According to this verse, God did not make a man in his image, but mankind—the human race—to reflect his image and likeness (Genesis 1:28). He made the human race. Not races, but race. One race. This one race was to reflect the image or likeness of God.
So what is the image or likeness of God? The prophet Ezekiel caught a glimpse of the “likeness of the glory of God.” In this vision, Ezekiel “saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake” (Ezekiel 1:27-28).
When God created the earth, He gave man dominion over it, (Genesis 1:28). But when Adam sinned, he gave that dominion over to Satan. Since then, Satan has become the prince of this world (John 14:30), and this world has become Satan’s plantation. One of his most successful crops is the crop of racism and oppression. Through it, he is able to produce hate and unrest. This is his livelihood. He produces the “works of the flesh” which, in essence, are designed to hurt and destroy the human race.
In a higher sense, whatever destroys the human race, is Satanic racism. Racism is in essence to hate your own race when we understand that there is only one race. As long as Satan can keep one color exalting itself above another, he can prevent the human race from reflecting the likeness and character of God.
Remember that during slavery in America, slave masters worked desperately to keep the enslaved from uniting in rebellion. Creating division among them helped, thus, he favored the house slave over the field slave. He kept them at odds, and sowed distrust among them so that they would never unite against the real enemy!
In a sense, this is how Satan operates. As long as he can keep our eyes off of the fact that, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12) he knows that the human race will never recognize the true nature of the battle against racism.
The Bible tells that “ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. Matthew 24:6-7 That Greek word for nation is “ethnos” and it means “race.” The Bible predicted that there would be race wars and we are seeing them before our eyes.
Strangely enough, and in the same sense, Satan works to keep people illiterate when it comes to the word of God, especially professed Christians. As long as they fail to understand that a true Christian will not hate or look down upon his neighbor, Satan successfully keeps many Christians, and non-religious people on his plantation of hate.
Understanding that the true slave is the one who is a slave to racism and hate, we come to have sympathy for the wretched racist. He is bound to ignorance, and blind obedience to his oppressive master, Satan himself. And so just as God sent Moses to deliver the captives from the house of bondage, so His plan is to send people with the gospel, a message of deliverance to those bound on the plantation of racism.
