Christian Nationalism and the Most-Abused Verse in the Bible

by Pastor Andrew Isker

There is currently no verse in the evangelical world more abused than Galatians 3:28. Only recently did this newcomer knock off the decades-long world champion, Matthew 7:1 “judge not, lest ye be judged.” But today, in the context of intense propaganda that seeks to demonize those of European descent and a ruling class that intentionally seeks to demographically replace them in their native lands, the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the church of Galatia is used as a battering ram to manipulate well-meaning Christians.

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“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28 (NKJV)

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Woke Christian wolves (as well as deceived sheep) rip this verse from its context and apply it to mean that Christians are forbidden from making ethnic or racial distinctions, class distinctions, and increasingly, distinctions between men and women. This verse is used to universalize humanity and flatten out any differences that God made in mankind.

The tortured logic goes something like this: if in Christ there is no male or female, there can be no distinction between men and women, despite the realities of biology, physiology, and psychology. According to this view, this means that all the various waves of feminism are biblically justified! Despite the obvious distinctions between men and women that a small child can recognize, and despite the manifold testimony of the rest of the Bible that there are very real distinctions between men and women in what God has called them to do and be, all of that is ripped away by the way this verse is used.

And not only is feminism justified by “neither male nor female,” but now transgenderism is as well. If there is no male or female, then gender is a social construct and it is fluid. There is nothing but generic human beings who have different sets of genitalia that with the miracle of modern medicine, we can change! You might laugh, but there are many people who believe this with deathly sincerity.

The same goes for class distinctions. American society has long been formally democratic and egalitarian. We do not have formal social classes like European nations of old, but even bearing this in mind informal social classes clearly exist. Drive around for a few hours in any large city in the country and you will instantly see the strata of American society. You will eventually come across houses valued in the millions of dollars with signs in the yard declaring “in this house we believe” as if were the blood of the Passover lamb spread on the doorpost. Elsewhere you will see slums filled with the homeless and drug addicted, houses with bars on the windows, and housing projects and Section 8 homes. And you will also see working-class suburbs on their way to becoming indistinguishable from these slums. Hierarchy is a part of how God built the world. Vagrants and drug dealers are not the same as factory workers who are not the same as doctors and lawyers who are not the same as hedge fund managers. The Bible also shows us kings and princes, merchants, farmers, laborers, slaves, and thieves. God’s Word exists within the reality that God made. The leftist, who is in full revolt against God’s created order despises this, and in their rage against God sets himself to undo this all, and reduce all mankind to abject poverty and suffering. And many foolish Christians will take up the anti-Christ leftist cause by seeing “neither slave nor free” and taking it as a positive command to produce an egalitarian utopian society (and all the unfathomable misery such a project requires).

The phrase “there is neither Jew nor Greek” is used, not just by woke Christian wolves but also by conservative evangelical leaders to mean that ethnic and racial distinctions between people are non-existent. Conservatives will follow the exact same logic with “neither Jew nor Greek” that the feminists and transgenderists do with “neither male nor female.” If you believe that there are indeed meaningful distinctions by those in different people groups, you are not just a sinner, but guilty of the very worst of sins. If you think there is a real difference between Haitians, Swedes, and Koreans (and the societies that these respective people groups built) beyond melanin content or physical features, you will be treated worse than a blaspheming heretic. Nevermind that all human beings until the modern era well understood that different ethnicities had their own unique national character, including every Christian theologian—including the very same Apostle Paul who penned Galatians 3:28, who spoke of the unique national character of the Cretans in Titus 1:17.

But if Galatians 3:28 is not about racial, social, or sexual egalitarianism, what is it about? The context of the Book of Galatians makes this very clear. The Old Covenant world was broken down between the Seed People from whom the Messiah promised in Genesis 3 would come (Israel), and the rest of humanity (the Gentiles). The distinction between Israel and the Gentiles was certainly genetic but was also more than that. God had given that nation particular privileges, He had spoken to them and instructed them how to live, He had come down to dwell among them in the tabernacle and temple, and He had set them apart as a priestly nation to minister to all the other nations.

But after the Messiah had come, the purpose of Israel and the Law which set them apart had been fulfilled. Now, all humanity was brought into the inheritance of the Second Adam, and made “sons” (Galatians 3:28)—not “sons and daughters” but “sons.” This is not a biblical defense of transgenderism, but rather an important ancient legal distinction. In the ancient world, sons inherited, not sons and daughters, so Jews, Greeks, slaves, free, men, and women being made “sons” means they all are heirs of the promises God made to Abraham with Jesus.

Paul’s point is that the Law which separated Jew from Gentile is no longer in operation with the coming of Messiah, so to force Gentiles to be circumcised and to not eat pork is a very serious, damnable error that undoes the work of Christ. That is what Galatians is about, not a permission slip for leftist egalitarianism with regard to ethnicity, class, and sex.

This will continue to be an issue as Christian nationalism as a movement continues to grow. Just as decades of leftwing egalitarian sexual propaganda leads to a society that is unable to answer the question “What is a woman?” Decades of leftwing egalitarian ethnic propaganda lead to a society that is unable to answer the question “What is a nation?” The classical definition of “nation” always included, at least in part, “common ancestry.” The leftist egalitarians want the definition of a nation to be “an economic zone filled with a random assortment of human beings.” They wish to adopt a globalist, multicultural definition that destroys the unique heritage, history, and character of nations. Nations being composed largely of a majority ethnic group is seen as an abomination in their worldview, but is it? Look at what makes the nations unique, their language, their history, their culture, their art and literature, and even their food. The great irony of leftist multicultural egalitarianism is that for how much they claim to champion diversity, they want all 8 billion inhabitants of planet Earth to all perfectly conform to the way of life of upper-middle-class liberal white women. They want to destroy actual diversity and all the things that make the nations glorious and wonderful.

This is a common temptation for many Christians, as well. They will treat America, not as a distinct nation in the classical sense but rather adopt the leftist frame, and then say things like “mass migration is great if they profess Christ because these are our brothers and it is also great if they do not because the nations are coming here for us to preach the gospel to them!” Such a statement is incredibly foolhardy and naive. It demeans baptism, not as the sacrament of entrance into Christ’s kingdom, but as a free ticket to plunder a wealthy First-World country. Simply assenting to a political or a religious doctrine is not a sufficient foundation for a nation, any more than assenting to political or religious doctrine is a sufficient basis to form a family.

Western and Christian tradition understood, until the mid-20th Century, that a nation was a family writ large. Nations had a father at the very top, the king, who ruled over his people like a father who rules his household. Nations, of course, were never thought to be these unchangeable, stainless steel entities. There were always clear means to graft foreign people into your nation, most often through intermarriage. Ancient Israel has many examples of this in the Old Testament. But this did not mean that an influx of tens or hundreds of thousands of Assyrians would be considered anything other than an invasion.

For Christian nationalism to continue to grow, we much reject as strongly as possible the manipulative proof-texting of passages like Galatians 3:28 to serve leftist ends. If we do not, we will be defenseless against Christian leaders who would cheer on the destruction of our nation by the most evil people on earth. The church must become much more aggressive in our declaration of the realities that all Christians understood until 50 or 60 years ago. America is a nation, not a continent-wide open-air shopping mall. Either we summon the courage to preserve this nation as a nation, or we will look on as it is erased from existence.

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