The Race Problem

Acts 10:9-16, 34, 35; 17:24-28

GOLDEN TEXT: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation He that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”—Acts 10:34 35

THE race problem is becoming an acute one in the chaotic world of today. The hue and cry for liberty and equality is arousing the hitherto backward races to assert their rights to a point that makes it difficult for the traditionally superior nations to handle the situation. Nations which boastfully claim superiority for their race are condemned; yet other nations refusing to acknowledge equality for all races put themselves in the same position of condemnation.

The apostle’s statement that God has made all nations of one blood has stood the scientific tests of time. Despite all the modern guesses of evolutionists and pseudo-scientists, the real scientific fact is that all the races and nations of earth stem from common progenitors, and the Bible tells us that these were Adam and Eve. One of the easiest understood proofs of this is the cross-breeding possibilities between the races. If the various races had stemmed from different original parents, fruitful marriages between them would be impossible. This is a fact well known to all scientists.

While it is interesting thus to note the truthfulness of the Word of God as it applies to the entire human race, the Scriptures cited for the lesson do not deal with a race problem as such, but rather as it affects the call and development of the church of Christ. God is no respecter of persons in so far as His provision of salvation for all mankind is concerned, but He does reserve to Himself the right to invite the special co-operation of some, both individuals and nations.

For more than two thousand years God had taken the natural descendants of Abraham into His confidence and had used them as His exclusive representatives in the earth. He had given them His laws, made them promises, sent them His prophets, and above all, had assured them that the Messiah, the great Deliverer and Savior of the whole world, would be raised up from their nation. Through the prophet God said “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.”—Amos 3:2

The many long centuries during which God had thus dealt solely with the Israelites constituted a background of thought which posed a problem in the early church when the time came that Gentiles were called to be co-workers with God on an equal basis with believing Jews. Jews who accepted Christ found it difficult to believe that Gentiles, whom they had looked upon as mere “dogs,” could be pleasing to God—unless, of course, they first of all became proselytes to the Jewish faith.

Our lesson indicates that it required a special revelation from God, a miracle, to open Peter’s eyes to the dispensational change in God’s plan which had occurred. The Jews, as a people, proved unworthy of the exclusive right to he co-workers in the Messianic Kingdom project whereby all nations were to be blessed with the opportunity of life. Because of this the Gentiles were now to have an opportunity to run for the “prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” and the apostles had to be specially enlightened in order to take the leadership in this enlarged sphere of divine operation.—Phil. 3:14

We can well understand Peter’s feelings when he was bidden to eat the flesh of creatures which God had decreed through the law to be unclean. But how well the experience served to prepare his mind to grasp the meaning of that which was to follow. While Peter still wondered what the vision meant, a further revelation from the Lord directed him to meet messengers who had been sent by Cornelius to seek him. This, also, had been by the direction of the Lord.

Cornelius was a Gentile. When Peter went to his home and preached the Gospel to the entire household, they believed and God showed His acceptance of them by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit similar to that which came upon waiting Jews at Pentecost. Then the apostle grasped the significance of it all. “I perceive,” he said, “that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”—Acts 10:34,35

This change of dispensation was in a twofold sense. It marked the end of special and exclusive opportunity to the Jew, and it also was the end of God’s dealings with a nation, as such. It was not a transfer of favor from the Jewish nation to one or more Gentile nations, but from a nation to individual believers of all the nations—believers who fear God and work righteousness. To fear (reverence) God means that one’s righteous works are the works of God, a carrying out of His plans and purposes. This opportunity is still open.

QUESTIONS:

Is it scientifically true that all the races of earth are of one blood?

Has God ever especially favored one nation above another?

In what sense is it true that God is no respecter of persons?

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