T4G 08 Session 2: Thabiti Anyabwile – Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church.
Thabiti was the “surprise” guest speaker this year, a new addition to the T4G line-up. Not a household-name evangelical rock-star like John Piper, but what an addition, and what a message!
Thabiti currently serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman. It’s difficult to categorise a message as “my favourite” from the conference, but this would certainly be in the running!
Download the audio from here.
Thabiti began with the challenge to us that for many of us our entire outlook on life, concerning the area of race and racism is misplaced, wrong and/or inadequate. He challenged us that believing in race is a bit like believing in unicorns, because race does not exist; and laid out that his task for that evening was to convince us that we’ve all been looking at the world with an unbiblical set of assumptions and we urgently need to go back to the Scriptures to get biblical assumptions on “race” that will change how we do pastoral ministry.
He laid out his 4-point messages like a baseball diamond (lost on most of us Brits!), but his point being you need to work round the bases in order – Base 1 is fundamental, before you move on to base 2, etc…
His “4 bases” were:
1. Our Unity in Adam
He took us to Genesis, to show the Scriptures don’t support race. We are united in Adam. When this is said, it is normally referring to our unity with Adam in sin; but Thabiti drew our attention to the fact that we ALL are genealogical, biological descendants of Adam. And like Adam, we are all made equally in the image and likeness of God.
He emphasised that Genesis 10 is about sameness, not difference — our unity and oneness in Adam; and that Genesis 10 actually speaks about the rise of ethnicities, not the rise of races. He said that, race, as viewed from a non-biblical, worldview, is defined by the idea that there is an essential biological difference between people groups. But ethnicity is about differences that include language, nationality, citizenship, cultural patterns, etc.
Thabiti encouraged us to see that the Scriptures don’t focus on our differences, labelled “race” but our unity in Adam.
2. Our Unity in Christ
As Christians, our union with Christ, gives us an even greater reason for unity together, than just that we are ‘united in Adam’. Thabiti focused our attention to the fact that we no longer share a merely biological lineage in Adam, but a deep lineage through Christ. (2 Cor 5:14-18)
3. Our Unity in the Church
Thabiti talked about how this restored, redeemed, dynamic, biblical view should be best/most keenly observed in these days (i.e. this side of heaven) in the life of local churches. He challenged us that Jesus is not impressed by our failure to love others who are ‘not like us’, but to love as Jesus did…as one who loved and died for those not like Him.
4. Our Unity in Eternity
As he closed out, Thabiti spoke of Revelation 5, about the reality we are headed towards, and left us with a final exhortation: “Why not live like that now?”
Here’s a brief video clip from his message:
