CHAPTER 8 JEWS AND GENTILES

Jews and Gentiles
The Jews and God’s Laws
Have the Jews any advantages?
God and the Jews
God’s Good News to the Jews and Gentiles
Salvation is for the Jews and Gentiles
Christ and the Gentiles – their only hope of Glory
God and the Gentiles
Don’t turn back
Jews and Gentiles
Jews and Gentiles joined together with Christ
Jews and Gentiles share in God’s House
Jews and Gentiles
Circumcision
– Should all Gentile Converts be circumcised
– and required to follow all the Jewish customs
– and ceremonies?
Becoming a Christian and circumcision

Jews and Gentiles
(Paul)
ACTS 20:21
I have had one message for Jews and Gentiles alike – the necessity of turning from sin (from thoughts, speech and actions against God’s Laws) to God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Jews and God’s Laws
(Paul)
ROMANS 2:17-29
You Jews think all is well between yourselves and God because he gave his laws to you; you boast that you are his special friends. Yes, you know what he wants; you know right from wrong and favor the right because you have been taught his laws from earliest youth. You are so sure of the way to God that you could point it out to a blind man. You think of yourselves as beacon lights, directing men who are lost in darkness to God. You think that you can guide the simple and teach even children the affairs of God, for you really know his laws, which are full of all knowledge and truth.
Yes, you teach others – then why don’t you teach yourselves? You tell others not to steal –do you steal? You say it is wrong to commit adultery – do you do it? You say, “Don’t pray to idols”, and then make money your god instead.
You are so proud of knowing God’s laws, but you dishonor him by breaking them. No wonder the Scriptures say that the world speaks evil of God because of you.
Being a Jew is worth something if you obey God’s laws; but if you don’t, then you are no better off than the heathen. And if the heathen obey God’s laws, won’t God give them all the rights and honors he planned to give the Jews? In fact, those heathen will be far better off than you Jews who know so much about God and have his promises but don’t obey his laws.
For you are not real Jews just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the Jewish initiation ceremony of circumcision. No, a real Jew is anyone whose heart is right with God. For God is not looking for those who cut their bodies in actual circumcision, but he is looking for those with changed hearts and minds. Whoever has that kind of change in his life will get his praise from God, even if not from you.

Have the Jews any advantages?
(Paul)
ROMANS 3:1-20
Then what’s the use of being a Jew? Are there any special benefits for them from God? Is there any value in the Jewish circumcision ceremony? Yes, being a Jew has many advantages.
First of all, God trusted the Jews with his laws [so that they could know and do his will]. True, some of them were unfaithful, but just because they broke their promises to God, does that mean God will break his promises to those who love him? Of course not! Though everyone else in the world is a liar, God is not. Do you remember what the book of Psalms says about this? That God’s words will always prove true and right, no matter who questions them.
“But,” some say, “our breaking faith with God is good, our sins serve a good purpose, for people will notice how good God is when they see how bad we are. Is it fair, then, for him to punish us when our sins are helping him?” (That is the way some people talk.) God forbid! Then what kind of God would he be, to overlook sin? How could he ever condemn anyone? For he could not judge and condemn me as a sinner if my dishonesty brought him glory by contrasting his honesty with my lies. If you follow through with that idea you come to this; the worse we are, the better God likes it! But the damnation of those who say such things is just. Yet some claim that this is what I preach!
Well then, are we Jews better than others? No, not at all, for we have already shown that all men alike are sinners, whether Jews or Gentiles.
As the Scriptures say,
“No one is good – no one in all the entire world is innocent.”
“No one has ever really followed God’s paths, or even truly wanted to.”
“Every one has turned away; all have gone wrong. No one anywhere has kept on doing what is right; not one.”
“Their talk is foul and filthy like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are loaded with lies. Everything they say has in it the sting and poison of deadly snakes.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“They are quick to kill, hating anyone who disagrees with them.”
“Wherever they go they leave misery and trouble behind them, and they have never known what it is to feel secure or enjoy God’s blessing.”
“They care nothing about God nor what he thinks of them.”
So the judgment of God lies heavily upon the Jews, for their responsibility is to keep God’s laws instead of doing all these evil things; not one of them has any excuse; in fact, all the entire world stands hushed and guilty before Almighty God.
Now do you see it? No one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what the law commands. For the more we know of God’s laws, the clearer it becomes that we aren’t obeying them; his laws serve only to make us see that we are sinners.

God and the Jews
(Paul)
ROMANS 11:1-12
I ask then, has God rejected and deserted his people the Jews? Oh no, not at all. Remember that I myself am a Jew, a descendant of Abraham and a member of Benjamin’s family.
No, God has not discarded his own people whom he chose from the very beginning. Do you remember what the Scriptures say about this? Elijah the prophet was complaining to God about the Jews, telling God how they had killed the prophets and torn down God’s altars. Elijah claimed that he was the only one left in all the land who still loved God, and now they were trying to kill him too.
And do you remember how God replied? God said, “No, you are not the only one left. I have seven thousand others besides you who still love me and have not bowed down to idols!”
It is the same today. Not all the Jews have turned away from God; there are a few being saved as a result of God’s kindness in choosing them. And if it is by God’s kindness, then it is not by their being good enough. For in that case the free gift would no longer be free – it isn’t free when it is earned.
So this is the situation: most of the Jews have not found the favor of God they are looking for. A few have – the ones God has picked out – but the eyes of the others have been blinded. This is what our Scriptures refer to when they say that God has put them to sleep, shutting their eyes and ears so that they do not understand what we are talking about when we tell them of Christ. And so it is to this very day.
King David spoke of this same thing when he said, “Let their good food and other blessings trap them into thinking all is well between themselves and God. Let these good things rebound on them and deservedly crush them. Let their eyes be dim,” he said, “so that they cannot see, and let them walk bent-backed forever with a heavy load.”
Does this mean that God has rejected his Jewish people for ever? Of course not! His purpose was to make his salvation available to the Gentiles, and then the Jews would be jealous and begin to want God’s salvation for themselves. Now if the whole world became rich as a result of the Jews stumbling over God’s offer of salvation and turning it down, think how much greater blessing the world will share in later on when the Jews, too, come to Christ.

God’s Good News to the Jews and the Gentiles
ACTS 13:46-47
Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared, “It was necessary that this Good News from God should be given first to you Jews. But since you have rejected it, and shown yourselves unworthy of eternal life – well, we will offer it to Gentiles. For this is as the Lord commanded when he said, ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles, to lead them from the farthest corners of the earth to my salvation.’”

Salvation is for the Jews and the Gentiles
(Paul)
ACTS 28:25-29
“The Holy Spirit was right when he said through Isaiah the prophet,
“ ‘Say to the Jews, You will hear and see but not understand, for your hearts are too fat and your ears don’t listen and you have closed your eyes against understanding, for you don’t want to see and hear and turn to me to heal you.”’ So I want you to realize that this salvation from God is available to the Gentiles too, and they will accept it.”
(Peter)
ACTS 11:18b
“God has given to the Gentiles, too, the privilege of turning to him and receiving eternal life!”

Christ and the Gentiles – their only hope of Glory
(Paul)
COLOSSIANS 1:25-27
God has sent me to help his church and to tell his secret plan to you Gentiles. He has kept this secret for centuries and generations past, but now at last it has pleased him to tell it to those who love him and live for him, and the riches and glory of his plan are for you Gentiles too. And this is the secret: that Christ in your hearts is your only hope of glory.

God and the Gentiles
(Paul)
ROMANS 11:13-32
As you know, God has appointed me as a special messenger to you Gentiles. I lay great stress on this and remind the Jews about it as often as I can, so that if possible I can make them want what you Gentiles have and in that way save some of them. And how wonderful it will be when they become Christians. When God turned away from them it meant that he turned to the rest of the world to offer his salvation; and now it will be even more wonderful when the Jews come to Christ. It will be like dead people coming back to life. And since Abraham and the prophets are God’s people, their children will be too. For if the roots of the tree are holy, the branches will be too.
But some of these branches from Abraham’s tree, some of the Jews, have been broken off. And you Gentiles who were branches from, we might say, a wild olive tree, were grafted in. So now you, too, receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in God’s rich nourishment of his own special olive tree.
But you must be careful not to boast about being put in to replace the branches that were broken off. Remember that you are important only because you are now a part of God’s tree; you are just a branch, not a root.
“Well,” you may be saying, “those branches were broken off to make room for me so I must be pretty good.”
Watch out! Remember that those branches, the Jews, were broken off because they didn’t believe God, and you are there only because you do. Do not be proud; be humble and grateful – and careful. For if God did not spare the branches he put there in the first place, he won’t spare you either.
Notice how God is both so kind and so severe. He is very hard on those who disobey, but very good to you if you continue to love and trust him. But if you don’t, you, too, will be cut off. On the other hand, if the Jews leave their unbelief behind them and come back to God, God will graft them back into the tree again. He has the power to do it.
For if God was willing to take you who were so far away from him – being part of a wild olive tree – and graft you into his own good tree – a very unusual thing to do – don’t you see that he will be far more ready to put the Jews back again, who were there in the first place?
I want you to know about this truth from God, dear brothers, so that you will not feel proud and start boasting. Yes, it is true that some of the Jews have set themselves against the Gospel now, but this will last only until all of you Gentiles have come to Christ – those of you who will. And then all Israel will be saved.
Do you remember what the prophets said about this? “There shall come out of Zion a deliverer, and he shall turn the Jews from all ungodliness. At that time I will take away their sins, just as I promised.”
Now many of the Jews are enemies of the Gospel. They hate it. But this has been a benefit to you, for it has resulted in God’s giving his gifts to you Gentiles. Yet the Jews are still beloved of God because of his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For God’s gifts and his call can never be withdrawn; he will never go back on his promises.
Once you were rebels against God, but when the Jews refused his gifts God was merciful to you instead. And now the Jews are the rebels, but some day they, too, will share in God’s mercy upon you. For God has given them all up to sin so that he could have mercy upon all alike.

Don’t turn back
(Paul)
GALATIONS 4:8-10
Before you Gentiles knew God you were slaves to so-called gods that did not even exist. And now that you have found God (or should I say, now that God has found you) how can it be that you want to go back again and become slaves once more to another poor, weak, useless religion of trying to get to heaven by obeying God’s laws? You are trying to find favor with God by what you do or don’t do on certain days or months or seasons or years.

Jews and Gentiles
(Paul)
ROMANS 9:30-33
Well then, what shall we say about these things? Just this, that God has given the Gentiles the opportunity to be acquitted by faith, even though they had not been really seeking God. But the Jews, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping his laws, never succeeded. Why not? Because they were trying to be saved by keeping the law and being good instead of by depending on faith. They have stumbled over the great stumbling- stone. God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “I have put a Rock in the path of the Jews, and many will stumble over him (Jesus). Those who believe in him will never be disappointed.”

Jews and Gentiles joined together with Christ
(Paul)
EPHESIANS 2:11-22
Never forget that once you were heathen and that you were called godless and “unclean” by the Jews. (But their hearts, too, were still unclean, even though they were going through the ceremonies and rituals of the godly, for they circumcised themselves as a sign of godliness.)Remember that in those days you were living utterly apart from Christ; you were enemies of God’s children and he had promised you no help. You were lost, without God, without hope.
But now you belong to Christ Jesus, and though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought very near to him because of what Jesus Christ has done for you with his blood.
For Christ himself is our way of peace. He has made peace between us Jews and you Gentiles by making us all one family, breaking down the wall of contempt that used to separate us. By his death he ended the angry resentment between us, caused by the Jewish laws which favored the Jews and excluded the Gentiles, for he died to annul (cancel) that whole system of Jewish laws. Then he took the two groups who had been opposed to each other and made them parts of himself; thus he fused us together to become one new person, and at last there was peace. As parts of the same body, our anger against each other has disappeared, for both of us have been reconciled to God. And so the feud ended at last at the cross. And he has brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles, who were very far away from him, and to us Jews, who were near. Now all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, may come to God the Father with the Holy Spirit’s help because of what Christ has done for us.
Now you are no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God’s very own family, citizens of God’s country and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.
What a foundation you stand on now: the apostles and prophets; and the cornerstone of the building is Jesus Christ himself! We who believe are carefully joined together with Christ as parts of a beautiful, constantly growing temple for God. And you also are joined with him and with each other by the Spirit, and are part of this dwelling place of God.

Jews and Gentiles share in God’s House
(Paul)
EPHESIANS 3:1-12
I Paul, the servant of Christ, am here in jail because of you – for preaching that you Gentiles are a part of God’s house. No doubt you already know that God has given me this special work of showing God’s favor to you Gentiles, as I briefly mentioned before in one of my letters. God himself showed me this secret plan of his, that the Gentiles, too, are included in his kindness. I say this to explain to you how I know about these things. In olden times God did not share this plan with his people, but now he has revealed it by the Holy Spirit to his apostles and prophets.
And this is the secret: that the Gentiles will have their full share with the Jews in all the riches inherited by God’s sons; both are invited to belong to his church, and all of God’s promises of mighty blessings through Christ apply to them both when they accept the Good News about Christ and what he has done for them. God has given me the wonderful privilege of telling everyone about this plan of his; and he has given me his power and special ability to do it well.
Just think! Though I did nothing to deserve it, and though I am the most useless Christian there is, yet I was the one chosen for this special joy of telling the Gentiles the Glad News of the endless treasures available to them in Christ; and to explain to everyone that God is the Savior of the Gentiles too, just as he who made all things had secretly planned from the very beginning.
And his reason? To show to all the powers of heaven how perfectly wise God is when they see all of his family – Jews and Gentiles – joined together in his church, just as he had always planned to do through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now we can come fearlessly right into God’s presence, assured of his glad welcome when we come with Christ and trust in him.

Jews and Gentiles
(Paul)
ROMANS 15:7-12
So, warmly welcome each other into the church, just as Christ has warmly welcomed you; then God will be glorified (honored). Remember that Jesus Christ came to show that God is true to his promises and to help the Jews. And remember that he came also that the Gentiles might be saved and give glory to God for his mercies to them. That is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote: “I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.”
And in another place, “Be glad, O you Gentiles, along with his people the Jews.”
And yet again, “Praise the Lord, O you Gentiles, let everyone praise him.”
And the prophet Isaiah said, “There shall be an Heir in the house of Jesse, and he will be King over the Gentiles; they will pin their hopes on him alone.”

Circumcision
– Should all Gentile Converts be circumcised
– And required to follow all the Jewish customs
– And ceremonies?
ACTS 15:7-11 and
15:13-21 and
15:23-29
At the meeting, after long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them as follows:
“Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you long ago to preach the Good News to the Gentiles, so that they also could believe. God, who knows men’s hearts, confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he gave him to us. He made no distinction between them and us, for he cleansed their lives through faith, just as he did ours. And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke (a harness) that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Don’t you believe that all are saved the same way, by the free gift of the Lord Jesus?”
ACTS 15:13-21
When they had finished, James took the floor. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people to bring honor to his name. And this fact of Gentile conversion agrees with what the prophets predicted. For instance, listen to this passage from the prophet Amos: ‘Afterwards’ [says the Lord], I will return and renew the broken contract with David, so that Gentiles, too, will find the Lord – all those marked with my name. That is what the Lord says, who reveals his plans made from the beginning.
“And so my judgment is that we should not insist that the Gentiles who turn to God must obey our Jewish laws, except that we should write to them to refrain from eating meat sacrificed to idols, from all fornication, and also from eating unbled meat of strangled animals. For these things have been preached against in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
ACTS 15:23-29
“From: The apostles, elders and brothers in Jerusalem.
“To: The Gentile brothers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. Greetings!
(“Cilicia” – a Roman Province in what is now southern Turkey, with Tarsus as its capital)
“We understand that some believers from here have upset you and questioned your salvation, but they had no such instructions from us. So it seemed wise to us, having unanimously agreed on our decision, to send to you these two official representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul. These men – Judas and Silas, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ – will confirm orally what we have decided concerning your question.
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden of Jewish laws on you than to abstain from eating food offered to idols and from unbled meat of strangled animals, and, of course, from fornication. If you do this, it is enough. Farewell.”

Becoming a Christian and circumcision
(Paul)
1 CORINTHIANS 7:18-19
For instance, a man who has already gone through the Jewish ceremony of circumcision before he became a Christian shouldn’t worry about it; and if he hasn’t been circumcised, he shouldn’t do it now. For it doesn’t make any difference at all whether a Christian has gone through this ceremony or not. But it makes a lot of difference whether he is pleasing God and keeping God’s commandments. That is the important thing.