Racial reconciliation has fallen on hard times in North American Christianity. In a dizzying couple of years, there have been increasingly vocal denunciations from various corners. Some of that criticism is to be expected, especially when it comes from non-Christian voices. After all, secularism has a hard time conceding any vision for transformation that is inseparable from God’s redemptive power. 

But many of us have been troubled by voices within Christian circles that have tried to delegitimize the call for racial reconciliation. They are motivated by different concerns and impulses, each requiring caution against sweeping overgeneralizations. There appears to be a fraying in certain corners of the church, weariness and fatigue in the pursuit of reconciliation, and perhaps even resignation to the status quo.

Some of these criticisms have come from those who see the vision of racial reconciliation as a veiled attempt to suppress efforts for justice and social transformation. In this telling, evangelicals--and white evangelicals in particular--who labor for racial reconciliation are complicit, knowingly or not, in perpetuating longstanding inequalities and injustices because they presumably focus too much on the individual or impede more aggressive proposals for social change. These voices often decry the call to racial reconciliation as evidence of “white fragility” and hopelessly embedded within systems that never give heed to matters of injustice. Coming from some of the most ardent voices in the “anti-racist” movement, this too is problematic. George Yancey’s careful and fair-minded critique of Robin DiAngelo’s white-fragility paradigm is especially commendable, offering an alternative for a model of mutual accountability that is far more helpful and biblical. The truth is we are all prone to defensiveness when confronted with our sin and woefully given to self-justification. That is a universal reality of sinful human experience, hardly limited to any one racial or ethnic group. And yet, DiAngelo’s model seems to propose a path where there is no real redemption, no expiation, no ultimate reconciliation, and no recognition of our universal fallenness.

Others--perhaps at another end of the political spectrum--repudiate the vision of racial reconciliation by claiming that it is a trojan horse for any number of ideologies incompatible with historic Christianity. In this telling, it seems the best way for Christians to move forward in racial unity is just to stop talking about race and racism. These voices appear prone to dismiss any mention of racial reconciliation as inseparable from critical race theory (CRT). That is both regrettable and problematic. Before too quickly ascribing pejoratives of “wokeness” (whatever one may mean by that), there is a better way. Test what is being said. Does it ultimately call on all of us to exert loving concern for one another’s wellbeing? Does it reflect the heart and wisdom of Christ? Does it align with what God reveals about the pervasiveness of sin and the promise of redemption in His inspired Word? Does it seek to magnify the glory of God in Christ in the work of redemption? If so, it’s worth hearing.

Neither of these extremes offers viable proposals. One side has hollowed out the redemptive power of the gospel in bringing about justice and renewal, and the other side has neglected the real ways in which sin has distorted the world in which we live. 

Proclaiming the truth pricks the conscience, something that tends to be unpopular. And the truth is that racism in every form is detestable to God and contrary to human flourishing. 

Within evangelicalism there are voices that have raised legitimate questions and concerns on discussions of race, reconciliation, and justice. We should always be grateful for brothers and sisters who help us to think more biblically and to communicate more clearly. Indeed, there are very real threats to biblical orthodoxy and orthopraxy out there. The spirit of the age is not one that gives a warm welcome to biblical truth.

But I’m not giving up on racial reconciliation. It’s not easy. There are dangers all around, to be sure. And we must make sure that the proposals being offered do indeed align with biblical truth. Ultimately, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to walk in his way, to follow the Master. 

Reconciliation Is the Way of Jesus

Christian people are reconciliation people. It’s really that simple. There is far more to the Christian life, but not less. The good news of salvation in Christ is a message of reconciliation. Fundamentally, it is the announcement of reconciliation between God and sinners, only made possible through Jesus’ perfect life and his atoning death. His victory over sin and death, vindicated in his bodily resurrection and ascension, assures all who put their faith in him that they can have peace with God.

That good news changes everything. In reconciling sinners to himself in Christ, God also reconciles us to one another. It is an accomplished reality, secured by Jesus’ glorious work at Calvary. 

And yet, we are called to walk it out. Theologians often speak of the indicative and imperative dynamics of the Pauline epistles. Paul routinely tells his readers who they are by virtue of Christ’s finished work (the indicative). But he consistently pairs that with a command, an imperative, calling his readers to live out their identity in a specific way. The argument goes something like this: “If this is what God has done for you in Christ (Col. 3:1-4), then this is how you ought to live (Col. 3:5-17).” This is precisely what Dietrich Bonhoeffer described in Life Together: “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

Reconciliation requires love. And love is costly. It demands that we die to ourselves, to our preferences, to our own vanity. We have too often settled for a cheap love, one that cannot hold up under scrutiny. The kind of love that Jesus calls us to is costly: “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-13).

Reconciliation requires humility. Consider how Paul puts it: 

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:1-4). 

This is a countercultural call. In a world that exalts self-interest and is obsessed with self-exaltation, the way of Jesus calls us to something completely different. And yet, in too many sectors of American Christianity we see a bent away from Christ-like humility. Even more disturbing, this move often gets cloaked in religious language that masquerades as Christianity but looks and sounds very little like Jesus.

Ultimately, racial reconciliation sees unity in Christ as a means to God’s great redemptive goal—people from every tribe, language, people and nation gathered around the throne praising Christ. We long to see what Christ prayed for: “May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me” (John 17:21).

Cross-shaped reconciliation—including racial reconciliation—points toward a unity in diversity, a vision of the eternal future when God’s people will be gathered from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” worshipping the risen and ruling Christ (Rev. 7:9). That day is coming, as sure as anything in the cosmos. So right now, in this present evil age, the church bears witness to this future reality. Each local church is a “sneak preview” of the coming main attraction. Far from perfect and still tainted by sin as they may be, churches rely upon the Spirit and the Word to work among us in such a way that we really do give a signpost to the world of what is to come. 

For two millennia it has been this way. When the gospel of Jesus Christ breaks into any culture, it disrupts things. The redemptive force of Christianity calls redeemed sinners to pick up their cross and follow the risen Christ, pressing against the exclusions and tribalism of the flesh, urging us to be reconciled to one another. This is the universality of the call to reconciliation. It may take different forms depending on place, time, and culture. For example, Christians living in a rather ethnically homogenous culture are still called to the ministry of reconciliation, whether between poor and rich, male and female, and so on. But for those of us who live in racially and ethnically diverse contexts, how much greater the opportunity to testify to the gospel’s power as we walk the path of reconciliation together! Jesus is indeed making all things new (Rev. 21:5).

Resurrection People are Marked by Hope

Hope is in short supply these days. We seem far more given to cynicism and despair. There are likely multiple reasons for that bent in many of our churches. The headlines of the day and our proclivity for social media “doom scrolling” certainly do not help. And for those who long to see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven, any given day can give more than its share of reasons to lose heart. It can seem that the loudest voices—those calling us to retreat into our socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, or national corners—are drowning out all else.

That’s when it would be particularly tempting to tap out, to give up and walk away from the path of reconciliation. Maybe it really would just be easier if we succumbed to the “homogenous unit principle” after all. After all, the HUP was right--it really is easier to surround ourselves with people who check all of our own demographic boxes. 

Easy, yes. But not in keeping with the way of Jesus. And the way of Jesus is one marked by difficulty, opposition, and hardship. Indeed, it can often even look like the way toward loss and marginalization.

But we are resurrection people. Christianity proposes a dramatically different way of understanding everything around us, a completely new narrative that sees a bloody cross and an empty tomb and concludes, “God is able.” Just when things looked their bleakest and darkest there at Golgotha, God was at work. And three days later, Jesus of Nazareth was raised by the power of the Spirit in victory. Tragedy turned to triumph and what had so clearly appeared to be the defeat of the Righteous One, now is shown to be the path to his glorious exaltation.

Perhaps you are weary of “doing good” (Gal. 6:9). The ministry of reconciliation in any form is never easy. Indeed, it is often decried, ridiculed, and slandered. The world, the flesh, and the devil conspire to press God’s people away from reconciliation and toward enmity. 

But God is always at work. And what others mean for evil, God means for good. It is most likely and most reasonable to conclude that it is in the very circumstances that are causing you to lose heart that God is most at work. His hand of providence may be hidden and mysterious right now. But the God who raises the dead to life is fully able and willing to transform hearts and to bring about renewal and redemption in our fellowship with one another. 

The World Desperately Needs to See It

Narcissism and identitarianism plague so much of Western society. And Christianity has not been immune to it. We see it in the cycles of outrage and hatred that plague so much of the discourse around us. Regrettably, many of us ingest its poison with steady diets of social media, fueled by algorithms designed to keep us addicted. The outrage we love to feast upon is a banquet that ultimately kills us. We should not be surprised that the world is plagued by this sort of thing, but it is to our great shame that so much of it has infected our churches. 

We look more like the world than we do like the family of God. We assume the worst of one another, casting aspersions and dismissing anyone who disagrees with us with careless and reckless adjectives. We surrender to the feedback loop frenzy of cable news outlets and assume that anyone who doesn’t share our opinion is an enemy to be destroyed. Are any of us then surprised that the church seems to have little to say about how men and women of any racial or ethnic background can be truly reconciled to one another in Christ?

We can and should have hopes for human flourishing in broader society. But a cross-shaped vision of racial reconciliation will bear fruit in local churches. We should pray for common grace spillovers, but the redemptive power of the gospel is seen in real congregations who, in their life together, demonstrate the realities of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s victory over sin and death. Or, as Leslie Newbigin aptly put it, “A gospel of reconciliation can only be communicated by a reconciled fellowship.”

That means that the vision for racial reconciliation is not diversity per se. The call of the church is a call to unity in the truth. That implies that there can be no true unity apart from the truth. Secular calls for unity ring hollow, void of any real truth claim that can cohere individuals. But the church is a different thing altogether. We are formed into a new household, a new tribe, a new family such that we actually address one another in familial language. When we speak of brothers and sisters, that is not quaint pietistic rhetoric. It reflects an ontological reality. In Christ, we really are family for eternity. 

That unity is secured by and established upon Christ’s finished work. But the announcement of His victory over sin and death now must go forward. There is indeed an ontological reality of who we are now in Christ. And yet there is the need for our lives to catch up to that reality as we are called to live in obedience by faith.

This dynamic was impressed on me in recent days as our nation observed Juneteenth, now a federal holiday. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed the legal status of all enslaved persons within the rebel Confederate states immediately on January 1, 1863, by making clear that they “are, and henceforth shall be free.” And yet, the good news of emancipation was slow to arrive. In fact, it took more than two years for Union troops to make their way into Texas and for General Gordon Granger’s troops to take hold of Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865. As they did, they read publicly General Order Number 3, notifying all Texans of the legal culmination of emancipation. For those enslaved black Texans, their legal status had changed on that first day of 1863. But someone had to get news to them for it to take effect. As Carl Henry put it well, the good news is only good news if it gets there on time. 

Christ’s saving work is complete and final. There is no more sacrifice to be offered, no more atonement to be made. He has conquered sin and death for all time on behalf of his people. As his fellow heirs, we are indeed reconciled to God and one another. And yet, living between the times involves the daily call to walk in the Spirit and to live in greater obedience. Grace transforms all of this, summoning us to walk in obedience, not for the sake of any merit before God, but in the freedom of Christ’s completed work for us. 

Within the church, we have indeed already been reconciled to one another. We have all been baptized into Christ and are thus clothed with Christ, such that we are all now offspring of Abraham and heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:29). That’s why Paul declares, “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus” (v. 28). Speaking to the ethnic hostility and divide between Jewish and Gentile Christians, Paul elsewhere claims, “For he [Jesus] is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 3:14).

If Jews and Gentiles are reconciled to God and one another in Christ, how much more every other ethnic and racial division? And yet, the grace of God calls us to walk daily in that settled peace, to live it out as a demonstration of the glory of Christ. And for those who will humble themselves, there’s always more grace (James 4:6). 

We long to see true peace and justice reign. And so we labor in faith, but ultimately long for the day when the Prince of Peace returns. Racial reconciliation may seem woefully naive to some, cast aside as a mere fig leaf to cover over an evangelical aversion to issues of injustice. I can understand that criticism but would plead with brothers and sisters not to abandon the biblical call to reconciliation. At the same time, some will denounce the path of reconciliation, contending that it is a masquerade for worldviews and ideologies antithetical to orthodox Christianity. To those brothers and sisters, I would also plead not to abandon the biblical call to reconciliation. Biblical faithfulness and our witness to the hope of the gospel demand that we do not surrender the language of reconciliation and--even more importantly--the ministry of reconciliation. 

Don’t give up on racial reconciliation. It may not be easy and it may not be popular. It may mean being willing to be maligned and misrepresented. But there is grace for you and me in that. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. He really is making all things new.