In 100 years’ time, everyone reading this will either be dead in their sins or alive in Christ. If you are in Christ, you will be united to His body, the church, worshiping the Lamb. You will be clothed in Christ’s righteousness, and to your left and right you will imager-bearers of every skin tone, every culture, all nations.

Where will you be in 100 years?

You may think, “Well, I’ll be dead”.
But is that true? If you are in Christ, you will be more alive than ever before.

When you confess your faith in Jesus Christ, you are born again (Jn 3:3-7). You become a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), an heir of God and co-heir with Christ (Rom 8:17). By the power of the Holy Spirit, you are given a new nature and are transformed into Christ’s image with an ever-increasing glory (2 Cor 3:18; Rom 8:29).

In Christ, you are made glorious and are promised a future glory. The resurrection of Christ proves that you will have a glorious-resurrected body. Christ promises to transform your lowly body (weakened by sin) and give you a glorious body like His own (Phil 3:21-21).

In Christ, you are also adopted into a new family-a new body: the church, which is the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-27). This body is composed of believers from every tribe, tongue, and nation throughout time and space. Before His ascension, Jesus commanded His disciples to make disciples of every nation (Matt 28:19), to preach the gospel to every creature (Mk 16:15), and be His witnesses to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

This would not be an easy task. During His teaching ministry Christ promised His disciples persecution. Christians should expect the world’s hatred; to be rejected by their communities, even their own families (Jn 15:18-27, Lk 12:53).

Christ was rejected by His family, and He taught us to expect the same. For this reason, Christians regard one another not according to flesh and blood, but by our relationship with Christ (2 Cor 5:16) In Christ we are all made sons of God through faith. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:27-29).

By God’s grace, Christians belong to a new family which supersedes all boundaries of flesh and blood. A new glorious body that will worship God for all eternity. We are given glimpses of this future glory in the book of Revelation:

⁹ After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰ and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Christians must live in light of this future glory.

This is your future if you are in Christ: worshiping the Lamb of God with a glorious-resurrected body within a body gathered from all nations throughout eternity. This perspective must shape the church and its worship.

A Grievous Concern

This past week, my beloved denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America made the news again. This time because a PCA church decided to host a segregated event for “Black Worshipers” to “cap off” their month-long celebration of Black History Month.[1]

Now, I have no problem with celebrating Black History Month. I believe it’s important for Americans to celebrate African American history and their contributions to society. This month, at home, my wife and I taught our children about Martin Luther King, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Frederick Douglass.

My concern is with churches hosting segregated events based on race. As an ordained Teaching Elder in the PCA, I strongly disagree with this practice, and quite frankly, I have been appalled not only by the news of this event, but by its support coming from brothers within my denomination.

In this post, I contend that race-based segregation, however well-intentioned, should have no place in Christ’s church. I firmly believe that there is no biblical, rational, or moral grounds for hosting such events.

A Biblical Example

In Galatians 2, the Bible records for us an incident between the “Apostle to the Jews”, Peter, and the “Apostle to the Gentiles”, Paul. Coincidentally, this event took place at a dinner in Antioch, the central hub of ancient Christianity.

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