Why Don?t Y?all Pass the Bread?...Continued from page 8
Timothy George
Paul is here picking out the three “biggies” in human life: race, money, and sex. They dominate our culture, our entertainment business, our newspapers. This is what people talk about, it is what they think about, it is what they work every day of their life for: race, money, and sex. Now, there is nothing inherently sinfully about any one of these three things. There is nothing wrong with racial identity, with the fact that I am a Caucasian and my colleague Robert Smith is an African-American. God created us different. He did not make us all the same. God did not use a Xerox machine in the book of Genesis!
To think that racial reconciliation means homogenization is to misunderstand racial reconciliation. That is not what it is about. There is nothing wrong with racial identity. The problem comes when racial identity, whether it is white, black, brown, red, yellow or purple, gets demonized. Then it becomes racism. We use race as a pretext to separate and segregate ourselves one from another. Then it becomes a denial of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There is nothing wrong with money. God wants us to use money and use it wisely. He gives us the ability to make money and save money and provide for our family. There is nothing in the Bible against that. The lust of money is the root of all evil. But money is not evil ? the Bible does not say that. Yet when money is corrupted by greed ? when we begin to act like that fool who had many barns but wanted still more barns ? then we are liable to hear what God said to him: “You fool! Tonight, it’s all up. Money is not going to help you now.” His wealth has been demonized into greed.
God made us male and female. There is nothing wrong with sex in its proper context. The Bible makes that clear. “The marriage bed is undefiled,” the Bible says (Heb. 13:4). But when sex becomes demonized by lust then it becomes a barrier to the Gospel.
These are the biggies. None of these distinctions ? race, money and sex ? are eliminated once we become Christians, but they are relativized. Did you hear what I said? They have been relativized; they have been put in a new category; a new value system; a new priority list. They have been relativized by our baptism. Because when we are baptized, three things happen.
gn=justify>First, we are dipped. Now I am a Baptist, I know we have Presbyterians, and dear Methodist sisters and brothers, and I am not here to argue about the modality of baptism. But even Martin Luther ? and there was no stronger defender of infant baptism than Martin Luther in the history of the church ? said the word baptizo really means to dip. We are dipped in baptism. That means that we are buried with Christ in baptism so that when we are raised to walk, it is in a newness of life. Those old categories that have been demonized are now relativized by virtue of the fact that we have been dipped.