For those who feel that there is a place for segregation in the body of Christ, i challenge you to dig further into the word. There are many places in the Word of God where He makes it clear that this isn’t the case. One of those places is Acts 10.
In Acts chapter 10, the Lord opens Peter’s eyes to this truth (although he still struggled with it as we see in Galatians chapter 2). The Lord gives Peter a vision, go and eat. The problem was, the things he was asked to go kill and eat were things forbidden in Jewish teaching. To do this would make him ritually unclean.
In fact, he tells the Lord “No.”
Just a heads up, this is never a good idea when you are speaking to the Lord. Peter’s desire was to be pure and clean before God. The problem is, the Lord was telling Peter what He desired. God knew that this would continue to keep division in the body of Christ.
There could always be 2 bodies of Christ, couldn’t there? Not in God’s eyes. Over the next couple of days, the Lord would shake Peter’s world up.
God tells Peter to go with the men He sent to him, and he goes (fortunately he didn’t say no to the Lord again). This takes him to the house of a Centurion, which is problematic because as a Jewish man he is not to visit or associate with someone who is not Jewish (vs. 28). But God is making it clear that His death and resurrection have changed things.
In the end of verse 28, Peter shares that “God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean.”
“God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean.”
Acts 10:28 CSB
God has removed the boundaries that were in place so that people could worship and fellowship together. To cap it off, while Peter was speaking the Holy Spirit came down on those who heard the message. We are told that it amazed Peter that the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit.
When he was challenged on this (in chapter 11), Peter shared the story, as well as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Who was he, and who were they, to try and hinder the Lord in His plans.
The question we face is, “How can we justify having segregated congregations when God has called us to be together?” We may state we are doing it to be seeker-sensitive, but where do we find this in the Word of God? God could have called for the people to have different churches. One each for the Jews and the Gentiles, Slave and Free, civilized and barbaric, black and white, Hispanic and Asian.
He could have broken the church up into thousands of different groups (denominations), but He didn’t. We as human beings have done that. Now it seems like we are at a place where the greatest challenges to desegregation is in the church. This just shouldn’t be so (unless you live in an area where there is no diversity).
God has broken down the the “dividing wall of hostility (Eph. 2),” yet it seems like we are working hard to build that wall back up. But this wall has no place in a church that is led by Christ.
Along the Multicolored Road 
Leave a Reply