The resurrection brought together ethnic groups that despised each other.
So far, we've intensively studied 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. Repeatedly, we've seen that we have multiple, early, credible, and independent eyewitness testimonies to the bodily resurrection of Jesus. None of these eyewitnesses were dispassionate observers who merely reported what they saw. Rather, their lives underwent a metamorphosis.
The resurrection didn't just change individuals. It changed communities. That's what we're going to consider in the next four lessons.
We'll start with a troubling topic: the evil of racism and the suffering that it causes.
Sadly, ethnic division and discrimination are part of every culture. At the time Jesus rose from the dead, many Jews and Gentiles despised one another. Dr. William Klein notes,
"The Jews contemptuously called Gentiles 'the uncircumcised,' a term of abuse and scorn... They in effect relegated all non-Jews—including those who devised the lofty cultures of Greece and Rome—to the trash heap of humanity."
Likewise, Roman commentary on the Jews was often quite negative. The Roman historian Tacitus said of the Jews, "Among the Jews all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral."
**Still, it's remarkable that after Jesus died by crucifixion, his Jewish disciples changed their beliefs and practices in order to treat Gentiles as their equals!**
In Ephesians 2, Paul writes, "Jesus is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility." Paul explains, "For through Jesus we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God's household."
Or in what might have been an early baptismal creed, the Jewish and Gentile Christians would say, "There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
**What can explain why ethnic groups that despised each other, and maintained separation, so suddenly decided to love one another as family members? The resurrection of Jesus.**
In fact, Dr. Max Turner says that Paul's argument in Ephesians 3 is that "a universal church where Jew and Gentile live and worship as one body ... [is] a central, if not the central, witness to the gospel."
But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In his flesh, he made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that he might create in himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace. He did this so that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross by which he put the hostility to death... So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God's household.
How have you seen or experienced ethnic hostility distorting the witness of the church?
Do you think the new social arrangements in the early church provide evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?
What would it look like for the resurrection power of Jesus to motivate you to seek the best interests of other ethnic groups?
Identify one way you can actively pursue unity across ethnic or cultural lines this week. Let the resurrection power of Jesus motivate you.
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