18 Bible Verses About Equality

Genesis 1:27

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Reflection: God has just said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and this verse applies the image to male and female alike. The next verse gives the blessing and the charge to rule the earth to both of them: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number.’”

Acts 17:26

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

Reflection: Paul is speaking at the Areopagus in Athens to people who did not know the Scriptures of Israel. He tells them that every nation comes from one man and that God “gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). Two verses later he quotes their own poets: “We are his offspring.”

Job 31:15

“Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?”

Reflection: Job is defending his conduct. If he had “denied justice to any of my servants, whether male or female, when they had a grievance against me” (Job 31:13), he asks, “what will I do when God confronts me?” (Job 31:14). Verse 15 gives his reason: the God who formed Job in the womb formed his servants too.

Proverbs 22:2

“Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.”

Reflection: The proverb sets the rich and the poor side by side and names what they share: the same Maker.

Proverbs 14:31

“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”

Reflection: Here the common Maker of Proverbs 22:2 becomes a rule of conduct. Oppressing a poor person is counted as contempt for the God who made that person, and kindness to the needy as honour to him.

Deuteronomy 10:17-18

“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.”

Reflection: Moses has just set out what the Lord asks of Israel (Deuteronomy 10:12), and here he describes the God who asks it. The God of gods “shows no partiality and accepts no bribes”, and his impartiality takes the side of those with least standing: the fatherless, the widow and the foreigner. Deuteronomy 10:19 turns God’s love for the foreigner into a command for Israel: “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”

Romans 2:11

“For God does not show favoritism.”

Reflection: Paul has just said that trouble awaits “every human being who does evil” and glory “everyone who does good”, in each case “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Romans 2:9-10). This verse gives the reason. Jew and Gentile answer to the same judge by the same standard.

Acts 10:34-35

“Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.’”

Reflection: Peter is in Caesarea, in the house of Cornelius, a centurion. He opened by admitting that his law kept a Jew from visiting a Gentile, “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28), which is what the vision of the sheet had taught him (Acts 10:15). His sermon begins with this conclusion about God.

Romans 10:12

“For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him.”

Reflection: The verse sits between two quotations of Scripture that both open with a word for everyone: “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame” (Romans 10:11) and “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). The point is access to salvation. Jew and Gentile call on the same Lord and are answered alike.

Leviticus 19:34

“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

Reflection: The chapter has already commanded “love your neighbor as yourself” for fellow Israelites (Leviticus 19:18). This verse extends the same words to the foreigner, who is to be treated “as your native-born”. The reason given is Israel’s own history as foreigners in Egypt, the same reason Deuteronomy 10:19 gives.

2 Chronicles 19:7

“Now let the fear of the LORD be on you. Judge carefully, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.”

Reflection: King Jehoshaphat is appointing judges in the fortified cities of Judah and tells them, “you are not judging for mere mortals but for the Lord” (2 Chronicles 19:6). Because God has no “injustice or partiality or bribery”, the judges who act for him may not either.

James 2:1, 4

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism… have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

Reflection: James sets a scene in a church meeting: a man with a gold ring and fine clothes is given a good seat, and a poor man in filthy clothes is told to stand or sit on the floor. James 2:1 forbids favoritism, and James 2:4 calls the treatment in that scene discrimination. James 2:5 adds that God has “chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith”, and James 2:8-9 calls favoritism a breach of the royal law, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

2 Corinthians 8:13-14

“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality.”

Reflection: Paul is urging the Corinthians to finish a collection for “the Lord’s people” that they began the year before (2 Corinthians 8:4, 10-11). He does not want one church relieved while another is hard pressed; each is to supply what the other needs as circumstances change. He supports it from the manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16:18): “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

Galatians 3:28

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

Reflection: The verses around it describe who belongs to Christ: “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). The three pairs cover nation, social status and sex, and the setting is who counts as a child of God and an heir of the promise.

Colossians 3:11

“Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

Reflection: The list follows a description of the new self, “which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10), language that goes back to Genesis 1:27. It adds names Galatians does not have, barbarian and Scythian, for peoples outside Greek culture. In the renewed self, “Christ is all, and is in all.”

1 Corinthians 12:13

“For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

Reflection: Paul has just compared the church to a body with many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12). Later in the chapter he says the parts that seem weaker are indispensable, and that God gave greater honour to the parts that lacked it, “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25).

Ephesians 2:14-15

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace.”

Reflection: The letter is addressed to “you who are Gentiles by birth”, once “excluded from citizenship in Israel” (Ephesians 2:11-12). The two groups are Jews and Gentiles, and the wall comes down “by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.” Ephesians 2:16 adds that both are reconciled to God “in one body” through the cross.

Revelation 7:9

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

Reflection: The vision is of a crowd too large to count, drawn from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne. They cry out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10).