A CONCISE STATEMENT OF BELIEF REGARDING RACE

  As complications arising from issues of ethnic identity, or ancestry, language, culture and nationality are encountered more and more in our churches, the oversight committee appointed by the Presbytery of the Northwest to serve as the interim elders for the OPC mission to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, have determined to publish the following statement, which has been adopted as a guide in these matters, for the instruction of current and prospective members.

In addition, the elders recommend for study, the Forty-first General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1974) statement on Race,
https://www.opc.org/GA/race.html

  1. God made all people from one man; they are ontological equals before God both in creation and redemption. Regardless of parentage, religion, accomplishments, or wrongdoing, all people are made in the image of God. No one can worship God in truth while regarding another human being as a lesser creature than himself.
  2. Every human being, regardless of parentage or heritage, is born into the condition of separation from God as sinners. Their actions have brought about social and religious divisions and oppressions. Each person needs the saving grace of the Lord to enable them to seek peace both with God and with other fellow humans. It is faith that makes one a Christian, not ethnicity.
  3. By His incarnation, perfect obedience, and sacrifice of His body and blood, Jesus Christ has obtained peace with God for his people regardless of ancestry and has therefore destroyed the principle of hostility among men. He has created a new mankind from every tribe, nation, people, and tongue, in the one body of Christ: the church.
  4. Refusal to share the Lord’s Table with those of different parentage is a denial of the Christian faith. It is at the Table that all believers commune with God and with each other.
  5. Each member of a church is obligated to regard every other whom Christ has placed in that church as being greater than himself, not as obeying men, or honoring them for any attribute of their own, but so as to honor and obey God Who has given his Spirit to them all.
  6. The church baptizes every member into the one Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, regardless of language, lineage, rank, physical features, or country of origin, so that we know there is no e.g. Jewish vs. Gentile, Rich vs. Poor, White vs. Black, English vs. Spanish, church.
  7. The Word of God sets no moral limits for intended marriage partners based on racial or cultural situations. Of course no Christian is obligated to marry but if they marry, a Christian must marry in the Lord.

Scriptures

  1. Gen 1:26-28, 9:6; 1 Cor 11:7; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10; James 3:9-10.
  2. Gen 3:22, 6:5, 11:1-9; Ezek 18:1-4; Acts 17:26; Rom 3:10-12, 8:20; Eph 2:8a; Phil 3:4-8. James 3:9-10.
  3. Gen 9:26-27; Acts 2,8,10; 1 Cor 5:17, 10:16-23; Gal 2:11-21; Eph 2:12-16; Rev 7:9-10.
  4. Psalm 23:5; Isaiah 19:23-25; Ezek 47:21-23; John 10:14-16; 1 Cor 10:17, 11:17-19; Gal 2:11-21, 3:13-14; Eph 4:1-7; Phil 3:3; Rev 7:1-17.
  5. Ex 12:38a; Eph 3:6, 4:1-7, 5:21; Phil 2:1-5; Heb 13:17; James 2:1-9
  6. Matt 28:19; John 17:20-26; Acts 8:26-40, 10:34-35, 44-48; Eph 4:1-7; Gal 2:11-21
  7. 1 Cor 7;2, 12-16, 28, 39; Eph 5:25-27, 32; Heb 13:4.

Version: 2018/11/08

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