BIG Questions — Race, Justice, and Reconciliation

Told before? Sorry: In 1991 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison the very first political gathering he held was outside the South African Embassy in the Transkei where my dad was working as a diplomat and I was living. We had grown up hearing about Mr Mandela and that he was involved in various terrorist bombings in South Africa over the years, and we had rather strong feelings about him. I was a young boy of 11 at the time, and I remember lying with a toy gun seeing him on the stage through the embassy fence. Fast forward to 1995. Mr Mandela is now President Mandela and we are living in Bahrain in the Middle East where my dad is now the ambassador at the South African Embassy. We spent some time with Mr Mandela and I remember specifically the part of the conversation where he asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. “Ah Airforce! That is good! We need good men like you in our Airforce to defend our great country.”

Try to go back in your minds to the time before Mr Mandela had done everything he did to show the world what true greatness can look like in a man, in a president. 

I can’t explain to you the clash of emotions I felt in that moment. The man who had from my perspective been imprisoned for terrorism and murder, was now my president, and I was having a warm conversation with him and I felt like he was my grandfather.

I heard someone once describe President Mandela in this way, and I can’t agree more. They said:

“You know you’ve been in the presence of someone great because you know they can change the world…

You know you’ve been in the presence of someone REALY great because you believe you can change the world.”

That was President Mandela. It was that strength of character and leadership that build a ‘Rainbow Nation’ in South Africa until his death.

I can’t help but think of that experience of being emotionally torn and confused when I look at the world right now.

We live in a world that feels increasingly divided — not only politically or culturally, but racially.

Every few months a story breaks — a tragedy, a protest, a moment that exposes deep pain and unresolved wounds.

And underneath all the noise, people are asking:
“Can we ever be truly united?”
“Is racial justice possible?”
“Does the church have anything to say about this?”

The truth is — yes to all of those.

The gospel doesn’t avoid the issue of race and justice; it redeems it.
And today we’ll see how Jesus not only saves souls, but also restores communities.

The Problem of Division — Remember Where You Were (vv. 11–12)

Paul writes to a church made up of Jews and Gentiles — people who would never have shared a table before Jesus came along.

He says:

“Remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh… were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel… having no hope and without God in the world.”

That’s the story of humanity: separated, alienated, without hope.

The human heart builds walls — between races, nations, and even sometimes within families.

We tend to turn differences between people into distances between people.

Pride, prejudice, fear — they’re all symptoms of the deeper disease that all humanity suffers from: sin, our rebellion against God our creator who knows better than we do what is best for humans flourishing and growth and health.

Racism dear friends isn’t first a social problem — it’s a spiritual problem.
It’s what happens when we try to live without God, or live with God but forgetting what Gen 1:26 says: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

We don’t have to look far to see that our world is deeply divided.
In the West, those divisions aren’t only about race anymore — they’re about class, politics, and culture.

People don’t just disagree; they distrust one another.
Our news feeds, universities, and even churches can start to feel like battlefields of identity and ideology.

We’re also feeling new kinds of pressure in our cities and nations.
Refugee movements, cultural clashes, and even the fear stirred up by Islamist extremism have left many people anxious about identity and belonging.

Some are afraid of losing their culture; others are simply longing for a home.

And yes — people in this very room will have different opinions about immigration, border control, and national policies, and pretty much everything else to do with politics.

That’s okay. There’s space for honest differences in how we see the world.

But inside the church and inside this church, we remember something far greater: here there is no division, no party, and no politics.

At the foot of the cross, there is only one new humanity in Christ —
people reconciled and united not by ideology, political views, colour or language, but by grace.

It’s complicated — and we should admit that.
There are real wounds, real fears, and real injustices on every side, because as we recognised last week, all of creation is broken.

But here’s what we can’t forget: every refugee, every neighbour — whatever their background or belief — bears the image of God.

And the gospel compels us not to respond with suspicion, but with compassion; not with hostility, but with hope.

The cross doesn’t make light of the world’s tensions — it meets them head-on.
Because at the cross, Jesus took on all the hostility of the human heart, and He broke its power.

And that’s why, as followers of Jesus, we have to remember who we are.
We are Christians first — citizens of heaven before we are citizens of any nation.
Followers of Jesus before members of any political party.

That doesn’t mean we withdraw from the world and politics and ignore justice and policy — but it means our loyalty to Christ defines how we think about and engage with them.

In the world around us we increasingly see how people let their politics disciple them. As followers of Jesus, it is unacceptable that our politics disciples us more than our Saviour does.

When the world divides into tribes and social media echo chambers, the church is called to live differently — not shouting across the aisle, but kneeling together at the cross.

The United Nations calls people to live differently, but there is very little power to help people live differently. We the church of Jesus Christ, are not only CALLED to live differently, but we are EMPOWERED to live differently.

The Power of the Cross — Christ Is Our Peace (vv. 13–18)

Paul continues:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace.”

I love that. He Himself is our peace.

Not a policy, not a program, not a politician — a Person.

At the cross, Jesus broke down the wall that stood between us and God — and between us and one another.

As His body was beaten and torn and eventually killed, we read:

“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances…”

Last weekend Lorette, the kids and I jumped in the car and drove to the Citadel at Namur to have a look. Massive walls, impressive buildings, clever design for it’s time, but you can’t help think how useless it is in the modern world.

The Apostle Paul goes on to tell us how the great walls were brought down by the cross of Jesus.

Paul tells us how in verses 15–16:

“By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.”

That phrase is vital.

The “law of commandments” refers to all the boundaries of the old covenant — the rituals, purity codes, and ethnic uniqueness that kept Israel set apart from other people.

There was a time in the OT where the purpose of the walls was to keep the purity of God inside with His people the Jews, and to keep impurity, and idolatry, and rampant sin outside the walls, where the gentiles, the unbelievers had belonged.

Those walls once served a purpose, but in Christ they’re fulfilled.

He didn’t destroy the law; He fulfilled it - Jesus fulfilled the law through His life, death, and resurrection. 

-In His life, He perfectly obeyed every command — loving God and neighbour without fail. 

-In His death, He bore the penalty of the law on our behalf, satisfying its justice. 

-And in His resurrection, He inaugurated a new covenant of grace, where righteousness is received by faith, not earned by works. 

So the law’s demands are fully met in Him, and now all who trust in Jesus stand accepted — not by rule-keeping, but by His finished work. 

So when Paul says Jesus “abolished the law of commandments,” he doesn’t mean He erased God’s moral will for people — He means He removed the law as a dividing wall, as a system that excluded Gentiles. The law’s purpose is now fulfilled in Him, so the door into God’s family is wide open to all who believe. 

How does Jesus break down barriers?

Spiritually, Jesus removes the barrier between humanity and God.
The law exposed our guilt; the cross removed it. Now grace, not rule-keeping, defines who belongs by faith.

Relationally, the cross destroys pride.
You can’t cling to superiority when your acceptance before God rests solely on mercy.
At the foot of the cross, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, black and white all stand on equal ground.
Forgiven people become forgiving people.
Loved people learn to love across every line the world draws because they’re fake lines drawn by broken people.

Socially, the cross creates a new humanity.
The old categories — circumcised and uncircumcised, insider and outsider, inside the wall, outside the wall — lose their power.
Jesus “made the two one,” creating a new community where the dividing wall of ethnicity, class, or tribe no longer defines identity.

Where there was hostility, now there’s hospitality.

That’s how the cross breaks down barriers — by fulfilling the law, forgiving the sinner, and forming one new people under grace.

Jesus doesn’t just preach peace; He becomes peace.

This is where what Jesus has done for us becomes the pattern of what we are to do for one another and live in the world.

Justice: The World’s Way vs. Jesus’ Way

The word justice is on everyone’s lips right now — and rightly so.

But not everyone means the same thing when they say it.

In our world, justice often means payback — getting what you deserve, righting every wrong by force or shame or power.

It’s often about being seen to be right, or about punishing the other side. But the Bible’s vision of justice is deeper and richer than that.

God’s justice is not vengeance — it’s righteousness, His goodness, His holiness, made visible.

The prophet Micah summed up God’s heart and God’s desires for His people this way:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8 (ESV)

That’s God’s kind of justice — not vengeance or virtue-signalling, but a life shaped by righteousness, mercy, and humility.

It’s easy to put a ‘Black-flag’ on your FB or Insta profile. It’s much harder sitting over a meal with someone you disagree with. It’s easy pointing fingers at the ‘lack of mercy’ of someone else according to your standards, but it is more difficult to look honestly at your own heart, to confess your own lack of mercy, and to extend grace to the person who has hurt or misunderstood you.

It’s easy to perform justice from a distance; it’s much harder to practice it up close — where it costs your pride, your comfort, and sometimes your reputation. That’s the kind of justice Jesus lived — truth and love, righteousness and relationship — not just spoken from a platform, but carried to a cross.

It’s justice that lifts up rather than tears down; mercy that restores rather than condemns; humility that bows low before the cross instead of standing proud on a platform.

And that’s exactly what we see in Jesus.
He doesn’t ignore evil — He absorbs it.
He doesn’t crush His enemies — He dies for them.

That’s justice according to Jesus: truth upheld, mercy extended, and reconciliation made possible through His blood.

The world cries out for justice — and rightly so…
But the cross shows us what perfect justice looks like:
sin absorbed, the lowest honoured, the guilty offered mercy,
and a new humanity born from grace.

Illustration:
In the early church, Jews and Gentiles shared communion for the first time.
Imagine that — people with centuries of mistrust now breaking bread as family.
That’s what the gospel does. It makes enemies into brothers and sisters.

The New Community — One Family, One Kingdom

Paul says in vs 19:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

That’s what the church is meant to be — a new kind of family.
Not colour-blind, but colour-rich — diverse, united, reconciled in Christ.

The church is a preview of the new heavens and new earth, where every tribe and tongue will worship the Lamb.

When the world looks at us, they should see a picture of what’s coming — not a mirror of the divisions outside.

I’m going to say something now that will shock you! I AM NOT PERFECT. Even my wife is NOT PERFECT. YOU ARE NOT PERFECT. This church is not perfect.

I love those days where people see Mosaic Church and see imperfect people in an imperfect church enjoying perfect community, because we worship a perfect God who has united imperfect people in perfect grace and love.

And Paul finishes this passage by saying that in Christ we’re being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

That means this unity isn’t just something we try to maintain by effort — it’s something the Holy Spirit is actively creating in us.

The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now lives in us, empowering us to forgive, to listen, to love, and to build bridges that last.

Application for us here this morning:

• Listen before you speak. Try to hear someone. I really want to grow in this personally.

• Lament before you rush to fix. Feel the sadness of God over a situation and person before you rush in to fix. Men, this is particularly for us. We rush into FIX mode, when we need to FEEL first. Ladies, you can’t get stuck in FEEL mode, you need to get to FIX mode at some point. Jesus spoke ‘TRUTH in LOVE’!

• Build friendships across lines of difference. Colour. Language. Culture. Money. Education. Learn to see and appreciate the image and likeness of God in all people.

• Be quick to repent, quick to forgive. We who are in Christ have no pride or shame to hold us back. Let us be quick in Mosaic Church to say sorry to God and one another, to hold no record of wrongs, because in the same way that we are forgiven by Jesus when we repent, so too we can be quick to forgive others. This is RECONCILIATION.

Reconciliation isn’t something we achieve — it’s something we receive in Christ, and then live out together.

Conclusion: One Cross, One Family

Friends, the cross of Jesus Christ stands at the centre of history — and it tears down every wall we as humanity has built.

At the foot of the cross, there are no superior people, no second-class Christians. Only sinners saved by grace.

Tim Keller puts it this way:

“The gospel creates a new identity which is not based on race, class, or achievement, but on grace. When that sinks in, it destroys pride and prejudice at the root.”

When we stand there together, justice and mercy meet, truth and love embrace, and strangers become family.

That’s the hope the world is desperate for.
And it’s the hope the church must and gets to display. I love that about Mosaic Church.

Imagine the impact if people saw us and experienced this. Imagine if Brussels saw the church not as another separated group, but as a place where enemies become friends and strangers become family. That’s what happens when we live out the gospel of reconciliation.

Just look around. What an opportunity to live out the truth that:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28 (ESV)

When I think back to that day meeting President Mandela — a man who once seemed an enemy, but who became a symbol of reconciliation — I’m reminded that even the best human peacemaking only points toward something and someone greater.

At the cross, Jesus didn’t just change a nation — He’s changing the world. He’s making enemies into family. That’s the greater reconciliation we celebrate today.

If you’re here today and you’ve never come to the cross yourself — this invitation is for you too. Jesus doesn’t just reconcile nations and groups; He reconciles hearts. He offers peace with God — forgiveness, belonging, a fresh start. You don’t need to earn it or fix yourself first; you simply come and receive what He’s already done for you.

The Table of Reconciliation — A Gospel Invitation to Communion

And now we come to the Table — the place where everything we’ve just talked about becomes real.

Here, we don’t just talk about reconciliation — we taste it.