am forgiven is because God had mercy on me. In His mercy He ignored my failures and faults. He said, ‘‘Garlington is messed up, but he needs Me. He doesn’t like Me, but he needs Me. He doesn’t want Me, but he needs Me anyway.’’ So He sent somebody to tell me that I needed Him and that message of hope got through. As the song ‘‘Your Grace and Mercy’’ states:
Your grace and mercy Brought me through I’m living this moment Because of You.
I just want to thank You And praise You too Your grace and mercy Brought me through.
Remember How You Got Here
Every now and then, we all forget how we got where we are in God’s Kingdom. That is when we are tempted to set up court and throw the heaviest Bible we can find at the ‘‘offenders’’ of the world. ‘‘Oh God, call Your fire down from Heaven!’’ We have forgotten our call, but God hasn’t. Don’t be surprised if God shows up in your court of vengeance and says, ‘‘Child, I’m not like you. I don’t even want to be like you. But I do want you to be like Me. I’ve called you to reconcile the world back to Me.’’ As the Church of Jesus Christ, we need to stop saying, ‘‘America, to your knees!’’ We need to say, ‘‘Church, to your knees!’’ Before we can say, ‘’Repent, America!’’ we need to humble ourselves according to Second Chronicles 7:14 and say, ‘‘Church, repent!’’ Judgment always begins at the house of the Lord. First we must be reconciled to God and to one another in the Body of Christ. Then and only then can we reconcile the world to God.
We raise our voices in protest against pornography when we have pornography pouring into our homes through magazines and TV cable service! We are too quick to stand back and pray, ‘‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people,’’ when we are actually just like them.
Cost Accounting 101
Whether we like it or not, Jesus has passed along to us His ministry of reconciliation. The plan is simple and unalterable. First you and I must be reconciled to God, to be brought back to His original intent for our lives and our local churches. Then we must be reconciled to one another in the bonds of unconditional love, ‘‘loving our neighbor as ourselves.’’ That is where the Church is right now.
Now great multitudes were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, ‘‘If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters [in comparison to his love for Me], yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’ ’’ (Luke 14:25-30).
Jesus hasn’t changed His mind. Remember, He isn’t like us. He is still telling His double-minded Church, ‘‘It’s going to cost you to stay with Me.’’ It is going to cost us our prejudice toward members of other races and social groups. It is going to cost us our pride and lead us to publicly repent for our abuse of members of the opposite sex or our children. It will cost us our compulsive love of money, achievement, and the praise of men. It will cost us everything, and it will gain us everything. First we must be reconciled to God. Then we must be reconciled to one another. The next step is God’s dream for the earth. He wants us to be ministers of reconciliation to the world, to boldly urge the lost souls around us to be reconciled to God. We need to remember that the only reason we call upon the name of the Lord today is because someone was willing to tell us the truth about God yesterday.
God’s Word says that if the Church does not judge itself, He will judge it Himself:
For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world (1 Corinthians 11:29-32).
Paul says in the Book of Acts, ‘‘And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent’’ (Acts 17:30 KJV). I believe that God is out to capture the attention of the Church and of the world----through dramatic means if necessary. In the days ahead, I believe that we are going to see some very ‘‘significant’’ people in significant places dropping out of their elevated positions because God is going to ‘‘clean house.’’ This is not the time to think that we can get away with our secret sins and hidden pleasures and still call ourselves Christians.
If you have a sin problem, then you had better take it directly to God and get that problem settled. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m simply saying that you and I live in a different season. I believe that God is going to bring judgment to national leaders and judges in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and throughout the world, but first He will bring judgment to the Church. If we are wise, we will judge ourselves first and be quick to repent and be reconciled. It is time to count the cost and obey the Lord of all. He commands us to be ministers of reconciliation to a broken world, but first we must be reconciled ourselves.
Right or Reconciled?
Reconciliation is more than a teaching for Pastor Joseph Garlington—it is a life message.
In this hard-hitting and thought-provoking book, Pastor Garlington emphasizes the need of the Church to be about God’s business of reconciling the world to Him. The message of reconciliation that the Church must declare is simple yet profound: “God is not holding your sins against you!”
With this in mind, Joseph then focuses on more practical reconciliation issues and asks the question, “Do you want to be right or reconciled?” Your answer to this question will determine whether or not God can use you in the ministry of reconciliation.
Pastor Garlington is at the forefront of modern reconciliation issues whether he is pastoring his church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or speaking at Promise Keepers rallies. If you are concerned about racial, gender, or denominational reconciliation, then this book is for you. And once you read it, you won’t ever see reconciliation in the same light again.
