Anyway, as I was saying, it's been a joy to see Jarvis's work over the years in the academic sphere as well as in the local church and his passion for preaching and ministry. Jarvis has been serving as a professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary now since 2013. And Jarvis is married to Anna. They have a son, Jaden. And I just want to commend Jarvis for doing such a great service to the church through his teaching ministry as well as his writings on various biblical themes like the atonement and like racial reconciliation. And we're going to hear some of both of those themes this evening. I'll tell you about some of Jarvis's books. One is entitled, For Whom Did Christ Die? The Extent of the Atonement in Paul's Theology. Another is entitled, Christ Died for Our Sins, Representation and Substitution, in Romans and their Jewish and martyrological background. This book, One New Man, the cross and racial reconciliation in Pauline theology. We use this here at Three Rivers Grace. Last year, we had a table talk. We have these from time to time, just try to get people together to have a theology discussion. And last year, we encouraged people to read this book, One New Man, and it was very beneficial for those of us who studied it and then came together to discuss it. And as I've desired to further that discussion, I thought how great would it be to have Jarvis here with us in person. And so I'm really glad you were willing to come, Jarvis, and be with us this weekend. Recently I've been reading another book that Jarvis edited and wrote one of the essays in. The book is called Removing the Stain of Racism. from the Southern Baptist Convention, and it contains essays from Albert Moeller, as well as Jarvis and several others. And it's very, very insightful from what I've read so far, speaking to the stain of racism in the SBC and how we need to be working for racial reconciliation in our denomination. And one more resource I'll mention, which I haven't gotten yet, but I'm looking forward to getting, Jarvis has worked on this. It just was released, I think, last month. The Gospel in Color, A Theology of Racial Reconciliation. And there's two volumes there, one for parents, one for children. So a resource there to help parents talk to their kids about these important issues. So I'm going to go ahead and lead us in prayer as we start this evening, and then Dr. Jarvis Williams will come and speak to us. And then when he's finished, we'll have plenty of time left for Q&A. So during his lecture, be thinking of things you'd like to follow up on, things you'd like to ask questions about for our discussion together. Will you pray with me? God, we thank you this evening for who you are and your grace to us. Thank you that we can be together this evening to talk about these important things, to talk about your word. We thank you, God, that you are a God of reconciliation. We thank you that you've reconciled us to yourself through the blood of your son, Jesus Christ. And we thank you that you are reconciling us to one another, bringing together individuals from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And we pray tonight that you will instruct us from your word and through your servant Jarvis Williams. We pray that you'll speak through him to us tonight and through our discussion and fellowship together. We pray that you will be glorified in all of this and we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you so much, Ben. It's such a joy to be here. This is the first time I've seen, I think, Ben in 13 years, 12 or 13 years. So it's a joy to be able to rekindle a friendship that we started way back when, when we were MDiv students and then PhD students at Southern. If you have a Bible tonight, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 1. There are a variety of passages we're going to look at. But I want to start by reading Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 7. And I want to pray again. And as you're turning there, I think it might be helpful for you to hear a little bit about my background so that you can understand how I approach this conversation. My lecture tonight will focus on limited atonement and racial reconciliation. I think it's always helpful, I think, for the audience to know a little bit about the speaker's background, especially in this conversation, the race conversation, because we are all coming from very different perspectives and different postures. So just very quickly before I read Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 7 and before I pray, let me just say that I grew up in a very small town in rural eastern Kentucky. And my family is diverse, multi-ethnic. So I have African-American blood flowing through my veins. And my mother is mixed. Her father was black, but her mother was half black, half white. So I have a very multi-ethnic family. My wife is from Costa Rica. Her mother is Nicaraguan, and so my wife has a multi-ethnic heritage, and my son is all of the above, right? He has Costa Rican in his veins. He has Nicaraguan in his veins. He has African-American in his veins. He has Anglo in his veins because he's a combination of both of us. But in addition to that, I got saved in 1996 and became the first person of color, the first African-American, but the first person of any color, to join the First Baptist Church of Hindman in Hindman, Kentucky in Eastern Kentucky. And in that predominantly white Southern Baptist Church, I encountered for the first time the reality that there was racism in Christianity I Knew there was racism outside of Christianity because I was a non-christian I experienced racism But I was naive as perhaps many of you have been naive And you thought that the church as I thought the church never struggled with racism until I was introduced to this fact But my pastor who was white that the Southern Baptist Convention that phrase means something right the word Southern means something in the title and So through that congregation, I saw the gospel actively pursue reconciliation through its love for me. As they loved me, shepherded me, gave me opportunities to preach, to teach, the pastor mentored me. And if it were not for that congregation, it would be highly unlikely that I would have been able to have gone to seminary, as many people in that congregation sacrificed financially for me to help me go to school. So this idea of the gospel and reconciliation and the gospel and racial reconciliation is just a part of my narrative and a part of my Christian experience. But most importantly, I think it's a part of the gospel. So tonight I want to talk about that, limited atonement and racial reconciliation. Let's read Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 7. Then I'll pray again, and I'll start my lecture. I want to just say this is a lecture, okay? So it's going to sound lecture-y. And then there will be time at the end of the lecture for you to ask me specific questions. So be thinking about questions that you might have as I'm working through my manuscript, and feel free to disagree, quite frankly, with anything I say. I'm a professor, and more specifically, I'm a professor at Southern Seminary, so I'm used to being disagreed with, all right? Chapter 1, verse 3 of Ephesians. Verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I really want you to hear verses 4 and 5 and 6 and 7. Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. I'll come back to this a bit later in the lecture, but just know for now that God predestined us or chose us not so that we could sit around and contemplate our navels. But he chose us to be holy and blameless, which I take not only to mean eschatologically at the end of the age, but to be holy and blameless right now. He chose us, in other words, to be converted. And part of that conversion experience is transformation. Further, verse 4, he goes on and says, "...in love." Now verse 5, "...he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he blessed us in the Beloved." Now notice verse 7. I see a move here, Paul says, verses 3, 4, and 5. Praise God, verse 3. Why? He chose us, verse 4. He predestined us, verse 5. Those whom he chose and those whom he is calling to praise God are the same group of people. Are you with me so far? And by the way, I'm a call and response teacher. So if I ask you a question, I need some help. Are you with me so far? So those whom he calls to praise God, and those whom he chose and predestined, they're the same group. Then verse 7. In Him we have redemption through His blood. Alright, now let's think about this for a moment. Those whom He is calling to praise God, those whom He chose, those whom He predestined, are the same group. And that group are the those who have redemption in Christ through His blood. And that redemption, notice, is defined not comprehensively here but it is defined at some level with this next phrase we have redemption through his blood namely the forgiveness of our sins okay stay with me so those whom he is calling to praise God Those whom God has chosen and predestined are those who have redemption in his blood and the redemption that those people receive is forgiveness of sins. So those for whom Jesus died are those who have their sins forgiven. So the rest of my lecture I'm going to argue that point and talk more specifically about how that applies to racial reconciliation. So let's pray together. And then we'll dive in. Let's pray. Father, we ask You, please, by the power of Your supernatural Spirit, would You please enter in to this space right now and open up our minds and our hearts as we think about some difficult things tonight, as we think about the extent for which Jesus died and those for whom He died, and as we think about how His death is connected to the idea of the unification of all things and all people in Christ. So Father, we pray that tonight you would awaken us to these truths. We pray that you would help us to hear what your Word says, that you would help me to say it clearly as we talk and think about difficult things. And Lord, we also pray, would you please protect us from the devil, who does not want us to pursue this, who does not want us to believe this, who wants us to live isolated and fragmented lives, protect us from the devil and awaken us to the totality of what You've done for us in Jesus, through the Gospel, by the Spirit. We pray and we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So here goes the lecture, all right? I'm putting my professor's hat on. In today's Christian culture, discussions about reconciliation are becoming more and more common. Some Christians disagree about the usefulness of the phrase racial reconciliation. Since the phrase, some say, wrongly assumes the need to restore a previously existing relationship in this country between African Americans and whites. And some would disagree with the phrase because they would say that relationship has never been conciled. So it's difficult to reconcile something that has never been conciled. So an argument against the phrase racial reconciliation is that that phrase assumes a relationship needs to be restored that never really was conciled. But in my view, regardless of what some may say about the terminology of racial reconciliation, Bible-believing Christians should gladly embrace the gospel's power to unify all things and all people in Christ, and to unite those alienated from God and from one another into reconciled friends. Ephesians chapters 1-3. And in my view, Bible-believing Christians should gladly embrace the gospel's imperative to pursue the unification of all things and all people in Christ, such as the imperative, love your neighbor as yourself. Unfortunately, however, many Christians espouse vague pieties about so-called colorblindness, which in my view hinders gospel reconciliation. By the way, this is a long introduction. My introductions are long, so it's long, all right? So hang with me. We're going to get to the text, but I have a long introduction. I'm going to try to set this up. before we dive into these texts. Colorblindness basically refers to racial neutrality. According to this view, the color of one's skin does not matter because we live in what some call a post-racial society. That is, a society that has moved beyond race. Colorblindness urges that humans need to look beyond skin color Because, this view says, treating people equally and ignoring their perceived race will lead to a more equal society. In my view, the idea of colorblindness, however, is an utter impossibility in a racialized society. Let me define what I mean by racialized. There are a lot of words I'm going to use I'm going to have to define along the way. The word racialized is a word that means to attribute racial characteristics to. Everybody still with me? Are you still with me? As the teacher, I need to know if you're following me, okay? To attribute racial characteristics to. And to talk about a racialized society, that means a society that exists for the purpose of or because of race-based decisions. So what I'm saying is this, I don't think it's possible to be colorblind because we've inherited race-based social constructs in a society that was established in part because of that very construct. Let me give you an example. So let's give you one example that, you know, the whole issue of slavery. one reason you get slavery is because of this idea of race and this idea of within the human race there is a hierarchy of identities and a inferior identity so that you then begin to build a society upon that premise and then you set forth a certain destiny for those who are on the lower end of the social hierarchy. So one reason you get things like Jim Crow-ism, right, is because of this false idea of race. And I want you to understand that, by the way. I'm going to define this a little bit more later, but race Race is a false idea. It's a social construct that's not based on any real criteria. And race and ethnicity are different. Ethnicity typically is connected to culture, ideas, language, geography, customs, and values. But there's nothing about ethnicity in terms of how we define it historically that's connected to someone's perceived biological inferiority. But the idea of race was a word created for that very fact, to establish a racial hierarchy and to establish a group of people who were at the top of that hierarchy for the purpose of perpetuating a system historically that prioritized those who were on the social stratus of the superior race. Does that make sense? The so-called superior race. So what I'm saying to you then in this introduction is that when you inherit race-based constructs that you had nothing to do with individually, you've just entered into a narrative wherein they already exist. It is therefore impossible to live as though those constructs are not real. The constructs are real even though they're not based on real criteria. Does that make sense? Let me just clarify that a bit more because some of y'all kind of, your eyebrows went up when I said that. There's no such thing as a black gene or a white gene. There are things that are in my DNA that make my skin darker as a black man than those of you who are white, but that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about race. That's the point. Race is an idea that was invented. It's not unique to the American experience, but the kind of race-based things that we saw in the American experience is a recent modern invention in our context, starting in the colonial period and entering into the Americas. So now back to the outline here, my manuscript. I've argued elsewhere that colorblindness actually perpetuates racism. and makes us apathetic and blind to racial injustices. This idea also denies the real racialized experiences of those marginalized in society by suggesting to them that their racialized narratives are false because they don't fit the counter-narratives of the majority group. However, the racist ideology of white superiority, and I'm speaking historically here, that created the historical impetus for slavery place non-white people, particularly blacks, in a negative light from this country's inception. So let me insert something here. I'm not trying to advocate white guilt or anything here. I'm just speaking historically. I'm a New Testament scholar. But as a New Testament scholar, when I talk about race, I'm forced to go into another discipline, which is namely history. And so what I'm doing now is historical analysis. I'm simply reporting information that helps us understand the cultural context into which we're having this conversation, because we've inherited an idea, namely race, that is false, and that idea has a whole host of ideas attached to it historically. So part of what I'm saying at this point of the lecture is, is that when you inherit an idea that has come into existence in order to prioritize another idea, known as whiteness, which we'll talk about a little bit later, it's difficult to be colorblind when you're living in a world that has been based upon, or a country, that has made decisions based upon this false construct, all right? Are you still with me? Still with me? All right. As you all know, so I'm going to give you some examples here historically. As you all know, in this country, Blacks were ripped apart from their families, enslaved, lynched, sprayed with water hoses, beaten with clubs, given separate bathrooms and water fountains, and were forced to live in a society where everything in their experience reminded them of their so-called inferior to whites. Now, of course, I know there are a whole host of groups of people that have suffered because of racism or discrimination, right? We have the Holocaust. We have the Irish who've suffered tremendously. We have, whites have suffered in this country. But what I'm suggesting here is, is that historically, that one of the factors for which blacks have historically suffered slavery, for example, is because of race-based ideas. Does that make sense? Blacks also had to endure dehumanizing names, like Coon, or the N-word, or Boy, simply because their black bodies were not white, names that reinforced their racialized status in society of so-called inferiority. Christian congregations that affirm colorblindness, in my view, grossly fail all people really in their congregations, but especially black and brown and yellow people who have experienced racialized, have racialized experiences in their communities and in their churches because of their racialized status. Black and brown and yellow and white Christians suffer when they experience racialized forms of racism. That's one thing about racism, it's not just the individual who's offended who's harmed, it's also the offender who's harmed. And I don't know if you know the name Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry is a poet from Kentucky. And he wrote this poem called, if I remember correctly, called The Hidden Wound. And he talked about how the false idea of race and white superiority has created a great burden for white people to have to walk around, many of them, not all, I'm not saying all white people, but historically many white people, had to walk around with the false belief that they were superior to black people. So everybody's affected by this. The offender as well as the offended. And Christians suffer when they experience racialized forms of racism even in Christian spaces. Further, evangelical churches deepen those racialized wounds when they suggest from their pulpits, in their classes, in their institutions, or on their personal blogs, or in conversations, that racism or that the suffering of black and brown and yellow people because of their race is not real. Or when they suggest that loving Jesus means we should be racially neutral and avoid discussions about race. Or when they suggest we should, quote unquote, just preach the gospel. Those who affirm colorblindness, still talking about colorblindness here. Those who affirm colorblindness fail to realize since American culture has traditionally prioritized the idea of whiteness, and remember we're talking about an idea here. I'm going to define that more carefully in a moment. And since whiteness has traditionally racialized non-whiteness as inferior, colorblindness perpetuates the very racism it attempts to overturn by causing those in the majority culture and some within minority cultures to turn a blind eye to racial injustice. Colorblindness, therefore, creates the very atmosphere for injustice to flourish. Because if you're colorblind, you're going to be blind to the racism that exists because of race. To many, not all, but to many minorities, and to more and more within the white majority, colorblindness is an impossibility. Because more and more people are beginning to understand that we do live in a racialized society in America. That is, we live in a society where decisions have already been made in our history about groups of people precisely because of how those groups were perceived positively or negatively. by those with power within the majority group. Now let me just clarify something else here. This doesn't mean that it's impossible for individuals within any group to break out of the stereotypes that people apply to them and to experience a life of flourishing. That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm suggesting is is that in spite of the fact that I'm an African American man teaching at a white seminary, I've lived in a society wherein I've been affected by racism. And that doesn't mean I therefore have to let racism defeat me, but it does mean that there's a certain kind of experience I have as a black man teaching at a white institution, and particularly a white Southern Baptist institution, who's been a member of a white Southern Baptist church or white Southern Baptist churches for 17 years. There's a certain set of experiences I have that make my journey a little bit more different from those who are from white majority culture in those same white spaces. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, the belief that colorblindness is a viable option as to how the church should go about its business continues to be advocated in Christian communities. And in my view, this is so for at least a couple of reasons. At least a couple of reasons. Race. Many Christians misunderstand what race is. I do not claim to have all the answers about race. And by the way, just because a person is black doesn't mean he's an expert on race or racism, okay? There are white people who know more about the history of racism than I will ever know because I'm not a scholar of race and religion. I'm a New Testament scholar, more specifically a Pauline scholar. And then the second reason is because a misunderstanding of the gospel. First, let me say a word about race here. Many Christians continue to think that race is about biology, that is skin color, instead of ideology. Although many, many scholars have shown, with much evidence, that this is not the case. Race has nothing to do with DNA, but everything to do with social currency. The idea of race, now I'm going to speak historically here for a moment, very briefly. The idea of race in the American experience is a word that operated alongside of the idea of whiteness, which is also an idea. Roughly here in the 1600s in colonial Virginia, you have these diverse Europeans who, for a set of social circumstances, decide to homogenize themselves into one group and to distinguish themselves from these enslaved Africans, whom they did not think had souls. And the group that they homogenized themselves into was a group called White. So what it meant, what it has meant historically to be white has meant that you are not black and that you are a Protestant Christian. What it meant to be a heathen historically in that context was you were an enslaved African who did not have a soul. English common law forbade Christians from holding Christians as slaves. So how do you make sure you keep enslaved Africans as slaves? You designate them as heathen, to be a heathen meant to be black in that historical context, and to be soulless, to be white meant to be a Protestant Christian European who could not be enslaved. So the idea of whiteness, just as the idea of race, these are both social constructs that are not based on any real biological criteria. They're ideas invented and created for the purpose of establishing a racial hierarchy. And many people don't understand that, I don't think. Frankly, I didn't learn that until I became a scholar. you know, I'm from eastern Kentucky, so maybe that's a part of the problem, but I learned virtually nothing about black people growing up other than we were slaves, and learned nothing about these constructs of why we even were forced into servanthood to begin with, you see, you see. Here's the second reason. This is still my introduction, all right? Second reason. Second reason why I think people believe this idea of colorblindness as a viable option is because of a misunderstanding of the gospel. Many Christians often insist that the gospel is only about individual conversion. And I want to suggest to you that that's not entirely true. The gospel is about vertical realities, horizontal realities, and cosmological realities. Let me define what I mean by that. Yes, the gospel is about how a person gets saved. The gospel, however, fundamentally, the words, and I'm going to be technical here for a moment, the words, euangelion, translated as gospel, The Greek verb, ouangelizo, translated to announce the good news, and another Greek verb, praouangelizo, to announce the good news beforehand, each of these words has this in common. Each of these words is essentially a word that means some kind of announcement. At its basic level, the gospel is an announcement. Here's what I think the announcement is. The announcement is that God has fulfilled all of His saving promises to Abraham for the world in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But I would argue that that announcement has a variety of different elements to it. It has vertical elements, it has horizontal elements, it has cosmological elements. The vertical element would be something like this. Jesus died as a penal substitute for your sins and God raised him from the dead so that you could be justified by faith, repent of your sins, and have your sins forgiven. We call that vertical elements of the gospel. But there's also a horizontal element of the gospel, which means that the gospel reconciles us, yes, to God through Christ, but it also reconciles us to one another. Ephesians chapters 2 and 3, for example. God is about the business of reconciling Jews and Gentiles through the cross into one new humanity, one new Adam, if you will, one new And then thirdly, cosmological. The gospel is also the announcement that God has begun to renew the cosmos through King Jesus. New creation is gospel stuff. Amen? There's no circumcision or uncircumcision, Galatians 6.15 says, but there is new creation, Isaiah 65.17-25. There's a new creation coming, a new Jerusalem. Paul says in Galatians, that new Jerusalem has begun now in Christ. It's already here, not yet fully realized. And the evidence that it's already here is that individual Christians who've been reconciled to God have the Spirit and they can live in hot pursuit of each other in the power of love. the spirit in anticipation of the consummation that is to come at the end of the ages. So in my view, I believe in a big gospel with a big God and a big cross that blows up the current evil age and begins to turn the ages from the old age to the new age inaugurated by Christ. And that's the gospel, not this teeny-weeny, itty-bitty gospel that's all about my Jesus moment. It's a big gospel about me and you and the cosmos being reconciled to God through the cross. Steal my introduction, okay? Thus colorblindness and an incorrect view of race and a misunderstanding of the gospel, quite frankly, make reconciliation and unity difficult when those churches claim to be preaching the gospel and working relentlessly to pursue reconciliation with all people and Christ. Now, the rest of my lecture I want to defend, or rather I want to argue, that these concepts about the unification of all things and all people in Christ and anti-racism and limited atonement are connected. But first, I want to give you three more preliminary points, okay? So this is still introductory material. Let me say a quick word here. Let me say a word about approaching these conversations from the Bible. Everybody still with me? You okay? A word about approaching these conversations from the Bible. The Bible should be the starting point in our conversations about reconciliation for Bible-believing Christians. God's original creation was in perfect harmony. God called his creation good, Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Humans were in right relation with God and each other, and they enjoyed the fruit of the ground without thorns and thistles. But when sin entered creation, it destroyed the unity of God's creation and shattered everyone's relationship with God and with each other, Genesis chapter 3. Sin introduced both physical and spiritual death and individual and cosmological sin into the world, Genesis 3, Romans 5, 12. An example of spiritual death in the real world is human depravity. Let me just go ahead and say it here, total depravity, right? All human beings are dead in trespasses and sins at conception. They don't become sinners, they are sinners. We're conceived in sin. And then we live out our identity as sinners when we're born into this world. As I often say, that when my little bitty cute boy was in my wife's womb, he was a little bitty God-hater in that womb. Although he was beautifully created in God's image, he was fundamentally totally depraved and in need of Jesus' redemption. The sin of Adam and Eve and God's universal curse of them and of the entire cosmos because of their disobedience resulted in the shattering of both vertical and horizontal relationships. Just read Genesis 1-4. Human transgression also resulted in a universal curse that fragmented and devastated the entire creation. Genesis 3 verses 14-19. As a result, all of us sin and fall short of God's glory. We're conceived in sin and we actually sin. Adam was our federal head, yes. And we died in Adam. But we also actually transgress the Lord. All have actually sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. One way we've sinned and fall short of God's glory is by the way we treat others. And sin often results in broken relationships and affects the way we treat others. In the Old Testament, we see this relational brokenness illustrated in Cain's murder of his brother Abel. No surprise, as soon as sin entered creation, you get human alienation, right? Vertical alienation first, Adam and Eve fleeing from God in the garden. And God says, where are you? And then the first narrative after chapter 3 and God curses the cosmos and Adam and Eve and the serpent, you get Abel and Cain. Cain murdering his brother Abel. No surprise that happens after the fall, right? Genesis chapter 3. Wouldn't have happened in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. There's no sin. There's no hostility. There's no alienation. But when sin disrupted God's good creation, you get murder, i.e. you get broken relationships. One human race. one human race begins to attack each other after sin enters creation. By the way, I do get a little worked up when I talk about these things, so don't be scared. We also see relational brokenness in the various factions and the churches in certain New Testament letters. 1 Corinthians 12-14, Philippians 4-2, We ultimately see brokenness in personal relationships. And quite frankly, we see brokenness in systems. When Jesus Christ was executed, individuals put him there and the Roman Empire put him there. Jews put him there. The Roman Empire put him there. Gentiles put him there. Of course, theologically, God put him there. But God is not guilty and Pilate and Rome and the Jews were. as a result of broken individual relationships with God, broken relationships with one another, and the brokenness in the actual cosmos itself, God himself must act to restore or reconcile this brokenness to himself and to unify all things and all people to himself. God has acted to crush the seed of the serpent through the seed of the woman, by the unification of all things and all people through Christ. Thus, Christians need to understand that the entire world needs to be reconciled in at least three ways. First, humans need to be reconciled to God. Second, humans need to be reconciled to each other. And third, the cosmos needs to be redeemed from the curse of sin and reconciled to God. Bible-believing Christians must begin the conversation about reconciliation, vertical, horizontal, and cosmological, by surrendering to the authority of the Bible, listening to the whole gospel, not a truncated one, but the whole gospel, and listening to what both say about the gospel's plan for reconciliation. Second preliminary point, almost done with my intro. A word about approaching reconciliation and race is Bible-believing Christians. I've already said some of this already, but let me just reiterate a few things here, and I'll say something briefly in concluding this preliminary remark, and then I'll jump into the exegesis. Christians must start the conversation about reconciliation with the Bible, absolutely, yes and amen. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative word of God. It gives us everything we need for eternal life and godliness, yes and amen. Yet we must also critically work to understand the complicated reasons humans in general, and American Christians in particular, are alienated from one another. We have to take culture seriously. We live in a society where we're all labeled as something. We live in a racialized society where there are race-based social constructs. Like it or not, you can pretend to be colorblind all day long, but you're still checking a box at the end of the day, aren't you? Because you've inherited a system of ideas that have forced you to check something that's not even real, quite frankly. Why? Because we have inherited these race-based ideas. And as a result of that, as Christians who live in a real world, we have to know how to apply the gospel to that racialized reality. So we must work hard to critically understand these complicated reasons that we are alienated because of race. One reason Christians are disunited is because of race. You can't just simply generically say sin alienates us. Yes, sin does alienate us, but sin also has a name. Sexual immorality. Adultery. Murder. Racism. Sin has names, right? Now, scholars have debated whether race or racism existed in the ancient world. There are numerous books on this. There's a book written by a famous black classical scholar named Frank Snowden, who wrote a book called Before Color Prejudice, in which he argued that the modern concept of race has no existence in classical texts, by which I mean texts that are within antiquity, prior to the American narrative. But he had a recent scholar in 2004 who wrote a book called The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, where he analyzed numerous primary sources in the ancient world. And he made the argument that in the ancient world, no, they did not have the same conception of race as we have, because in our context, it's connected to a so-called superior or inferior ontology. But this particular scholar showed how you do have, quote-unquote, proto-racism. You do have ethnic othering, and you have people treating other groups of people certain ways based on their perceptions of those groups of people. So this scholar says whether or not you call it racism, it is at least a form of discrimination and mistreatment based on perceptions of other groups of people. But just know there are people who debate these sorts of things all the time. One more book, a recent monograph that came out in 2009 written by an African-American New Testament scholar, a friend of mine, she argued that the concept of race is in the ancient text, in the ancient world. So just know that this is debated. In my personal view, I think you certainly have the idea of ethnic othering in the ancient world. But hear this very carefully. The definition of race that I gave you at the beginning of this lecture that was an invention in the American experience, that definition is nowhere in the Bible. You have no place in the Bible where people are being ethnically, I want to make a word up here, ethnically othered based on a perception that there's a biological inferiority or superiority. Now, you do have ethnically othering, but let me just say it this way. You don't have, white supremacy's not in the Bible. Right? Even the category of white is not in the Bible. Whiteness as a race, that's not in the Bible. I'm not arguing that there were no people with fair skin in the ancient world, just like I'm not arguing there were no people with dark skin in the ancient world, but that's not what we're talking about when we talk about race. You understand that point? So here's the challenge we find then when we're talking about racial reconciliation. We have to understand that there's not a direct one-to-one correlation between how the Bible defines the concept of ethnic othering and the modern-day problem of racial reasoning. There's not a direct one-to-one correlation. But there is an application to be had from what the Bible says. Right now I'm writing a book called A Biblical Theology of Ethnic Identity. One whole book on that issue where I'm doing the hard historical work, but I'm also going through different texts in the Old Testament and the New Testament showing you how identity is actually formed in the biblical material. And it's quite fascinating when you do the research, you actually see that identity is formed in a variety of different ways. But it was never formed based on these so-called perceived biological inferiorities or superiorities rooted in a biological fiction known as the modern invention of race. One quick example would be when Israel is formed as a people, their identity is rooted in God's sovereign choice of them. Not because of anything they did that was good, but because God loved them. And he gave them a law that further identified who they were as God's people to mark them off as the people of God. So it's not rooted in any kind of a racial supremacy that we see in our context. Now, having said that, as I've said, that even though the idea of race historically is an idea based on something that's not real, racism is real. All you've got to do is read. I encourage you to read this book. Read, for example, Donald Matthews' recent Cambridge monograph that was published in 2007. called On the Altar of Lynching in which he shows from historical texts where many southern evangelicals participated in the lynching of black people. And there was one particular lynching of a man named Sam Hulse. Now, there's some debate as to why he was lynched, but the evidence seems to suggest that he was lynched because he was falsely accused of murdering a white man, which he killed a white man, but the evidence seems to suggest it was self-defense. But the argument was he tried to rob the white man, and then he also tried, some argue, tried to attack the white man's wife. Well, he was lynched and there were Christians present at the lynching and they viewed the lynching as a worship experience whereby white purity was being preserved by means of the atonement of this black man who was lynched. Let's read the book, On the Altar of Lynching, Donald Matthews. Third, and then we'll get into the exegesis. A third word here, a word about the reconciling power of the gospel. So I've already said this, but I just want you to hear this again, because there are a lot of things that are said about people who believe in racial reconciliation or gospel-centered justice that, quite frankly, are malicious and slanderous. And I want you to hear very clearly from me tonight that I'm someone who believes in the authority of the Bible and penal substitution. I wrote a book on limited atonement. I hold a double predestination. There's no, just hear this, there's no cultural Marxist, there's no black liberation theologian who would claim me. Okay? There's no socialist who would claim me. And so part of what you need to hear tonight is that it is absolutely slanderous and malicious to suggest that just because you believe in gospel-centered justice, you deny the gospel or are a threat to it. You need to hear that tonight. So let me say another word, because that's what I have to do. I have to overly clarify everything! Third, a word about the reconciling power of the gospel. The gospel creates vertical, horizontal, and cosmological reconciliation. It has power to do that. The gospel demands Christians to pursue horizontal reconciliation. Just read Galatians 5, 13, and 14. The gospel is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek, Romans 1.16. Paul summarizes Jesus' cross and resurrection as the first important matters of the gospel, 1 Corinthians 15 through 8. Jesus' death justifies, declares not guilty sinners by faith in Christ. Jesus died for us to make us right with God, Romans 3 and 4. We call this justification by faith. This is what I think it means. God declares sinners to be not guilty. That's what it is. It's a divine verdict. It's a verdict in God's law court. It's a forensic verdict, not guilty. By faith in Christ. This verdict is given to the sinner because the sinner has been reckoned with the righteousness of Jesus and the sinner's sins and the punishment thereof have been reckoned to Jesus' account. Jesus, in essence, or not in essence, but in function, becomes the sinner on the cross. because he's absorbing the wrath of God for the sinner. And as a result, the sinner, who places faith in Christ, receives Christ, and I'll just use this good word, imputed righteousness, which reckons the sinner not guilty, because Jesus received the imputed unrighteousness of the sinner. Romans chapter 4, verses 5 and following. Judas' death and resurrection are foundational to the sinner's right standing with God. Because we all are sinners, everyone, everyone needs to be justified by faith in Christ through the blood and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We all likewise need to be reconciled to God, Romans 5, 8-10. Justification by faith in Christ happens through God's redemption provided through Christ's blood, Romans 3.24, and resurrection. This redemption delivers us from the future wrath of God, Romans 5.8-9, emancipates us from our current bondage to sin, Ephesians 1.7, Ephesians 2, reconciles us to God, Romans 5.9-10, and delivers us from the present evil age, Galatians 1.4. Jesus' blood and resurrection emancipate all different kinds of sinners from the penalty of their sin. His redemption and reconciliation, hear this, is for all elect people without ethnic restriction. And these people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God through the work of Jesus on the cross for sinners is now the God of both elect Jews and elect Gentiles by faith through the death and resurrection of Jesus apart from the works of the law. Romans 3, 29-30. Is God the God of the Jews? Only no. He's the God of the Gentiles too by faith in Jesus Christ. And by the way, that's ethnic language, folks. Jew-Gentile is ethnic language. Red and yellow, black and white, we're all Gentile in God's sight, unless we're Jewish. And he's dying on the cross, Jesus that is, he's dying on the cross for different shades of skin. He's dying on the cross for different ages, different genders, different economic groups. People who ain't speaking English, right? He's dying for tongues and tribes and peoples and nations. The atonement is a multi-ethnic atonement. A Jewish man who is the seed of Abraham is blessing the nations by means of his penal substitutionary death, and he's resurrecting from the dead to guarantee that the elect for whom he died will receive all the benefits thereof, which includes spirit-empowered love for one another. God's redemption of the justified is for all who have been justified freely by faith through Christ's redemption. Through Jesus's death on the cross, God was also pleased to reconcile to himself all things in heaven and on earth. Just count the number of times reconciliation appears in the New Testament, and not just vertical either, but also horizontal. He reconciles all things to himself in heaven and on earth by making peace through his cross, Colossians 1.20. Jesus reconciles in his body by his death on the cross those who were once alienated from and hostile toward God to present us blameless if we continue in the faith, Colossians 1.21 and 22. His work of reconciliation with God enables us to live in hot pursuit of reconciliation and Christian unity and community with each other. Romans 14 and 15. See, if you believe in a big gospel that is vertical, horizontal, and cosmological, then those imperatives to walk in the Spirit mean something. Those imperatives to love one another mean something. Never, ever separate Paul's thinking as gospel over here and practical stuff over there. You get the therefores because of what occurred before the therefores, right? I mean, all that stuff in Romans leads up to 14 and 15 where Paul says to these diverse people, in my view, Jews and Gentiles, who are probably bickering over some kind of food issue, he's saying, basically, well, you throw 12 in the mix as well, basically, present yourselves as living sacrifices before God. You love each other. Stop bickering, 14 and 15, over food. Horizontal language! Y'all okay? Are you okay? Sound from Eastern Kentucky, and this is how we preach in Eastern Kentucky. We scream. We don't even need a sound system. Jesus's death for his elect also delivers us from the present evil ways, Galatians 1.4. I'll come back to this in a moment, but it is interesting to me that in Galatians 1.4 Jesus dies, Paul says, for our sins, not to deliver us from God's wrath. That's not what he says in 1.4. I think you can get that from 3.13. And you certainly see that in Romans 5. But he died to deliver us from the present evil age. Racism is part of the present evil age. Why do you get those Virtue and vice list in chapter 5, 16 to 26. Walking in the Spirit. Look at those vices very carefully. They're social vices. Enmities, divisions, factions. They happen with people. Orgies. Right in that list. Idolatry. That was no private affair in antiquity. There were gods that were viewed as being patrons of cities in the ancient world. And when the ancient world wanted to receive the favor of ancient deities, they would offer particular sacrifices and erect temples and erect cults in the name of these pagan deities. And that was a communal affair. And Paul says Jesus died to deliver us from all of that. Everything that is anti-gospel is part of the present evil age. Everything that is opposed to the Spirit is part of the present evil age. He also died, Galatians 3.13, to deliver us from the curse of the law. His death gives to various elect groups the Spirit by faith, Galatians 3.14, factions, quarrels, divisions, and other social vices or manifestations of the present evil age. These vices and vices like these are lusts of the flesh, works of the flesh, and they're contrary to the Spirit. But love and the fruit of the Spirit are the work of the Spirit. Let me ask you this question. Is the fruit of the Spirit a gospel reality? Can you have the fruit of the Spirit without the gospel? It's not rhetorical. Can you? Can you have the fruit of the Spirit without the gospel? Therefore, you can't love in the Spirit without the gospel. Therefore, love is a gospel issue, right? And when I say gospel issue, I don't mean, well, if I love enough, I'm going to be saved. See, I don't define gospel only as entry language. It's entry and it's maintenance. The gospel tells you how to get saved, and it tells you how to live once you are saved. You understand that? So when I'm talking to unbelievers, I say to an unbeliever, you must, you, I don't point at them, you must turn from your sin. You must turn to Christ. You must repent. And when that person turns by the power of the Spirit, I say, this is how you need to live. Walk in the Spirit. It's a gospel reality. How do you know that? Because Jesus died, Galatians 3.13, to give the elect the Spirit, which is the blessing of Abraham, and the Spirit produces love. Christians redeemed by Christ's blood and walking in the Spirit will therefore inherit the Kingdom of God. Galatians 5.21. Now, as I've already said to you, look, I'm a double predestinarian. Just read my book. But you should never use predestination or justification as an excuse to be spiritually lazy. or lethargic. If you don't walk in the Spirit, Galatians 5, 16 and 21, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do you believe that verse? Some of y'all might want to shout when you read Romans 9, but you want to cry when you read Galatians 5, 21. Both of those are in the Bible, right? Everyone who is justified by faith will walk in the Spirit. But if you don't walk in the Spirit, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. That's what he says in 521. That's what he says. And if you don't walk in the Spirit, that is evidence that you're not justified by faith. It's evidence that you're not justified by faith. Justified people have the Spirit, and they walk like the Spirit wants them to walk. So you can't have a racist Christian walking around. It's not walking in the Spirit. You can't have an apathetic Christian about the real needs and suffering of people in their community. That's an apathetic Christian. I'm not saying everybody who misunderstands the gospel and justice is an unbeliever, but what I'm saying is, is that a Christian should care the most about loving those in their communities because love is a result of spirit-empowered, gospel-empowered conversion. And if you don't produce that kind of love, The question is, have you been justified by faith? The kingdom of God in Galatians is a reference to the new heavens and the new earth, which Paul calls new creation in Galatians 6.15, in which John identifies his new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. The kingdom of God is about a person, Jesus, a people, Jews and Gentiles and Christ, and a place, the entire cosmos. The kingdom of God is already here, but not yet fully realized. This is one reason why the New Testament speaks of the kingdom as both present reality and future hope. It's interesting when Jesus preaches the gospel in Mark 1.14, he preaches the gospel of the kingdom. Further, the future kingdom is currently experienced in the here and now in real space and time by Christians from different tongues and tribes and nations for whom Jesus died as we inherit by faith the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit. And as we live and step with the Spirit by a consistent pattern of Christian obedience. And one aspect of this obedience is, because of our topic, anti-racism and loving your neighbor as yourself. grounded in the redemption of the cosmos because of Jesus' death and resurrection from the dead. There's so much more that I could say related to this issue here. Let me dive in more specifically now to Romans 3. I've already gone past my time, but I'm going to try to shut this thing down here in about 10 more minutes. I'm going to say a word about Romans 3. So I do turn to Romans 3. Let me say a word about Romans 3. I'm going to talk more specifically about Judas' death, resurrection, and justification, providing the foundation underneath spirit-empowered, gospel-centered reconciliation, or anti-racism, because Jesus died for the elect from the Tongan tribe and people and nation to reconcile sinners to God and to each other and to restore what Adam lost in the garden. He didn't just lose his individual relationship with God, but he lost the whole creation. Romans 3, 24 to 30. In these verses, Paul states that Judas's death justifies, declares not guilty, sinners by faith in Christ. In Romans 3, 25, he refers to Jesus's death as a bloody sacrifice. In the ESV, that translation is propitiation, that Jesus is actually satisfying the wrath of God for sin. And then in verse 24, Paul connects that propitiation with redemption, which I think is a slave metaphor, which talks about a spiritual emancipation delivered from God's wrath. This connects Jesus' blood and liberation with justification by faith. Because in Romans 3, verses 21 and 22, Paul says that God's righteousness does not come by works of law, but by faith. And then in verse 24 of Romans 3, Paul says that God's that every single person who has sinned, Romans 3.23, must be freely justified, verse 24, through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. So every sinner must be justified by Jesus' propitiatory death, which absorbs the wrath of God for them, and that death results in actual, not hypothetical, but actual redemption. This redemption is for all who have sinned without ethnic restriction and fallen short of the glory of God. But this redemption is also only for those who have been chosen by God, justified by faith, by God's grace, through the redemption in Jesus Christ. You can jump ahead to Romans 9 and read the part about election there. In Romans 3, 28-30, Paul expresses God justifies Jews and Gentiles by faith. And then he further talks about the fact, in Ephesians 2, that this reconciliation that God has accomplished for Jews and Gentiles includes, yes, their vertical reconciliation, but also their horizontal reconciliation as well. Now, a word about Galatians, and I'll give you some quick applications. Actually, I'm going to save the Galatians stuff for tomorrow. Let me give you a few applications after I read this final paragraph. The people for whom Jesus died consist of some from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. Revelation 5, 9. And that's what the New Testament generally means by the categories of Jew and Gentile. These categories are ethnic categories. His death is for all kinds of people purchased. It purchased salvation for all kinds of people. And it recreates those people from different races and ethnicities and backgrounds into a new chosen race. 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. 1 Peter 2, 9. And he makes these diverse ethnic groups of people with different experiences and skin colors for whom Jesus died into a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, and a royal priesthood by His blood. As Revelation 5, 9, and 10 says, they sang a new song by saying, you're worthy to open the book, You were slain and have purchased for God by your blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And then you made them for your God to be a kingdom and preach." So, a few quick applications here, and then we'll have some time of discussion. Number one, let me give you a few quick applications related to the atonement, and then a few related to racial reconciliation. First, Jesus' blood conquers the power of sin and death for every elect person from every tongue, tribe, people and nation found in Him. He doesn't save white folk one way and black folk another way. He doesn't save Asian folk one way and Latinos another way. He doesn't save males one way and females another way. He saves Jews and Gentiles the same way. By His penal, subterranean death, His resurrection of the dead, and faith in union with Him by faith, you receive justification and your sins forgiven when you repent and believe. That's for everybody. who turns from their sin. You understand that? Doesn't matter what you have, what you don't have, how smart you are, none of that matters. At the cross, the cross is the great soteriological equalizer. Society gives us an established order of things. We have middle class, we have lower class, we have upper class, but the gospel says in Christ you're all one through the blood and the resurrection of Jesus. But you still live in a real world that wants to racialize you. and you've got to figure out how to live out the gospel in that world. Jesus's death for elect Jews and Gentiles creates a diverse, reconciled community and serves as the foundational reason why the Spirit can enable Christians from the entire world to pursue reconciliation with diverse people. Now, when I say that Jesus's death and resurrection create diverse, reconciled community, what I mean is He died so that that would be a reality. But that doesn't mean that people are just going to magically just start loving each other. Otherwise, why are we commanded to love each other? Unless we are inclined not to love each other. So that command to love is a command. It means I need to be in pursuit of it. And loving somebody can take on a whole host of different forms. But I would argue that love for your neighbor should be consistent with the needs in your community. So if you have some people in your community who have a difficult set of social circumstances, I think it will behoove the church to think carefully about how the gospel can be applied in the lives of those people and think of ways that you can reach into those lives, yes, with the gospel, but also ways that you can show real tangible love. For example, if a child in the neighborhood is starving to death, If you're trying to reach kids in the neighborhood, it might behoove you, maybe, to have something to eat when they come to church on Wednesday night. Does that make sense? It doesn't mean giving them something to eat's gonna save them, but it does mean that you are loving your neighbor in a gospel way by using a physical need as a means by which to show them that Jesus-loving people are Jesus-loving people, and there's a greater need that he can met, greater than the need of the belly that's growling, but guess what? The belly's growling. James says, take care of orphans and widows. See, we love Romans, but we don't love James. You love all of it, right? Faith without works is dead. Let me give you a few applications specifically about race. I have 12, but I'm not going to give you all of them, because I'm past my time. I'm sorry, Ben, I'm past my time. Let me just give you a few. One, one. understand the whole gospel. Now look, y'all are busy. You don't have time to sit around and study words all day. But I've analyzed every single occurrence of the word euangelion, euangelizo, prongolizomai, in every occurrence in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in every occurrence in Paul's letters, and outside of Paul. And what we often mean by gospel is not as much as the words actually mean in the New Testament. So what I would encourage you to do is actually understand that you need a biblical theology of the gospel. Paul says in Galatians chapter 3 verse 8 that the scriptures preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. And Paul says that's fulfilled by means of the justification of the Gentiles. So Paul says the gospel doesn't start with Romans, it starts with Genesis, right? At least that's what he says in Galatians 3.8, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. So if you want to understand the gospel, understand or study the whole Bible. And to see how the New Testament then begins to redefine the announcement of the good news that's anticipating Jesus in the Old Testament, but they're defining the gospel as Jesus in the New Testament. Paul calls Jesus the gospel in Galatians 1.15. God revealed his son to me that I might announce his son as the uangalizo, my baby, announce him as the gospel. Understand the whole gospel and allow space for brothers and sisters who don't to grow in their understanding and don't level malicious attacks at people. Second, live multi-ethnic lives. I find it highly unlikely that you will be able, as a congregation, to reach a diverse community unless you are spending real time with people who represent the diversity in that community. And the time can't just be when you're trying to minister to them. See, here's where people of color tend to have an advantage. Because whether we want to or not, we are forced to spend time with people who don't look like us. I have no option but to spend time with white brothers and sisters when I go to work every day. I'm the only African-American full-time professor at the seminary. I have a bit of an advantage, because I know how to socially navigate being the minority. And then when I'm in majority cultural spaces, I know how to navigate that, because in my home, we're all brown. And one benefit you gain by spending time with people who are not like you is that some of those racialized stereotypes that you implicitly believe will begin to fall away. When you actually begin to meet black and brown and yellow people who you're actually spending time with beyond ministering to them, Now I'm not trying to make anybody feel guilty, but when's the last time you spent some real time just hanging out with someone who is not like you ethnically or socially? It's going to be very hard to reach a diverse community if you don't spend time with people in that community. Live multi-ethnic lives. And by the way, never fall into this trap. Now obviously I'm speaking to white brothers and sisters here because this is a majority white church, right? So I'm speaking to my audience. Don't think one black person represents all black people. There's no such thing as the black perspective, right? There's no white perspective either. There's no yellow perspective. There's no Asian perspective. There are perspectives. So I'm vastly different. from other people of color who would have some cultural things in common with me. I mean, I'm, I mean, and that's true, because there's just too much diversity within groups of people. Third thing I would say is, is that work to understand culture. There's a diversity of cultures amongst people who have similar cultural experiences. For example, just to take African American. African Americans are, you can call it a culture, but then there are cultures within African American cultures. Does that make sense? Let me give you an example. So again, I'm from Eastern Kentucky. So black folk in Red Fox, Kentucky, where I lived, were different, are different from black folk in Louisville, where I live now. Generally speaking, a different culture. Eastern Kentucky is the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Louisville is not. It's more urban. It's more metro. But guess what? Even in Eastern Kentucky, black folk from Red Fox were different from black folk in Hazard. Different cultures. But guess what? Black folk in Red Fox had different cultural experiences in Red Fox. Human people are diverse. So don't think that one black friend, one Asian friend, one Latino friend is gonna solve all of your issues as it relates to race, okay? And then finally, let me just say this, two more. One, reject colorblindness. It's not gonna help you. And what I mean by colorblindness is reject the idea that you can actually live in a society that has been established because of race-based ideas. and live as though those race-based ideas don't exist. I'm not saying you should show advantage or disadvantage because of race, but what I am saying is you can't realistically live in a world as though those realities, race and the associations with it, don't exist. And then finally, ask the Spirit to have His way. Look, I feel in my bones what I've said to you tonight. This keeps me up at night. I weep over this. I want in my bones a God-breathed, Spirit-empowered, Gospel-centered, anti-racist, Jesus-loving church. And I've intentionally put my family in spaces where this is being pursued in my city. It keeps me up at night. If you don't feel this in your bones, it's going to be a fad and the fad will end like all fads end. But if you believe that God in His sovereignty desires that, you be amazed by which He blesses all the nations of the earth through the death and resurrection of Jesus in your city. And if you pray to that end, weep before God to that end, think carefully about ways in which you can get into the community to that end, and ask God to breathe on it, and then maybe God might show you some favor. Maybe. Let's pray. God help us. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. I'm sorry. The goal was to go for 45 minutes, but I did not do that. It's 8.20. Ben, you want to take it? You want to take it over and lead here? I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, good question. The question, I'm gonna repeat every question because it's being recorded. The question, first a statement, then a question. The statement was that in my book that I published in 2010, that I made a distinction between simply ethnic diversity and gospel-centered racial reconciliation. And the question is, is why is that distinction important? Because one of the things I'm trying to, what I was trying to push against in that book was this idea that just because you have different people in the same space, that you somehow have a reconciled community who is pursuing one another in spirit-empowered love. Plantations were diverse, right? Plantations were diverse, but there wasn't a lot of racial reconciliation happening on those plantations. So, moreover, we're gonna go to a baseball game tomorrow. That stadium's gonna be diverse, but it doesn't mean there's a unified, spirit-empowered love for each other in that stadium. Food, I love to eat. Food, my wife's a great cook. Food can get folks together who are different, but you don't need Jesus to get people together. So what I'm trying to argue is is that God wants something much better and bigger than us simply sharing some space for a couple of hours tonight. He desires us to love one another. which requires sacrifice and mutual reciprocity, whereby we begin to leverage our preferences and our privileges for the sake of unifying and building up all people and all things in Jesus. So gospel-centered racial reconciliation can show itself up by means of multi-ethnic churches. But you can have a gospel-centered church that's serious about unifying all things and all people in Christ, even if that church is not diverse or multi-ethnic, because God must do all of it. But God must also place churches in locations where there is diversity, right? My church in Eastern Kentucky, I was the first person of color to join, and my uncle was the second, and that's been it. because there aren't a lot of black people in that neighborhood. At least when I was growing up, there were no Hispanics in that neighborhood. There were no Asians in that county. But I would argue that that church wasn't perfect, but that church pursued reconciliation by how they loved me and my family. And I did by how I loved them. And so spirit-empowered, spirit-empowered reconciliation shows itself up by means of love, and love, by definition, is sacrificial. diversity because of a certain policy doesn't mean your heart's been changed to love. You understand what I'm saying? You can have a law that requires diversity, but that doesn't mean there's genuine love, you see. In fact, you can have abolitionists who hate slavery, but they still were not necessarily believing Many of them didn't believe that blacks were equal to whites. You know that, right? You had abolitionists who were against slavery, but were not under the belief that blacks and whites were equal. Am I making sense? So spirit empowerment, reconciliation is something the gospel can do in us because it creates love. But then also love, like faith, love's a gift. Faith is a gift, but we also must pursue. Love. I mean, Paul commands us to do that, right? Pursue love. 1 Corinthians 14, I think. So that's what I would say. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a hard question, so I'm going to answer this in a very nuanced way, because I am being recorded, and what I say can and will be used against me. Trust me, I know that. It already is being used against me. The question is, comment relates to currently in the evangelical climate you have various accusations being made about people who believe in issues of justice and more specifically social justice and so the question is how much of those accusations are really accusations that are made based on failure to talk to and understand each other, and then also based on a misunderstanding of what we're talking about when we talk about justice. So I actually think that one of the problems in this conversation is a conflation of people into one basket that just because they have a similar, not the same, notice I'm choosing my words carefully, a similar concern. So for example, it is absolutely false to equate somebody who believes in justice and social justice to necessarily say that person believes in the social gospel. That's wrong. You will find no, I'm just speaking as a reformed person, you will find no reformed person who believes in the authority of the Bible, who believes in the need for a person to personally convert, who believes in biblical inerrancy, who believes in penal substitution, and the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the physical bodily return of Jesus from heaven to earth, you will find no person who believes those things and who cares about justice who is preaching a social gospel. Social gospel was a gospel, was an anti-gospel. It was not rooted in biblical inerrancy. It wasn't rooted in the authority of the Bible. It wasn't rooted in any of the doctrines that folks who would be in this congregation and congregations that are represented here that are like-minded would affirm. So one of the problems is that you have this false equivalency that people are making when they say social justice equals social gospel. That's just wrong historically. Second thing I would say is, is that it's also wrong, it's also, so I'm answering the question about people misunderstanding what they're talking about. It's also wrong to say that just because you care about social justice, that you therefore share the same worldview an atheist or a Marxist who would care about social justice. You follow what I'm saying? So some of the language you hear, see this is part of what happens I think frankly I think evangelical culture is a culture often a culture of fear and often perpetuates fear by using some of the catchphrases that will make people anxious and applying those phrases to people that have a very different understanding of the world and of issues of justice from what they have. So again, give you an example. I think some people who call reform folk who care about justice, who call them these names, some of those folks have never ever really met a real bona fide Marxist. never met a real Marxist, some of them. They've never ever met a real bony, fide, liberal. There is a whole intellectual tradition out there that is overtly, honestly, atheist and Marxist in their understanding of the world. But they're not Christian and they're open about that. As I said earlier, there's no Marxist, there's no cultural Marxist or no Marxist that would claim any Calvinist, any evangelical who believes in all the things that evangelicals believe in terms of theologically, who would claim those people as one of their own. And so part of what's going on is that you have people who just simply don't like the conversation about justice. And really, when we're talking about justice, let's just be really honest, we're talking about race in many ways. And if you want to split certain evangelical circles fast, talk about Reformed theology or talk about race, and you'll watch the room part like the Red Sea. And so then you have people making certain suggestions about gospel-believing, Jesus-loving people. because they disagree or don't like what they have to say about justice. And then you have these malicious attacks being leveled against the state of their souls because they disagree or don't understand what they're saying about matters of justice. And so, if I can just bring it back to the original question, yes, I think there is a misunderstanding, but sometimes there's outright just misrepresentation. Some people, I'm not saying all, but I think there are some people who are just outright malicious and nasty. And, I mean, some of the baseless things that people have written about me, you can't read anything that I've ever written and believe that some of these things are even remotely true, some of these folks are saying. They're just outright, some of them just nasty, and frankly, antithetical to what the gospel says Christians should be toward one another. And then also again, I think, I think there is, I think there is, as I said earlier, I think there's a misunderstanding of what the gospel is. So again, if the gospel only means how to become a Christian, right, then we're using, people who use the word gospel that way are using it very different from how it's used in the New Testament. Because the word gospel and the verb gospel is used in other places to talk about other realities, right? So that it does include vertical, horizontal, and cosmological. Those things are all part of the announcement. The gospel is the announcement that God has fulfilled all of the saving promises in Jesus. And one of those saving promises is cosmological renewal, new creation. You can't enter into new creation unless you personally convert. So then really when we say, when people say things like, just preach the gospel, don't worry about justice, they're really saying just tell people how to get saved. That's what they're saying. Just tell people how to get saved. But see what I want to say is, what then? What happens when they get saved? Do they still live in the real world? Are you going to tell them to walk in the spirit or not? Because the Spirit is something that comes only because of the Gospel, the good news that Jesus has brought to pass. So, yeah, I think there's a misunderstanding. I think there's an outright misrepresentation. And I think there's also a misunderstanding of what the Gospel is. I'll try to be less long in my other answers. Alright? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, good, good, good. So I'll repeat it again. So the question relates, excuse me, to blind spots. So I always have to make sure that I'm speaking carefully here because this is going to be recorded. So those who will be listening to this, just know that a white pastor is asking this question. So I'm going to answer the question based on the question coming from a white pastor at a predominantly white church. So the question is, what are some blind spots that white Christians may have? that they might not be aware of, and what are some practical things that one can do in order to see those blind spots? That's a really good question. I think, and I'm speaking on my own experience here, I think one blind spot that white brothers and sisters may have, or that I've experienced that they have, is that they think that their experience is normal for everybody. So then when something like a clear example of injustice takes place, which then creates a larger conversation about race in this country, then there are some white brothers and sisters who kind of react against that and assume that people are necessarily playing the race card, or race baiting is a language that's often used. because their experience is not one in which where they have personally felt race-based injustice. And so because their experience has not normally been that, they might try to normalize their experience for everybody. Now I want to come back and clarify something here and realize that there are people of color who don't have race-based experiences of injustice. But my point is that there's a whole legacy in this country of race-based injustice directed toward people of color is my point. And so then a blind spot could be is that just because you're not aware or haven't experienced certain things that certain people of color have, you might begin to think that their experience isn't real and that it's just a figment of their imagination. That's one blind spot. I think another blind spot could be is that when you're in the majority culture, you begin to think whiteness is normal. So let me just give you one real practical example. I'm an academic, and you'd be hard-pressed to go to any evangelical seminary and see a regular requirement of books written by people of color. You'd be hard-pressed at many seminaries, evangelical, evangelical, I'm emphasizing evangelical, to find the contributions of people of color in church history. You'd be hard-pressed to hear about the black missionaries that went out and taught the gospel in different parts of the world. And the whole presentation in many evangelical seminaries is that anything good about the Christian life and virtuous has been driven by a European or a white sort of perspective, right, or white people or Europeans. And you might then begin to think that non-white people are just sort of theologically inferior because what you've been exposed to your whole theological experience has been dead white people or Europeans. And then the only thing you've heard about people of color, if you're talking about blacks, they were slaves and their masters took the gospel to them. Right? And so then that creates an idea in your thinking that makes you think that good theology is white, and bad theology is not white. The only way you can see that that's a... somebody went on... The only way you can realize that black people are reformed is by reading black people who are reformed. But if you've only been exposed to white authors, and the only theology you've gotten that you believe is valuable is from white authors, then a blind spot might be that you don't think people of color have anything to contribute to the theological conversation. Now, obviously, that's not playing out tonight because you've invited a black person to talk about these things. But I'm just saying, just think about your theological educational experience for those of you who went to seminary. Think about the books that you've read. Right? I'm not saying you've intentionally said, I don't want to read people of color, but you have just reflexively reacted to what you've inherited. Sort of this legacy that has prioritized whiteness pedagogically, educationally, you see. Am I making sense? So a blind spot could be is that, well, white folk and Europeans, that's where, that represents everything good about the Christian faith. But man, read those slave narratives. Read Alotto, Equiano. who was a slave, who in spite of his racist master became deeply in love with God's sovereignty and predestination. Read about those famous Christian women like Phyllis Wheatley. who was a poet, and she was an enslaved woman, and was a Christian woman, and learned from her about how to trust God in suffering. She was a slave. It's easy to read a book written by someone sitting in an office talking about suffering when they write that book, or read a book about suffering and God's sovereignty written by a slave. See, I never even knew slave narratives existed until I was a New Testament scholar. So my blind spot was, I just assumed black folk didn't really have anything to say, until I went looking for them. Same thing with Asians, same thing with Latinos, I go looking for them. That's a blind spot. Practically, how do you overcome that? How do you work through that? I think, look, my view, racial reconciliation, gospel unity, and overcoming blind spots, they only, fundamentally, you can't over, you can learn things from books. But you have to have real relationships with people where you hear their narrative. I mean, think about your Savior. He became like you to fix your problem, right? He became a man, right? He didn't just sit up in heaven and said, okay, I'm gonna save y'all from up here. He came from heaven to earth, right? He became one of us. He got into our skin. That's what you've gotta do. to see your blind spots. And by the way, I have blind spots as well. Again, just because we are people of color, people of color have blind spots. And we have blind spots toward other people of color. And so building real relationships with people, not just for the sake of having the black or Hispanic or the Asian friend, but for the sake of really trying to understand what it means to live in reconciled community and spending time together, having each other's homes, praying together. That's how I think things change. And also I would say this, not just having a person Because remember, the question came from a white brother, and he was asking a question about white blind spots, so I'm speaking into that question. Don't just get a black or brown or yellow friend that can answer all of your race questions. I hate that. I get all kinds of bizarre emails, and I'm always quick to tell people this. Most of my academic work focuses on Paul-line soteriology in its early Jewish context. I care about the race conversation because I'm a black Southern Baptist Christian who believes the gospel applies to racism and who has experienced racism. So I care about the issue because it's a gospel issue in my view. But never email me and say, I know you're the race guy, which I've gotten emails like that before. Can you fix me? Can you answer all my questions? I'm gonna say, no. Because I don't have all the answers. Or, never say this, say, you know, I'm really struggling with like this social justice issue. Can you meet and tell me everything I need to know about social justice? I've been black for 40 years, and I still don't know everything there is to know about social justice. And how do you think I'm gonna fix you in an hour when I still have issues? You follow what I'm saying? What if I said to you, you tell me everything you know about reform theology in one hour. You can't do that. And so then one more word here about that. Practically, this is people being practical, don't place the burden on people of color to do your homework. So I kind of live in a complicated world. I'm a black, multi-ethnic family, black man, multi-ethnic family, Reformed, Southern Baptist, who studies Judaism. Pauline sociology and writes books on racism and against white supremacy. So I live in a complicated world. And then also my world is one in which where I have to learn how to code switch. You know what I mean by that? I have to learn how to navigate majority white cultures and learn how to navigate when I'm in predominantly black context or multi-ethnic context. So I'm exhausted a lot. So don't exhaust people of color more by asking them to carry the burden that you need to be carrying with them in this conversation. Does that make sense? You know, like, yeah, there's more I could say, but I'll stop because I want to answer more questions. Those are a couple things I'd say. And another thing, let me say one more thing here, okay? So another thing I would say is, going back to the original point I was making, you do have to read. See, I'm confused. Let me just be real. I'm Reformed, okay? I've already said that like 50,000 times. For a reason. Because it's been recorded. But Reformed people, they say, yeah, I read widely. And on their shelf, it's like different people who are Reformed. That's not reading widely. So if you really want to learn, you got to read some people that, you know, you got to learn how to eat the meat and throw away the bones. If you only read people who think like you, who look like you, sound like you, you're not going to grow very much. See, I'm a New Testament scholar. I don't have the luxury to just read people I agree with. I have to read people I don't agree with most of the time because of the kind of work I do. And moreover, because I'm a person of color who's lived in a world that's been majority white most of my life, I therefore have never had the privilege of being around people who only look or think like me. So what I'm encouraging you to do, brothers and sisters, especially if you're white, is don't be afraid to read non-white people, even if they don't agree with you. You'll find black people and brown people and yellow people who will agree with you, but you will find a lot who won't. But don't be afraid to read. If you believe in a big sovereign God, don't be afraid to read broadly. All right. I see a hand there in the back. Yes. Yep. Yeah, yeah, okay, that is so good. Oh man, I wish I would have talked less so I could actually let you guys talk more. Let me add a little bit to that. So the statement was that Jesus was born in lowly Bethlehem, and Bethlehem had a set of realities that you wouldn't find in Athens, right? So you look at the Gospel of Luke, Right? In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is born and then the angels go out and they announce the good news to shepherds. And they're announcing the good news to shepherds in a context where the good news announcement related to an emperor who was born and would succeed the father to the throne. So that was the good news of the Roman Empire. But these lowly shepherds come with a better news about this baby born in Bethlehem who's the king of the world. Now, it gets a little bit more complicated. This baby grows up, and he's a Jewish man. He's a carpenter. He's probably an architect, working with his hands, doing stuff with his daddy. But then he's also, in the Gospel of Matthew, he is fleeing as a refugee to Egypt. Right? Right? Right? Uh-huh, uh-huh. And he's incarcerated. He's marginalized. Oh, it's not race-based. He receives injustice. Oh, yeah. And God vindicated him by raising him up from the dead, right? And in the Gospel of Luke, what you have is an emphasis on God coming to deliver the poor and the oppressed through Jesus, who fulfills Isaiah 61. And you have this very real Jesus who is entering into the plight of other people in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke, you also have Jesus. Every single parable He tells about women, women would have been marginalized in the ancient world. Every parable about women is a positive parable in the Gospel of Luke. Women are following Him, serving Him, learning at His feet, learning at Rabbi's feet. Luke chapter 10, right? Mary and Martha. And then you also have Jesus, of course, healing the sick. helping the poor, but also ministering to Zacchaeus, who was the elite. So you see a very real Jesus entering into a real social situation who experiences bad social circumstances, and he's ministering to, yes, the spiritual needs of people, but he's entering into their plight as well and providing some physical relief as he gives them the best news of all. And so why are we afraid of that? You with me? See, it's just much easier to talk about, honestly, in many ways, it's much easier to just talk about, like, Romans 9. But Romans 9 should be applied to the real world, right? Yeah, and I'll be honest with you, I'm just talking here as you guys think about other questions. See, it's easier for me to analyze Romans 9 and to say, yes, thank you, Jesus. That's easier for me to do than it is for me to love my neighbor. It's easy for me to live in isolation. I'm an introvert. Only time I'm excited is when I'm teaching or preaching. But the rest of the time, I'm pretty quiet and shy, and I like being by myself. That's easy. But the gospel nudges me, pricks at me, and provokes me to pursue people in spirit and power love. That's hard. It's hard. I think there's a hand behind you and then I'll come to you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so let me say the question. Make sure I understand what you just asked. So you mentioned issues of policing, right, and how policing could look differently, or African Americans can have different experiences with the police in comparison to majority culture. Am I understanding you correctly? And you're asking me how to apply the gospel in that situation. so far so good? Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't have all the answers to questions. I would say one application of the gospel I think would be, I think we would all agree, is that we want to honor and show due respect to those who rule over us in a society and not to indict every police officer because there are police officers who are problematic. Does that make sense? So I think Christian charity would say that It would be incorrect to say that every single police officer is policing black people in ways that are wrong. But it is right to say that there's a whole history again in this country of a certain kind of policing that's been directed toward communities of color, right? And so how do you apply the gospel to that exactly? Yeah, you know, I don't have the answer to that question at hand. I would just say, I just use maybe our church in Louisville as an example, where we've tried to have a good relationship with police and the community. We had a situation in our neighborhood where the church is located. There was a shooting a few years ago before I started going to the church. It was a drive-by shooting. We invited the families affected into the church, and then we also invited some police into the church, and some folks from the community to have a dialogue about violence, and created space for people to have a conversation about issues of violence and injustice. It wasn't an incident involving the police, but my point is that there was an effort of the church to reach out to the police to say we want our community to know that you love the community and we want to show the love of Jesus to you and the community and provide a space by which we can do that on the church's terms. and try to speak some gospel hope into the lives of those families who were broken. And then also try to help provide a sense of confidence that the police would try to do what they could to see that those families would do justice in that community. And the families who suffered this loss were black families in a community where there's some systemic issues there. So I guess maybe that's one application. That's a hard question. I think one thing I would want to be clear about is that how you apply the gospel to any issue needs to be consistent with your community in which your church exists. You follow what I'm saying? So that's why I reach for an example from my community as opposed to speaking generally, so that every church has a responsibility to think about how their gospel mission can speak into, or if it can speak into, these realities, and what can the church do to further that mission by applying the gospel to these kinds of realities. So there's a situation, too, I think about in the situation in Dallas. You know what I'm talking about with their churches in Dallas that are partnering together to try to make sure that there's an effort for what is right to be done on behalf of the families and the young man who was shot. And so you see those pastors working and applying their understanding of the Bible and loving neighbor and those sorts of things in their context in that way. It's probably an unclear answer, but that's a good question. It's a hard question. Oh, I'm sorry. I think he had his hand there. I'll come back to you. You did email me, you said? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My question relates more to the semantics. We were talking semantics. The best way to describe it is an example. If you look at church history, there's an example in history where Thomas Aquinas was trying to say that philosophy, like Greek philosophy, and Virginia says, or Christian theology, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a fair question. If you email me, by the way, I thought you could email me and ask me questions. It's just sometimes the way people phrase those questions, it's like... Yeah, okay. Your question was not one of those questions, though. It was about books. So the question is, Is it dangerous, perhaps, to read people and read about ideas that have a larger anti-Christian worldview just to get some common grace truth from those ideas? Sure, sure, yeah, yeah. So reading those ideas, but then also applying, using some of the categories that you find in those traditions. Is it dangerous is what you're asking. Well, I suppose you can, a person could, do all sorts of things that aren't inherently dangerous but could end up being dangerous. Before I answer the question directly, let me just sort of say this as a preface, that we all do that anyway with certain things in life, right? So we use language that is not necessarily exclusively Christian. You know, we talk about a talk about a verdict. We're talking about the court of law, but then we're talking about a forensic verdict as it relates to justification. That's a different sort of conversation. There's not a one-to-one correlation between justification and modern-day justice system. And then also, we use methods like the grammatical-historical method of studying the Bible, grammatical-historical exegesis, which was a method that many anti-supernatural scholars used to develop anti-supernatural ideas, but we use the method of grammatical-spiritual exegesis and we reject the anti-supernatural conclusions that many had. We also use certain social categories that come out of sociological schools. Again, race. Race is not, as is used in the modern experience, that's not a biblical category, or excuse me, a biblical word. It's a category of, you have the category of otherness of kind or something, but it's not the same exact sort of concept that we find in the modern experience. So, what I would say is that we already do use stuff that's not inherently Christian. Paul did the same thing. The word to justify was not uniquely Christian. The verb dikayo, the noun dikayasone, the adjective dikayas, These weren't words that Paul created. They were used in different secular sources in antiquity. Moreover, baptism, baptizo, that verb was used by Josephus, and it had nothing to do with immersion into water when Josephus used it in this one particular text. You also have a grace, charis, the Greek word, which is used all over the place in ancient sources and has nothing to do with the grace of the gospel distributed through Jesus Christ, but everything to do with gift giving and benefaction. So the ancients did that and we do that because we live in a real world that uses categories and concepts that are socially constructed. Living in a society where societies create culture. you're going to have things that you talk about that aren't inherently Christian, or words that you use that aren't inherently Christian. Now your specific question though, using, let's just say the word theory, using the theory or using methods that are from people who are not Christian or who are outspokenly anti-Christian, is there a danger in reading those things and using those categories? Well, a person could read something like that and begin to think that therein lies the answer in that person's solution. But I would argue that there doesn't have to be a danger so that when I want to know what racism is, what white supremacy is, I can't go to a verse in the Bible and see that. When I want to know what the solution to that is, I can. So here's the way I would say it, is that some of these theories that talk about race, they diagnose the problem fairly well without knowing the fundamental reason why we have the problem. So they point out what's wrong and what racism is, and they help you understand that, but they don't give you a solution at all. So my approach is, is I want to say, okay, I want to approach this conversation with the biblical text. I think we have racism fundamentally because of sin, because of what happened in the garden. Racism flows out of that. Okay, but I live in the United States of America in a society where there are race-based constructs that exist. How can I understand that better? What is that? What is racism? What is race? What does racialization mean? So then I have to read people who thought critically about race and understand that these people have a different worldview from what I have, but read what they're saying and look at their insights and apply the gospel to the problem that they don't know how to fix and that they fundamentally don't know why we have it. So that would be my answer. I think There could be a danger with just reading Calvin all the time, right? So there's a danger with driving a car, right? There's always a danger. There's a danger with eating certain foods. But there doesn't have to be, you don't have to be seduced by a larger worldview just because you're acknowledging that God gives common grace even to the atheists, to communicate certain things that can be helpful. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, I would clarify something you said. I would not at all say I'm taking their worldview. I reject their worldview. I reject the worldview of critical race theory. I reject the worldview of intersectionality. Their worldview is fundamentally not compatible with the gospel. What I do is I read people who are working in those areas, and I see what insights can they give me about the race conversation in America. I reject their worldview from the outset, because I already know before I even crack the book open that they're antithetical to the gospel. So I know when I read a book on race that, written from that particular perspective, that there's a whole ideological and worldview associated with them that I reject, but I still want to learn what they're saying about this real issue in the society, even though their worldview is fundamentally incorrect. That make sense? Yeah. So I appreciate that question because I think that's one wherein there's some great confusion where people begin to label people something because people see some value in something. You know, I'm a Southern Baptist. But I reject what Southern Baptists historically have thought about race. Southern Baptist Convention was founded because of slavery. I mean, that was wrong. Right? And so just because I'm a Southern Baptist doesn't mean I accept their worldview on the race issue. Just because I speak English doesn't mean I'm English. It doesn't mean that I affirm everything that English-speaking people affirm. Yeah, that's how I would actually ask the question. There's a lot of just... This brother's been waiting for a few minutes. Can I ask just one more question? Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I'm long-winded. pursue reconciliation, Christian unity on this issue. And there are a variety of things, I think. I think one thing when we're talking about black Christians and the race issue, we have to remember something very important historically. that the black church historically, and the black church is very diverse, okay? I'm just, I'm using the black church just as a phrase, as a historical marker where you had black people forming their own church locations, okay? The black church historically exists in this country in part as a resistance to white supremacy. Right? Historically, black folk began to form denominations of their own, churches on their own, because they weren't welcomed in white churches. And so when we're talking about black churches, let me just say churches, and I'll get to the individual point in a moment, but black churches and the race conversation. We've got to remember something historically. Black Christians have, since their very existence in this country, have had to fight to preserve their human dignity and to create space wherein that would be valued. That make sense? So when you go to black churches, historically, historic black churches, it's not just a casual gathering. It's an event in terms of the preaching of the word, singing, but also where people are celebrating the dignity of the black body. by acknowledging what's happening in black communities. And we have to understand something very important when we're talking about this from the black church's perspective, and that is the black church exists in part because of white churches. So then the conversation is a little bit different when you're talking about black churches. And I'm not a pastor of a black church. I'm in a multi-ethnic church contest. My pastor is black. He was a pastor of a black church for eight years. But one of the things I've learned by being in black churches and by reading on black churches is that black churches have always been about the dignity of human beings. They've never struggled with anthropology. You understand what I'm saying? And they show that same dignity toward non-black bodies. But the black church exists in part because of wanting to preserve that black dignity, right? Okay, so that then means, and for black churches who are wanting to lean into this, one thing that would mean is, I think practically, that when non-black brothers and sisters come into the church, show love and welcome those who are there and seek to live in reconciled unity. And that will happen in a black church context within the context wherein there is a, I want to make sure I say this the right way, where there is a dignifying of black people. Does that make sense? So there's a role that black people have in this conversation. And I would also say that black people who are in communities, black churches that are in communities where there are white people, they should be reaching out. to red and yellow, black and white in that community. I think the church should look like it's community and seek to reach out. And I think as it relates to the individual level, Let me give you an example about that. So a good friend of mine was a pastor of a traditional black church in Louisville, and one of the things that happened under his ministry at that church was a lot of white people from the community began to come, and he began to disciple them, and some of them became on the leadership in the church. So it was a still predominantly black church, but it had Asian members, you had white members, you had white leadership. And it's a beautiful thing to see this traditional black church reach out. This same church has a partnership with a white church in Louisville whose building caught on fire. And this black congregation welcomed this white congregation into its fellowship free of charge. Use the building as long as you need to until your facility was up and running again. That's a beautiful picture of what we're kind of talking about. There's this black church that is reaching out to this predominantly white church, and there's this partnership there. That's beautiful. Individually, I think, one of the things that we, this is, I don't want to end on this. There's so much that I can say, but I'm going to end on this. One of the things that we as, I think, people of color need to make sure we do in this conversation is make sure We don't, or rather, make sure we love and listen to and pursue our white brothers and sisters who genuinely want to pursue multi-ethnic gospel community. Because what can often happen is those of us who are people of color, who are right to critique and criticize racism, we can often speak more negatively about white people than positively about those white brothers and sisters who are in the game with us. So we have to be clear, so what can we do? We have to make sure we make clear that to work toward reconciliation and to be against racism isn't to indict every individual white person. It's to indict the ideology of racism and to recognize that we as, you can kind of feel this now, that black and brown and yellow people who are saved, we are brothers and sisters to white folk who are saved. Can I get a witness? And that relationship is one that is eternal. And that's the one that binds me to a white brother or sister in a way that sharing the same skin color does not. Does that make sense? And we've got to remind ourselves of this. But I could say more, time's up, sorry. Thank you, I've enjoyed this, this has been great.