A growing trend among many Christians is the idea there needs to be racial reconciliation between black and white Christians.  Many claim this to be a Gospel issue and therefore, a pressing issue that must be dealt with, and dealt with immediately. First of all, let me say at the outset, I am not naïve to believe or dismiss the reality of racism, not simply in America but in many places throughout the world. The reality of racism does not simply lie in the fact that one person believes another person’s skin color makes them inferior; instead, it is because all men are born under the bondage of their sin nature (Ps. 51:5). The prophet Jeremiah elaborates on this truth further by declaring that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9); and there lies the essence of the problem. I’m reminded of a phrase stated during the sermon of one of my best friends, “It’s a heart thing.” Those who teach or believe in the need for racial reconciliation cannot accredit it to the Gospel, because there is not a shred of support in Scripture. As a matter of fact, Scripture teaches just the opposite. Note Paul’s words in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (I Corinthians 12:12). And just in case there might have been some confusion in that statement, Paul expounds in verse 13 how this mysterious union came about, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free”. Here are the facts, God has not elected good and loving people; people who strive to be united to each other in love and harmony. No, my friend, these are not the kind of people elected and called into the Body of Christ; instead, he calls people whose hearts were not only loved and basked in their evil deeds, but people whose hearts were “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. It is those people who are now part of the glorious body of Christ united by the Holy Spirit; a body where race and ethnicity cease to become a governing factor.  Notice I did not say these things cease to exist, but cease being a governing factor in our lives for now we’re governed by the marriage between the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. Perhaps here lies the problem; a misunderstanding of our relationship to each other, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and ultimately God the Father. How’s your marriage?