–– Adapted by Tim Cantrell from Dr. Flip Buys
The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Historian Rodney Stark describes how the early church was the first institution in the history of the world that brought people together across ethnic barriers. They were inclusive because they believed that there is one God who gathers His new people from every tribe tongue and nation. Longtime GK pastor and professor, Dr. Flip Buys, was a white Afrikaans pastor in a black church in the 1980s in Sharpeville township, home of the infamous Sharpeville massacre of 1961 (commemorated every 21 March on Human Rights Day in South Africa). He often had to drive to church services through burning tyres on the streets and police barricades.
Yet Dr. Buys powerfully testifies to the gospel’s impact in seeing black and white young people converted and learning to reconcile. He tells of how, in those tumultuous times, their church truly experienced how Christ has torn down the wall of racial division and created the “one new man” (Eph. 2:14-16). Nothing is more potent for racial harmony than a biblical vision of God as absolutely free, gracious and sovereign – a God who truly saves sinners! Whether we wear the Calvinist label or not, every Bible-believing child of God says ‘Amen’ to that testimony.
As Pastor Conrad Mbewe writes, “The doctrines of grace reveal a God who is sovereign in salvation. It is God who predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies. He does not simply try to save people and hope they respond in faith. Rather, He ensures that those He calls will believe and be saved.” Despite all the wicked abuses and misuses of Calvinism in history, consider how the doctrines of grace should make us more gracious, not less. Walk with me for a moment through the five points of Calvinism and consider how each of these biblical truths should foster racial harmony, not strife.
Total Depravity
Because the depravity of man is universal (Rom. 1:18-3:20), all of humanity in every place is equally condemned. No one has in himself a higher standing before God or is of more importance because he belongs to a certain nation or ethnic group. The Bible fundamentally teaches there is only one race, the human race, made in God’s image, and now fallen in Adam (Acts 17:26). It is absurd for so-called Calvinists to hold atheistic, evolutionary (Darwinian) views about the inherent inferiority of any other ethnic group.
What is desperately needed is a biblical and humbling conviction, that all people are corrupt, depraved, guilty, and under the just sentence of hell. We are all lost in the woods together, sinking in the same boat, and dying of the same disease. Genuine belief in the universal fallenness of man will kill all thoughts of racial superiority.
Advocates of black theology and liberation theology say that God is always on the side of the oppressed. Being oppressed then becomes a sort of good work with which the favour of God is earned. Yet when you accept the biblical doctrine of total depravity, you realise all the unregenerate, whether oppressed or not, will die in our sins without Christ.
Believing in human depravity and inability shatters our hopes of producing an earthly utopia by political means. Accepting this biblical doctrine of sin fuels us with zeal for evangelism, knowing the gospel alone can transform human hearts and societies. If we saw how united we are as humans in our depravity, the sins of other people and cultures would surprise us less, knowing the same seeds lie within our own hearts; and we would be slow to judge and quick to show mercy.
Unconditional Election
Believing that God chooses some for salvation and not others entirely based on His free and sovereign grace (Rom. 9:6-23; Eph. 1:3-11) should humble us and prevent us from thinking that our culture or ethnicity in any way makes us more acceptable to God. For Afrikaners or any modern nation to equate themselves with God’s unique choice of Israel for His purposes is actually (and very ironically) to embrace an Arminian theology of salvation through conditional election by works, instead of unconditional election by grace alone.
This same Arminian error is also made by liberation theologians who say that God chooses the marginalised and oppressed for salvation, which is also thus conditioned on a kind of human merit, not on God’s free grace. No believer has any grounds for boasting whatsoever except in the sheer mercy of a gracious God, which should never cease to amaze us (Eph. 2:1-10; 1 Cor. 15:9-10; 1 Tim. 1:15). Likewise, any nation or culture that has received greater gospel light and biblical influence dare not become proud, but rather steward carefully and generously what God has entrusted to them.
Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption)
To believe that God saves whom He wants to save, throws such a brilliant light on the sovereignty of God that the truly reformed believer is always humbled to the dust and feels, ‘I had nothing in and of myself to deserve God’s grace. If I got what I deserved, I’d be in the Lake of Fire right now!’ When he comes across unbelievers of any ethnicity or location, his heart can only cry out, ‘There, but for the grace of God go I.’ A biblical Calvinist realises, ‘My colour and my culture made zero contribution to the ransom Jesus paid for me at Calvary. All I had to offer was the sin that nailed Him there.’
If we believe Christ died not only to make salvation possible but actually to purchase redemption for every sinner who will ever believe (Matt. 1:21; 20:28), then we should be full of hope in His saving power for the most seemingly un-saveable of people or cultures. Because none of us was more or less ‘saveable’ before a holy God, apart from His grace and His cross alone. If Christ died to ransom people “from every tribe, tongue, people and nation” (Rev. 5:9; 7:9), then His ambassadors are eager to go and find God’s elect in every place! As the Lord told Paul to keep preaching in debauched and darkened Corinth, “for I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:10).
Irresistible Grace
This doctrine means that not only did your ethnic distinctions contribute nothing to your election, and nothing to your ransom by the cross, but they also added nothing to your faith and repentance.
Apart from God’s effectual call, we would’ve remained dead in our sins and trespasses (Eph. 2:1-3; Col. 2:13), unable to lift a finger or make one step toward God or ever come to Christ. If the King of heaven had not thundered out that sovereign summons, “Lazarus, come forth”, we would’ve remained entombed forever in our rebellion.
Irresistible grace also means that there is no scoundrel and no racist beyond the reach of God’s mighty gospel and saving voice (Rom. 1:16-17). Professing believers who join the world in resorting to violence and political schemes to solve spiritual problems shows that they are ashamed of the gospel’s power to transform hearts, homes and communities (Matt. 5:13-16). When a Christian truly believes in irresistible grace, his reaction to sinful people with sinful ways and sinful structures will show that he believes what God has promised, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit’, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).
I have seen many people who have radically improved their attitude toward other ethnicities after they have been truly born again and made new by Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Only God’s sovereign, all-powerful grace can bring lasting change to human hearts (Gal. 2:20).
Perseverance of the Saints
The true child of God will persevere to the end (Jn. 10:28; Rom. 8:28-39; 1 Pet. 1:5; 1 Jn. 2:19).
This means no matter how exhausted we are in learning to overcome hurts, forgive enemies, reconcile with foes, and grow in Christian love and peace-making – we cannot give up and we will not give in because we are sustained by the same sovereign grace that first saved us (1 Cor. 15:9-10; Col. 1:28-29; Php. 4:13). Because we can be unshakably sure of God’s unchanging and permanent love for us in Christ, we can keep growing in fervent love for those who seem most unlovely or most different from us.
Dr. Buys, who has given his entire life to live and teach these glorious doctrines of grace, powerfully concludes:
I believe with all my heart that we should pray and work for a revival of genuine reformed faith. We should preach and teach the doctrines of grace with more zeal and clear simplicity than ever before. A revival of genuine biblical Calvinism will change our politically explosive country and continent in the same way the Reformation did on the European continent in the sixteenth century. Not because it will bring about a utopia of peace and prosperity, but because it honours God as the Almighty God of sovereign grace of all the nations of the world.