What 'One Blood' Doesn't Settle

Today's Reading

Read Acts 17:24-31, where Paul, standing before the philosophers of Athens, declares: "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God..."

Then read Galatians 2:11-14, where Paul recounts a public confrontation: "But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him..."

Then read James 2:1-9 ("If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin...") and Amos 5:21-24, where God refuses worship from a society that tolerates injustice: "Take away from me the noise of your songs... But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

Reflection

Acts 17:26 is, in some Christian circles, the verse that ends every conversation about race. God made every nation from one blood. We are all one in Christ. So why are we still talking about this?

Paul, who actually wrote those words, did not think they ended the conversation. The same Paul who preached Acts 17 in Athens also wrote Galatians 2, where he tells the embarrassing story of confronting Peter — Peter, the chief apostle, the rock — over racial behavior. Peter had agreed in principle that Gentile believers were equal members of the body of Christ. He had eaten with them. He had baptized Cornelius. He had defended their inclusion at the Jerusalem council. His theology was right.

But when "certain men came from James" — observers from the older, ethnically Jewish wing of the church — Peter, "fearing the circumcision party," began to draw back. He stopped eating with Gentile believers. He let his behavior tell a different story than his theology. And what made it worse, Paul notes, is that "the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray." Barnabas. The encourager. A man who had spent his ministry breaking down ethnic walls. Behavior is contagious in a way that doctrine is not.

This is the New Testament's first great racial confrontation, and Paul names exactly what is happening: not a failure to know the truth, but a failure to live by it when the social cost rises. His response is sharp, public, and unashamed. The gospel itself is at stake when our practice silently contradicts our theology.

Two thousand years later, this is the conversation the American church keeps not having. The doctrinal answer is settled. Almost no Christian today, on any side of the political spectrum, will defend racism in principle. But James 2 — written perhaps a decade after Galatians — already saw that doctrinal agreement is not enough. Partiality is sin even when no one would publicly defend it. Showing the rich man to the good seat and the poor man to the floor is sin, James says, even when the Christian doing it would never give a sermon endorsing the practice.

Charles Spurgeon understood this with a clarity that cost him. Writing to American Baptists in the 1850s and 60s, Spurgeon refused to soften his denunciation of slavery for the sake of pulpit invitations. American slave-holding pastors burned his sermons in protest. He lost a significant portion of his American audience. He did not back down. "I do from my inmost soul detest slavery," he wrote, "and although I commune at the Lord's table with men of all creeds, yet with a slave-holder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind." Note: he was not arguing about the theology. The theology was simple. He was arguing about whether the men in question would let the theology touch their wallets, their plantations, their inherited assumptions. They wouldn't, so he wouldn't pretend otherwise.

Bonhoeffer, writing from a prison cell in Nazi Germany, named the deeper diagnosis. The reason the gospel fails to do its work in our practice is that we keep judging people by what they do or fail to do, rather than learning to feel what they suffer. We can affirm Acts 17:26 with our mouths and never sit long enough with the actual experience of a Black brother or sister to be changed by it. The verse becomes a way of ending the conversation rather than entering it.

Tim Keller pressed the same point with characteristic precision: "There is a need for far more than goodwill on this question. There is a need for repentance — by which I mean not regret, but a turning around of the mind." The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, is not "feeling bad." It is "thinking again, on a deeper level, about what was assumed." That is what this plan is going to ask us to do over the next ten days.

So we begin where every American Christian conversation about race should probably begin: not with confidence, but with the discomfort of a verse we have used to settle a question Paul himself, in person, did not consider settled.

Going Deeper

Sit with Galatians 2 and try this exercise: imagine the scene physically. Peter at a table with Gentile believers. Friends. A meal. The door opens, men he respects walk in, and one by one Peter's foot finds the leg of his chair and pushes it back from the table. He stands up. He moves to the other table. The Gentile believers watch. Some of them have just been baptized. They notice that the apostle they trusted has just told them, without saying a word, that they are not quite welcome.

Now ask: when in your life have you been Peter? When have you been the one watching from the other table?