Wrongly Dividing
by Ken Griffith

One of the doctrines clearly taught in the Word of God is the unity of the Bride of Christ down through the ages. All flesh, that is mankind, has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Lord Jesus Christ became incarnate and dwelt among us. He lived a perfectly sinless life. And then He died to atone for the sins of His People. He rose again as the firstborn from the dead that His people might follow when He raises them all and restores them to life on the Last Day.

In the mid-l800's two false doctrines crept into the church that have since spread like cancer throughout Christendom. The first false teaching was Darwinism — the idea that all life on Earth arose from the same ancestral organism and that the fittest races of creatures evolve into higher beings but the unfit become extinct. Survival of the fittest is yet another form of the heresy of salvation by works. This seemingly harmless, if foolish, idea set the philosophical scene for a wicked deduction. If all creatures including man are evolving, and the fittest evolve the fastest by out-competing or even killing their competitors, then it stands to reason that some races of men have evolved to be superior to others. Hitler arrived at the natural conclusion of "survival of the fittest." Superior races should eliminate the inferior ones.

While a genocidal take on Darwinism has in large part been repudiated by the world, the secular world still clings to the underlying premise: that mankind can and will evolve into a godlike creature, and some races of men are superior to others. As long as Darwinism is the accepted theory of origins, that society will risk arriving over and over again at Hitler's conclusion: other races must be put to death.

Scripture easily exposes the blatant falsehood of this doctrine. God created all life (Genesis 1) and all men are descended from Adam. God made ALL of mankind in His Image, male and female He created them. After God judged the world through the Flood, again all men are descended from Noah. All men are under the rule of Christ the King. They will either be saved from damnation by the atoning blood of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, or they will be sentenced to everlasting damnation.

We are told that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. This does not mean that Christianity is an egalitarian religion. The same Bible tells slaves to obey their masters, wives to obey their husbands, and acknowledges that the Word of God came first to the Jews. However, the passage teaches us that all of the descendants of Adam were made in the Image of God. In Christ all of the elect are restored to the Image of God regardless of our station in life.

If we see distinctions between the families or races of men it is not reason for boasting. God gives different gifts to different people individually. However, the Bible deals with families and nations of men through covenant. When a family or nation of men embraces a particular sin, God will judge them with a consequence that is often peculiar to that sin. We see great disparity in the world today, largely because some nations have embraced the gospel and produced Christian civilizations, while others have remained in darkness. Yet the tribes of the West were base barbarians and cannibals before the Word of God lifted them out of darkness. The Christian civilizations produced great wealth over the past few centuries, but now those nations have by and large turned away from the Word of God and embraced wickedness. We should expect to see those nations fall into darkness unless they repent. Likewise, if Africa and Asia, and South America fully embrace the Word of God, we should expect to see their cultures rise from darkness into light. The Bible teaches that there are only two races in the world, the elect and the damned.

A second false doctrine introduced in the middle of the 19th century was dispensationalism. This false teaching interprets the Bible to mean that God has two peoples: the Jews, and the Church (Gentiles). This teaching has sometimes said that the Jews were saved by obeying the Law and the sacrificial system, but the Gentiles are saved by the atoning blood of Christ. The Scriptures, however, are exceedingly clear that we are one people. I Corinthians 10:1-4 says, "Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ."

The common error of racism, racialism, and dispensationalism is the denial of the unity of the Body of Christ. Read in context, I Corinthians Chapter II is condemning exactly this, "For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."

Jesus Christ is not a polygamist. There is one Groom, and one Bride, made up of the elect of all generations from Adam until the last child is born upon the Earth. Galatians 3:29 tells us that, "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Romans 11:16-I8 teaches, “For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you."

There is only ONE people of God. We are all grafted into the same root, the same vine, the same olive tree of Jesus Christ. To deny the catholicity of the body is to defy the Head, Jesus Christ.