1+1=1: The impossible possibility

An outstanding article exposing to mind and heart the ultimate basis for successful interpersonal relationships.

John M. Fowler, Ed.D., is an associate director of the Department of Education at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and a contributing editor of Ministry.

One plus one equals one? Impossible? Not so when it comes to human relationships infused with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Revelation 7 pictures thousands in one; a scene of ultimate togetherness: "There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white" (Rev. 7:9).1

"Who are these?" wonders one of the 24 elders. The answer does not identify the people according to nationality, race, color, gender, status, tribe, caste, or any of the frontiers we are so accustomed to on this earth. The answer is simple, but profound: "'These are they who .. . have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb'" (Rev. 7:14).

Washed in the blood of the Lamb is the anchor of Christian unity. Any person who harms this fellowship by bringing any other factor to define Christian togetherness cannot be a Christian. Someone else might define human relations in terms of superiority or inferiority, exclusivism, or inclusivism, but a Christian has no such option. Someone else might exploit another human being or crush an entire group by using the tactics of racism, gender, nationalism, tribalism, economics, caste, religion, or color, but a Christian must not. . . cannot.

For the Christian approach to inter-human relations is based not on what humans can achieve but what God has created, made possible, and mandated.

Human relationships: What God has ordained

The Bible begins with what God has ordained for human relatedness: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). How could Christians claiming a common origin in the creative activity of God assert the superiority of one over the other and destroy the possibility of a common fellowship and togetherness?

How can Adventists who keep the Sabbath as a memorial of God's creative act practice activities that deny the commonness of humanity? The Genesis Creation passage does not deny differences between people; indeed it affirms such differences such as the obvious one between male and female. Since the Fall has marred the image of God and imposed its own alienation not only between God and humans, but between humans. Sin has negatively accentuated such differences as color, gender, caste, nationality, creed, or tribe. But the challenge of accepting God as Creator is to reject these differences and affirm the commonality of humanity.

Paul spoke of this original commonness in his sermon in Athens: "From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth" (Acts 17:26). We cannot escape the significance of this statement made to a Gentile audience. It affirms that the Creator-God of the Christian is no local deity of a cult, but the Sovereign of the universe. He has ordained that we share a common blood and a common origin.

Human relationships: What God has made possible

The entrance of sin marred God's ideal of oneness for humanity. God's question to Cain, "Where is your brother?" was indeed a projection that henceforth wherever sin reigns, so will division: between God and humans, and between people and people.

But God did not leave humanity without an effective remedy for such dividedness. For "when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son . . . born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children" (Gal. 4:4, 5).

The "we" of "we might receive adoption" cuts across all barriers and frontiers. The Son has come to make us all children of God, giving us the common privilege to approach God as "Abba, Father." The Holy Spirit has preserved for us in the Gospels and in the rest of the New Testament instance after instance that stresses the fact that division within the human family is alien to Christian ethos. We observe this in the genealogy of Jesus, in how Jesus related to people, and in some of the foundational principles of His kingdom.

The genealogy of Jesus. The Jews were fond of preserving their pedigrees and set great value on purity of lineage. A priest was expected to produce a pure pedigree back to Aaron; his wife to at least five generations. To such a pedigree-conscious people, Matthew gives the genealogy of Jesus that proclaims the Savior to be not a parochial messiah, but a universal redeemer whose mission is to restore the original design of the Creator. Matthew mentions four names in the ancestry of Jesus: Bathsheba, a Hittite; Ruth, a Moabite; Tamar and Rahab, Canaanites all women, all Gentiles, and all sinners. Bethlehem's crib affirms that biblical anthropology prefers no male or female, no Jew or Gentile, but only God's children.

Jesus and people. The ministry of Jesus brought Him in touch with the entire spectrum of society. The rich young ruler or the leper down the street, Nicodemus or the Syrophoenician woman, the Pharisee, or the Greeks; it did not make any difference to the Master. In fact, throughout His ministry He was breaking down walls that divided people.

Kinship barrier was knocked down when Jesus defined His brother, sister, and mother as "'whoever does the will of my Father'" (Matt. 12:50). Jesus looked beyond flesh and blood, and placed both of them at the altar of divine priority.

Political barriers were removed by Jesus. Among the Twelve were Simon the Zealot who belonged to a party that considered it an honor to kill a Roman and a privilege to murder a Jewish collaborator. Yet Jesus expected Simon to accept Matthew the tax collector, a Roman collaborator.

Occupational barriers came tumbling down when Jesus chose simple fishermen as His disciples and later called a Pharisee of the Pharisees to be His apostle to the Gentile world!

Class barriers were dealt with when Jesus sought out Zacchaeus, received the anointing from an alienated Mary, talked to Nicodemus, and mingled with publicans and sinners. Jesus broke down the wall between sinner and saint, the evil and the righteous. He didn't do this by persuading the saint to participate in the lifestyle of the sinner, or by asking that righteousness be minimized or by ignoring the seriousness of evil. Instead he did it by obeying the dictates of love, that per chance the dying may find life, the sick may dis cover healing, the sinner may respond to the Savior.

Caste and prejudice were knocked out around the wall of Samaria. The Samaritan woman had three things against her: she was a woman, she was a sinner, and she was a Samaritan. But Jesus broke down each of these walls of caste and prejudice and showed that "no circumstance of birth or nationality, no condition of life, can turn away His love from the children of men."2

Racial barriers had no place in Christ's ministry. William Barclay points out that the wall between Jews and Gentiles was so formidable that "'the daughter of an Israelite may not assist a Gentile woman in childbirth since she would be assisting to bring to birth a child for idolatry.'"3 And yet in Phoenicia Jesus healed a Gentile woman's daughter at the verge of death (Matt. 15:21-28).

Jesus' ministry to Phoenicia had the "wider purpose" of warning every generation of Christians to be aware that "the spirit which built up the partition wall between Jew and Gentile is still active.... Caste is hateful to God.

He ignores everything of this character. In His sight the souls of all men are of equal value. . . . Without distinction of age, or rank, or nationality, or religious privilege, all are invited to come unto Him and live."4

National barriers were removed when Jesus responded to the need of the Roman centurion (Matt. 8:5-13). Jesus showed a willingness not only to heal the servant, but also to step into the centurion's home some thing no "good" Jew would have done. Or witness the compassion He showed to the Greeks (John 12:20-30). To Jesus entering a Gentile home or touching a Gentile was anything but a source of defilement. Need was His command; compassion was His attitude, and total healing His objective. Nothing else mattered.

Jesus and His kingdom. Not only in the way He related with people, but also in the establishment of His kingdom, Jesus revealed His new order of human relations based on the worth of the individual as seen through God's eyes. This comes through, among other things, in His prescription of the new commandment, His establishment of the Lord's Supper, His cross, and His great commission.

The new commandment. When Jesus speaks of His new commandment of love (John 13:34), the newness does not refer to love, but the object of love. People always loved, but they loved the lovable, their own. But Jesus introduced a new factor: "Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another." That is to say, just as indiscriminate, as universal, as sacrificial, and as complete as Jesus' love is, so should our love be. The new love erects no barrier; it is inclusive. On that quality of love "'hang all the law and the prophets'" (Matt. 22:37-40).

The command to love our neighbor leaves no room for modification. We do not select whom we love; we are called upon to love all. As children of one Father, we are expected to love each other. In the parable of the good Samaritan, "Christ has shown that our neighbor does not mean merely one of the church or faith to which we belong. It has no reference to race, color, or class distinction. Our neighbor is every person who needs our help. Our neighbor is every soul who is wounded and bruised by the adversary. Our neighbor is everyone who is the property of God."5

True neighborly love penetrates well beyond the color of the skin and confronts the humanness of the per son; it refuses to take shelter under caste but contributes to the enrichment of the soul; it rescues the dignity of a person from the prejudices of dehumanization; it delivers human destiny from the philosophic holocaust of thing-ism. In effect true love sees in each face the image of God potential, latent, or real.

The ordinance of the Lord's Supper. "Because there is one bread," Paul wrote to Corinthians, "we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). The bread and the wine are the symbols of the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus that brought about reconciliation vertical and horizontal. A reconciled relationship and a united fellowship are the most visible demonstration of the power of the blood of Jesus. The concept of God's family, including His prodigal children who need our love and our reaching out, can be seen at the Lord's Table. To sit at that Table and at the same time discriminate against another human being is a desecration of the heart and soul of the gospel, or of what it means to be family God's family. It is diametrically opposed to the nature of God and the transcendent yet practical quality of His love.

The Cross. The Cross, as God's instrument of redemption and reconciliation, brings back what was lost in Eden: the restoration of the image of God with, among other things, the reality of human togetherness and unity. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level: The entire humanity stands as one in sin and one in the possibility of redemption.

Through the Cross, God "was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). "The Cross is God's best picture of himself; ... It is the place where God comes to grips with the forces that violate his love; it becomes the place where he draws men [humanity] into harmony with the love and the purposes that flow from it.... The reconciliation of man to man, through the reconciliation of man to God, releases the healing power of God into this anxious, broken, and bitter world. Only redeemed men [and women] can reconcile."6

The Cross challenges us to a new perspective in life: "From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view" (2 Cor. 5:16). The Cross initiated a new value system. The post-Fall factors of looking at a person from a human point of view race, gender, color, language, caste, tribe, culture, money, position, or status have been done away with at Calvary. The Christian enters into a new world of values that flow out of the Cross.

This new creation of Christ demands that every member of the community of faith live by only one basic rule of interpersonal reality: love, as expressed in the living Christ. As Schaeffer so eloquently states, "Love and the unity it attests is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father."7

The Great Commission. Both the Great Commission (Mark 16:15, 16; Acts 1:8) and the message of Revelation 14:6-12 envision the creation of a world family. Evangelism is Christ's antidote for prejudice within the church. Where there is a strong evangelistic program and an eagerness to bring people to Jesus Christ, there will be a universal feeling for men and women of every kind. True evangelists see the whole world as their parish, and do not recognize frontiers and restrictions that divide communities. Peter must go to Cornelius, Paul must go to Antioch, Philip must rush to Samaria, Philemon must take back Onesimus. The blood of Christ is the ink with which the covenant of brotherhood is written, and the evangelist extends that covenant to take the world for Jesus.

Human relationships: What God has mandated

Nowhere is the mandate of God for the unity of His people, without respect to any factor of prejudice or pride, so forcefully argued as where Paul writes to the Ephesian fellow ship. The church has been given the charge to maintain unity and dignity in that multicultural mosaic called the body of Christ (see also 1 Cor. 12:12, 20).

In Ephesians, Paul muses in wonder upon the nature of the church, "consisting of Jews and Gentiles, Asiatics and Europeans, slaves and freemen all symbols of a disrupted world that was to be restored to unity in Christ."8 This minister notes the destruction of "the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2:14, RSV) by the Man of the Cross.

That historic truth overwhelms him with such an indescribable sense of joy that he considers it as nothing less than the work of the entire Godhead. Indeed in the extraordinary conclusion of Ephesians 2, Paul calls to witness the names of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as architects of the marvelous unity that must characterize the Christian church, made up of people of every hue.

For his part, Paul calls that unity a "mystery," and uses this word seven times (Eph. 1:9; 3:3, 4, 9) to underline the divine nature of it. The mystery, says Paul, is that "the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Eph. 3:6). Conceived in the mind of God, completed by the reconciling ministry of Christ, this mystery of a new humanity without any dividing walls is every Christian's privilege and challenge. The mystery demands of us three things.

First, it should make us aware of the oneness of the Christian fellow ship. Paul argues in Ephesians 2 and 3 that out of two, the Jew and the Gentile, Christ has made one. The gospel equation is 1 + 1 = 1. That is untenable in mathematics or logic, but in this the mystery of the gospel transcends mathematics and logic.

This gospel is a mystery and realistically expects the impossible. This mystery empowers the creation of the new humanity that must accept the indivisibility of the human person. "There is no longer Jew or Greek . . . there is no longer male and female; for all of you ate one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).

Second, the mystery should make us aware that while differences may exist among people, these differences must not be allowed to diminish the worth and dignity of any individual. Bigotry is anti-Christian and hence is an unacceptable conduct in one who claims to live by the gospel.

Finally, the power of the mystery should so permeate our own inner selves that all our relationships will be governed by its dynamic. Paul's words must become the anchor of our privilege and the challenge of our ministry: "Of this gospel I was made a minister" (Eph. 3:7, RSV) and when it comes to proclaiming and living this gospel, one of one kind plus one of another always simply equals one.

1 Except as otherwise stated, all Scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version.

2 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1940), 194.

3 Mishnah tractate Abodah Zarah 2.1 quoted in William Barclay, Ethics in a Permissive Society (London: Collins, 1971), 189.

4 White, The Desire of Ages, 403.

5 Ibid., 503.

6 The Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abington Press, 1980) on Galatians 4:5.

7 Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (London: InterVarsity Press, 1970), 35.

8 The SDA Bible Commentary (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1980), 6:995.


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John M. Fowler, Ed.D., is an associate director of the Department of Education at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and a contributing editor of Ministry.

February 2002

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