Bible Verses About Racism
Introduction
The Hebrew word goy, meaning nation or people, and its companion am, meaning a people or community, appear throughout the Old Testament in a world that was organized almost entirely along ethnic and tribal lines. The remarkable thing about the Old Testament's treatment of the nations is not that it acknowledges ethnic difference, which it does consistently and without apology, but that it consistently refuses to allow ethnic difference to determine who belongs to the people of God or who is the object of God's care. Ruth the Moabite, Rahab the Canaanite, and the Ninevites who repent at Jonah's preaching are all outside the ethnic boundary of Israel, and all of them are drawn into the purposes of the God of Israel in ways that challenge the assumption that those purposes are ethnically limited.
The Greek word prosopolempsia, partiality or favoritism based on external appearance, is the New Testament's most direct word for the kind of judgment that racism represents. James uses it to describe the favoritism that treats the wealthy differently from the poor. Peter uses it in Acts 10 when he declares that God shows no partiality, after the vision that broke open his understanding of who belongs in the community of Christ. Paul uses it in Romans 2 when he establishes that God will judge every person without partiality, whether Jew or Greek. The word describes the specific failure of judgment that evaluates a person on the basis of what can be seen rather than on the basis of what God sees, which is the deepest theological definition of what racism is and why it is incompatible with the gospel.
What Scripture offers on the subject of racism is not a single proof text that settles every contemporary debate but a consistent theological vision that challenges every form of it at its root. The person made in the image of God cannot be assigned a lesser worth on the basis of their ethnicity without the one assigning that lesser worth contradicting the God whose image is being diminished. The community gathered around Christ cannot draw ethnic lines around its welcome without contradicting the one in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek. Racism is not merely a social problem that the church is called to address. It is a theological one, a failure to believe what the gospel declares about the equal worth of every person before the God who made them all.
One Humanity, One Origin
Acts 17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.
"From one ancestor he made all nations" is Paul's declaration to the Athenians of the common origin of every human being, spoken in one of the most ethnically diverse cities of the ancient world. The diversity of the nations does not change the fact of their common source. Every person on earth is a member of the same family, which means the ethnic divisions that human beings use to assign relative worth are divisions within a single human family rather than divisions between fundamentally different kinds of beings.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
"In the image of God he created them" places the dignity of every human being in the creative act of God rather than in any human determination of worth. The image of God is not distributed according to ethnicity, skin color, or national origin. It is the shared condition of every human being, which means the person who assigns lesser worth to another person on the basis of their ethnicity has assigned lesser worth to someone who bears the image of God. The insult does not stop with the person. It reaches the one whose image they bear.
Malachi 2:10 Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?
"Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?" is Malachi's appeal to the common origin and the common Creator of every person as the ground of the faithfulness they owe one another. The rhetorical questions expect an obvious yes, which makes the faithlessness that follows all the more inexplicable. The person who is faithless to another person made by the same God and descended from the same ancestor has acted against the logic of their own existence.
God Shows No Partiality
Acts 10:34-35 Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."
"I truly understand that God shows no partiality" is Peter's declaration after the vision that broke open his understanding of who belongs in the community of faith. The understanding he describes is genuinely new: he has been a person who drew ethnic lines around the welcome of God, who would not eat with Gentiles, who had assumed that the God of Israel was primarily the God of Israel in an ethnic sense. The vision corrects this understanding at the root: God accepts every person from every nation who fears him and does what is right.
Romans 2:11 For God shows no partiality.
"For God shows no partiality" is Paul's statement of the equal standing of every person before the divine judgment, placed within his argument that Jew and Gentile alike are accountable to God and in need of his grace. The impartiality of God is the theological ground from which every argument against racism ultimately flows: the God who judges every person without regard to their ethnicity is the God whose people are called to see and treat every person without regard to their ethnicity.
Deuteronomy 10:17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
"Who is not partial and takes no bribe" describes the character of the God whose people are called to reflect his character in their treatment of one another. The impartiality of God is not a peripheral attribute. It is placed alongside his greatness and his awesomeness as one of the defining features of who he is. The community that claims to worship this God while showing partiality on the basis of ethnicity has contradicted its own worship.
The Breaking Down of Ethnic Barriers
Galatians 3:28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
"There is no longer Jew or Greek" is Paul's declaration that the most fundamental ethnic division of the ancient world, the division between Jew and Gentile, has been crossed in Christ. The crossing is not the abolition of ethnic identity but the abolition of its power to determine belonging, worth, and access to God. In Christ, the person who was outside the ethnic boundary of the covenant is as fully inside it as the person who was born within it, which is the most radical statement about ethnic equality that the ancient world had heard.
Ephesians 2:14-16 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
"He has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us" describes the cross as an act of ethnic reconciliation as well as an act of individual salvation. The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile that the temple literally embodied has been broken down by the body of Christ, and the one new humanity that results is the community in which the hostility that ethnic division produces has been put to death. The church that maintains ethnic hostility or ethnic hierarchy has not yet allowed the cross to do what it came to do.
Revelation 7:9 After this I looked, and 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, with palm branches in their hands.
"From every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" is John's vision of the worshiping community at the end of history, and it is the most ethnically diverse gathering imaginable. The throne of God is surrounded not by a homogenous group but by the full range of human ethnic diversity, each people and tribe and language represented in their particularity while united in their common worship of the Lamb. The final vision of Scripture is not the erasure of ethnic difference but its transformation into a form of worship that no single ethnicity could offer alone.
The Neighbor Has No Ethnic Boundary
Luke 10:29-37 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead...But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them."
"A Samaritan while traveling came near him" is the detail that made the parable of the Good Samaritan scandalous to its original audience. Jews and Samaritans shared an ethnic and religious hostility that ran deep, and Jesus makes the despised Samaritan the model of neighbor love. The neighbor, Jesus declares in answer to the lawyer's question, is not the person who shares your ethnicity. It is the person who is in front of you and in need, regardless of where they come from or what they look like.
James 2:8-9 You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
"If you show partiality, you commit sin" is James's unambiguous verdict on the favoritism that treats some people as more deserving of love and attention than others on the basis of external characteristics. The royal law of neighbor love has no ethnic qualifier. The neighbor who is to be loved as oneself is every neighbor, which means the partiality that reserves genuine love for those who look like us is not a minor social failing. It is a violation of the law that Jesus identified as the second greatest commandment.
The Early Church's Struggle and Model
Acts 6:1 Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.
"The Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected" is the first recorded instance of ethnic discrimination within the Christian community, and it arrives remarkably early. The Greek-speaking Jewish widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food, and the community's response, the appointment of seven deacons with predominantly Greek names, is the earliest recorded institutional response to ethnic inequality within the church. The community takes the complaint seriously and restructures itself to address it.
Acts 11:20-21 But among them were some men of Cyprus and Cyrene who, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists also, proclaiming the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord.
"On coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists also" describes the deliberate crossing of ethnic lines in the proclamation of the gospel. The men of Cyprus and Cyrene did not limit their witness to those who shared their Jewish background. They brought the gospel to Gentiles, which was the act that produced the first genuinely multiethnic Christian community at Antioch. The church at Antioch, where believers were first called Christians, was from its beginning a community that crossed the ethnic boundaries that the surrounding world maintained.
Galatians 2:11-14 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I opposed him to his face.
"They were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel" is Paul's diagnosis of Peter's withdrawal from eating with Gentiles. The refusal to eat with people of another ethnicity is not, for Paul, merely a social failure or a failure of courage. It is a failure to act consistently with what the gospel declares about the equal standing of every person before God. Racial or ethnic separation within the community of faith is, in Paul's account, a gospel issue rather than merely a cultural preference.
A Simple Way to Pray
Lord, you made every person in your image, you sent your Son for people of every nation, tribe, and language, and you are building a community that the final vision of Scripture describes as the most ethnically diverse gathering imaginable. Forgive me for the ways I have assigned lesser worth to people whose ethnicity differs from mine, for the partiality that contradicts the impartiality of the God I claim to worship. Give me eyes to see every person I encounter as someone who bears your image and for whom Christ died. And let the community I am part of be one that looks more like the throne room of Revelation than like the divided world around it. Amen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Bible directly address racism? The Bible does not use the word racism, which is a modern term, but it addresses every element of what racism involves: the assignment of lesser worth to people on the basis of their ethnicity, the partiality that treats some people as more deserving of justice and love than others, and the hostility between ethnic groups that the gospel identifies as something Christ came to put to death. The consistent biblical teaching on the image of God, the impartiality of God, and the ethnic diversity of the community of faith all speak directly to what racism is and why it is incompatible with the gospel.
Was the Old Testament's distinction between Israel and the nations a form of racism? No. The distinction between Israel and the nations in the Old Testament was not primarily ethnic but covenantal: Israel was the people with whom God had entered into a specific covenant relationship, not a race that was inherently superior to other races. The Old Testament consistently includes people of other ethnicities within the people of God through faith and covenant loyalty, as Ruth and Rahab demonstrate. The exclusion of some nations from certain aspects of Israelite life was rooted in their religious practices rather than in their ethnicity per se.
How does the parable of the Good Samaritan address racism? Jesus makes the despised Samaritan, the person of the ethnicity most hated by his Jewish audience, the model of neighbor love. The parable does not merely say that Samaritans can be neighbors. It says that the Samaritan is the one who understood and practiced what neighbor love actually requires. The person asking "who is my neighbor?" was looking for an ethnic or religious boundary around the love command. Jesus removes the boundary entirely and then places the ethnic outsider as the example of what the love command looks like when it is genuinely obeyed.
What is the church's responsibility in addressing racism? The early church's response to the neglect of Greek-speaking widows in Acts 6 models the institutional responsibility: the community restructured itself to address the inequality rather than dismissing the complaint or explaining it away. Paul's confrontation of Peter in Galatians 2 models the relational responsibility: the failure to act consistently with the truth of the gospel is named and addressed rather than tolerated for the sake of social harmony. The theological responsibility is to consistently preach and teach the equal worth of every person as God's image-bearer and the equal standing of every believer before God in Christ.
Can a racist be a Christian? The question is better framed as: can a person who holds racist beliefs and practices racism consistently with genuine faith in the gospel? The gospel declares the equal worth of every person as God's image-bearer, the equal standing of every believer before God in Christ, and the breaking down of the dividing wall of ethnic hostility through the cross. A person who genuinely believes these things and allows them to shape their perception and treatment of others will find racism increasingly incompatible with their faith. The person whose racism is unchallenged by the gospel they profess has reason to examine whether the gospel has actually reached the place where their racism lives.
