Biblical Diversity

Recent years have seen an increasing emphasis placed on the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the business world, as well as among charities and governments in America and elsewhere in the West. While it is a right thing to acknowledge the need for just and fair criteria for hiring and promoting individuals in secular organizations, there is disagreement among leaders with varying perspectives as to what those criteria ought to be, and on what underlying values they should be based.

The concept of equity and its desirability is found often in the scriptures, which teach by the use of that term the responsibility of men to deal fairly, with uprightness and without partiality. We can suppose that, without an underlying biblical framework or a Christian world view, equity in an ideological sense might well be used as a cudgel for suppressing initiative and industry in an unrighteous manner.  The inclusion aspect of DEI purportedly seeks to right the wrongs of the exclusion of disfavored groups from full acceptance in the workplace and in society.  But without a biblical and moral basis for exclusion and inclusion as appropriate in the varied spheres and relationships of life, disorder and strife will result. The desire to be inclusive can have a righteous effect if it first be recognized that God has the right to exclude men based on the judgment He has already concluded them all under: unbelief and sin. (Romans 11:32; Galatians 3:22)  Faith in Christ brings with it the only inclusion that will matter at life’s end, when to be included among the number of the redeemed attains infinite value.

It is the subject of diversity that we will discuss here, hoping to approach the matter according to the mind of God as given us in the scriptures. Secular organizations promote or require diversity largely along the lines of ethnicity, skin color, gender, and sexuality. It is often viewed almost as an end in itself, or so it might seem to a critical eye. The word of God, in contrast to any secular motive for diversity, presents it as a means to the end of unity, wholeness, and mutuality in the body of Christ, which is the church. 

There are at least two kinds of diversity that God in His great wisdom uses for the blessing of His people and to the praise of His glory in the church, or assembly.  Perhaps the easiest to explain and understand to an American, given the “melting pot” of national origins that is the United States, is that there is no longer any difference in the sight of God, nor in His dealings with men in grace, now that “the middle wall of partition” between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down by Jesus Christ, by His atoning blood and reconciling death on the cross (Ephesians 2:11-22). “Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one.”  From the epistle to the Galatians, we learn with complete clarity that the wonderful diversity of ethnicity, status, and gender found in the church of God, as a result of the gospel of God’s grace preached to all nations, is no hindrance whatever to the blessed unity of the body of Christ. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). But notice that the emphasis is not on the diversity, however refreshing that might be to us and however pleasing it is to God, but rather on the unity of position and fellowship that can now exist where it might once have seemed that diversity would be a hindrance.

Another category of diversity we find in the New Testament is the diversity of spiritual gifts found in the church of God. These gifts were given to the assembly by the ascended Christ Jesus and divided to each member of the body by the Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:7-16; I Corinthians 12:4-31). And even as we learn about the diversity of gifts in I Corinthians 12, we learn also of the diverse nature of the roles of the three persons of the Godhead, but here again it is the unified ordering of each role and the unity of purpose among those roles that receive emphasis. God, whom we as Christians call our Father, coordinates a diversity of operations in the world by means of His saints. These operations include the work of the gospel in saving souls; the work of edification of the body of Christ; and the work of the judgment of this world and giving testimony to it. Of the Lord Jesus it is written that there are diversities of administrations or services overseen by Him, and we know that the Lord upon His ascension was “working with” His apostles as they preached the gospel (Mark 16:20). He is the perfect servant, and each of us in our diverse services in the body answer to Him as Master and Lord (Matthew 19:14-23). And so it is the Spirit, carefully designated as that “one Spirit”, who has divided the many spiritual gifts to each and every member of the body of Christ.

We need not dwell long on the gifts and their designations and specific uses, but we find lists in several categories given in three epistles in the New Testament. In all this diversity of gift and spiritual manifestation in the body of Christ, there is a definite purpose that transcends the concept of diversity for its own sake. In I Corinthians 12, the emphasis seems to be on the wholeness and health of Christ’s body through the utilization of each member’s different gift. In Ephesians 4, it is the unity of the body, and the growth or edification of the body toward that final and completed unity, that is the goal of the various gifts. And in the listing of gifts in Romans 12, it is perhaps the mutuality of service and intimacy of love among the members of the body that stands out, as we are given the expression “. . . members one of another”, along with the follow-up exhortations to “let love be unfeigned” and “be kindly affectioned to one another”.

Biblical diversity, diversity according to God’s mind, brings blessing and enjoyment to God and man, not because of the differences and variations in themselves, but because it ends in the “unity of the faith” and “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). This kind of diversity in the body of Christ will end in an eternal perfection where differences among us will fade in the light of His glory, where “Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).