Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Paul’s announcement in Galatians 3:8 that people of all sorts are one in Christ punctuates his argument for gracious justification. No matter who you are, trusting in Jesus makes you a son of God.
Unfortunately, this verse has been misread, as if Paul were canceling all distinctions between people. Yet Scripture addresses the spiritual implications of such human characteristics as ethnicity, social status, and gender. “Jew” and “gentile” are useful titles describing distinct peoples to whom the church sent different missionary teams (2:9). In terms of social differences, Paul teaches free and enslaved people how to honor God in their respective positions (Eph. 6:5–8). Finally, in Christ men and women have unique responsibilities grounded in God’s created order (e.g., Matt. 19:4; 1 Tim. 2:8–13). Those who are “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) do not transcend meaningful ethnic, social, and gender realities. So what is Paul saying?
In each of Paul’s contrasts—“neither Jew nor Greek, . . . slave nor free, . . . no male and female”—one of the two titles seems disadvantageous to a vibrant walk with God. It was harder for gentiles than Jews to hear the gospel before Pentecost (Rom. 3:1–2). Likewise, women in the ancient world had fewer rights than men. Finally, freedom is clearly preferable to slavery (1 Cor. 7:21). For this reason, one second-century rabbi taught free Jewish men to pray, “Thank God that I am not a gentile, a woman, or a slave.” Ironically, the early church was largely composed of gentiles, women, and slaves.
Yet even these can receive God’s best because He shows no partiality; He doesn’t judge people by their ethnicity, social status, or gender (Acts 10:34–35). Every believer receives Christ and all His benefits. “The same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Rom. 10:11–13). Rather than muting human differences, Galatians 3:28 encourages us to receive Christ as we are, no matter our apparent liabilities. If you “have put on Christ” (v. 27), He is now the most important truth about you. The verse also urges us to be content in Christ: “In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Cor. 7:24). Moreover, we may not judge men or women by their race or class or create fellowship barriers that Christ has abolished (Acts 10:28). Finally, our differences reveal God’s grand plan to make a single family from all sorts of people (John 19:26–27; 1 Tim. 5:1–2).
If we embody Galatians 3:28, we will be like stars on a dark night. The world wants race to mean everything and nothing. It pits men against women while denying that there is male and female. It insists on social equality, yet everyone fights for dominance. The church is different. By grace alone, the church is a tapestry of unique people united in heart, purpose, and destiny to one glorious Savior.