The Gentile Question (Part 3)

 
PAUL’S GOSPEL FOR THE GENTILES..."IN CHRIST"
 
Although we read about Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus (~ A.D. 30), he disappears from the Acts account until significant numbers of Gentiles start believing in Antioch (~ A.D. 42). When Paul arrives in Antioch, his teaching is different from the other apostles. Paul’s teaching contained in his letters, is a combination of his Pharisaic upbringing at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), his additional training for proselytizing the Gentile world, all overshadowed by the revelation he received directly from the Lord, “for I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ,” (Gal 1:12).
 
Consistent with the Pharisees, Paul taught that salvation could only originate through the nation of Israel, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is from the Jews,” (John 4:22). Paul acknowledged to the Ephesians, without Israel, Gentiles were “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world,” (Eph 2:12). Paul did not preach “universalism”, that is, a Gentile salvation path to God the Father apart from the nation of Israel. For Paul, Israel was the only path of salvation promised by God. To the Israelites “belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all,” (Rom 9:4).
 
Although Paul agreed with the Pharisees that salvation was through the promises given to Israel, he departed from their theology on how a Gentile could enter the nation of Israel. The Pharisee believed the only path to God was through the physical conversion to Judaism, to become a proselyte. This was in part due to the low view Pharisees held toward Gentiles. By tradition, Gentiles had rejected the Torah at Mount Sinai (Av. Zar.2b), and were largely motivated by their idolatry, moral laxity, and other such faults. Gentiles of the ancient world were largely idol worshipping, sometimes child sacrificing, pagans without a moral code of ethics derived from a knowledge of true God.
 
Paul’s view of Gentile salvation was different from the Pharisees based on a divine revelation he received from Christ Jesus that Paul saw confirmed in scripture. Paul called it, “the mystery of Christ” (Eph 3:4), that had been hidden in the past but now revealed “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,” (Eph 3: 6). So unique was this revelation among the apostles that Paul referred to it in personal terms as “my gospel” (Rom 2:16, 16:25). For a brief time, Paul feared that he “might be running, or had run, in vain” (Gal 2:2), because his message was unique even among the apostles in Christ.
 
According to Paul, Gentiles had access to the promises of Israel through the Messiah. Jesus was the “Door” (John 10:9) and the “Way” (John 14:6), into the nation of Israel and the promises of the Fathers originally given to Abraham, (Gen 26:24). In Paul’s words, Jesus “broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments…so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man…and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross,” (Eph 2:14-15). Breaking down the wall simply meant that Gentiles had access to the promises of Israel through the Messiah without becoming Jews. Paul’s words do not argue for elimination or the invalidity of the Law, which sanctifies Jews from the nations of the world.
 
Paul’s approach to Gentile salvation was neither conversion to Judaism nor universal salvation independent from the nation of Israel. Using our modern vernacular, Paul’s gospel was a “hybrid” of the two approaches permitting a Gentile to remain, “In that condition he was called” (1 Cor 7:20). At the same time, Gentiles could be “adopted” (Eph 1:5) and “grafted” (Rom 11:17) into the olive tree of Israel and the promises of Abraham. Previously, salvation had been possible only for those people who were “in Israel”, a phrase often used in the Hebrew text for the collective nation and also used by Jesus (Matt 8:10).
 
Paul’s gospel held access to salvation for both the Jew and the Gentile as possible through the Messiah, “In Christ”, a phrase almost completely unique to the epistles of Paul. “In Christ” was Paul’s answer to how Gentiles could have access to the promises of Israel, “In Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles,” (Gal 3:14). According to Paul, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus…There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man…for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise,” (Gal 3:26-29). “In short, the Gentiles ‘in Christ’ had ceased to be strangers and foreigners and had become Israelites in the true sense” (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, WD Davies, 1965, page 113) as Paul wrote, “In Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ,” (Eph 2:13), enabling the believer to obtain “the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory,” (2 Tim 2:10).


(Next Part - Paul's Gospel in the Jewish World, Scott)