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Jealousy and the Gentiles
by Brian Hennessy
“But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.” (Romans 11:11)
Reading Romans Eleven recently, and this verse in particular, I
marveled at the intricacies of God’s plan of salvation. By causing the
Jewish nation to reject the good news of their salvation in Messiah
Jesus, the Gospel had been driven out among the Gentiles. And in
bringing that salvation to the Gentiles it would in turn make the Jews
jealous and eventually set in motion the means to save them also.
Truly His ways are as far above ours as the heavens are above the
earth. Truly all glory, and honor, and praise belong to Him!
But as I pondered the dynamics of this outside-the-box salvation plan,
the Holy Spirit brought two intriguing questions to my attention.
The first one concerned this issue of jealousy that was supposed to
awaken the Jews to the Gospel, which is how most Bible commentaries
(and some Bibles) interpret the purpose of the Jewish jealousy. This
understanding is strengthened of course by Paul’s comment a few verses
later, when he says: “As an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my
ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and
save some of them (Rom 11:14).
But something wasn’t adding up. How, I wondered, will jealousy provoke
them to salvation? Why would these self-righteous
Jews who had already rejected Jesus in spite of seeing His many
miracles, and who held nothing but contempt for their fellow Jews who
believed in Jesus, suddenly be provoked into believing in Jesus by a
bunch of happy-clappy Gentiles who would always be the great unwashed
in their sight?
Furthermore, jealousy usually leads to anger and resentment, not
repentance and salvation. Just look at the story of Joseph. When his
brothers saw that their father Jacob favored Joseph over them they
became jealous and murderously angry, which eventually caused them to
turn on him and sell him into slavery. It was only many years later
that circumstance led them to repent of their sin and reconcile with
their brother Joseph.
My suspicions grew when I could not find one instance in the New
Testament where a Jew met a saved Gentile and became jealous of his
faith and then believed in Jesus. Even Paul, who had seen Steven be
stoned to death, was too busy throwing them into jail to consider
their faith. God had to knock him off his high horse to get him saved.
The more I studied this jealousy thing, the more I realized we had it
completely backwards. That the jealousy aroused in the Jews by the
Gentiles was not designed to attract them to the gospel, but to
repel them! This jealousy was God’s way of blocking them from
receiving the gospel of salvation so they would become its enemy for
our sake. “From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your
sake” (Rom 11:28).
And sure enough, when I backed up a few verses into the end of the
tenth chapter I found: “At the first Moses says, ‘I will make you
jealous by that which is not a nation, by a nation without
understanding will I anger you’ ” (Rom 10:19). Clearly God was
using the Gentiles to anger the Jews as a form of judgment. Because
when we go back to the original words of Moses we find this:
“They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me
to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who
are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.”
(Deut 32:21)
But besides the jealousy issue, which I’ll come back to shortly, this
raised another question in my mind. Why did God set up this seemingly
convoluted salvation plan in the first place? That is, why did the
Jews have to surrender their salvation to the Gentiles (albeit
involuntarily) so that we could make them jealous in order that they
might be saved later? To be specific, why involve the Gentiles in the
middle of this salvation process at all? Why not just have the whole
Jewish nation simply see that Jesus was their promised Messiah, repent
of their sins, and get saved? Then He could send them all out to
evangelize the nations and save those whose names were written in the
Lamb’s Book of Life?
I saw that Paul did offer an explanation at the end of the chapter for
why the Jews had to reject the gospel, when he said, “For God has shut
up all in disobedience so that He might show mercy to all” (Rom.
11:32). But the Jews were already disobedient sinners before they
rejected Jesus. Why did they have to be made even more disobedient?
As I began to ponder the dynamics of this salvation plan, the Holy
Spirit began to give me some marvelous insights, which I’d like to
share with you. For I finally saw a deeper purpose for why God saved
the Gentiles as He did. Like all the mysteries of God, when you get to
peak behind the scenes and get a glimpse of God’s marvelous ways, it
is so exciting and so satisfyingly perfect.
Problem Solution
When confronted by some puzzling move of God, I find it helps to step
back and try to see the big picture. We know He doesn’t do anything
without a reason. So no matter how illogical His ways seem to us, they
become very logical in hindsight. Start with the crucifixion of Jesus.
Who could have ever imagined that killing the Son of God on a Roman
cross was the best way to save the world? Certainly not His disciples,
who wept bitterly at the foot of the cross as they saw their Messiah,
and all their hopes and dreams of a soon coming Kingdom of God, die in
one afternoon. Even the Devil was fooled by His plan (see 1 Cor. 2:8).
Now, one way to gain an insight on the big picture is to see the
actions God takes as solutions to problems. If we can discover with
the help of the Holy Spirit what particular problem was solved by an
action He took, we can begin to understand why He did what He did. And
the mystery is revealed.
To understand God’s purpose for inserting the Gentiles into the middle
of His plan of salvation, it helps to go back to Mount Sinai and see
how God used the Mosaic Law to reveal the presence of sin in the life
of His people.
The Rule Book
After delivering the nation from Egyptian slavery through Moses, God
led His people into the wilderness to establish a “new” covenant with
them. Central to that covenant were His rules for living, which He
gave them written literally in stone. This Law Book, which the Jewish
teachers later broke down into 613 distinct commands, governed every
facet of their religious and cultural life. Through the Law, God set
the culture of Israel head and shoulders above all the pagan cultures
of the world. And when they actually lived by its tenets, which was
seldom, it directed them to love God with all their heart and soul,
and their neighbors as themselves. In so doing they promoted the
knowledge of God to all the nations they came in contact with, and
were a blessing to the world.
But there was a lot more going on with the Law than Israel realized.
What Israel didn’t understand was that the Law had a hidden purpose
that was not revealed until after Jesus ascended back into
heaven. The hidden purpose of the Law, which was revealed specifically
to Paul, was that the Law was designed to cause them to fail. That
even though it represented the ultimate in God’s will for man, love of
God and love of neighbor, they couldn’t keep its commands no matter
how hard they tried. It was undoable And the reason they couldn’t was
because it actually inflamed their rebellious sin nature through its
unyielding commands, thereby exposing the existence and power of sin
within them. “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law
(Rom. 7:7),” admits Paul.
In failing to keep the Law the whole nation of Israel, both
individually and corporately, was brought into the docket of
condemnation and subjected to the Law’s often harsh penalties. The
only way to become reconciled to God again was by repenting of the
transgression and offering one of the sacrifices provided for by the
Law itself. Of course, all those sacrifices were just types and
shadows pointing to the one final sin sacrifice of Jesus, who would
deliver them from their sin problem along with its death penalty, once
and for all.
So the main purpose of the Law, as Paul explained it, was to be a
signpost pointing to Jesus: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to
lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that
faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor” (Gal 3:24,25).
When Jesus came, He satisfied all the demands of the Old Covenant
(Mosaic Law) and then gave Israel a better covenant. This New
Covenant, as prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah, would be completely
different - “not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on
the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, for
they did not continue in My covenant” (Heb 8:9). This new covenant,
which could only be entered into by faith in Jesus, would not only
bring new spiritual life, but the power of the Spirit to overcome the
desires of the flesh. It would also wipe the slate clean regarding the
death penalty that His people had incurred from disobeying the
commands of the Law.
But here is the main point. Even though God had given His people this
New Covenant and the Holy Spirit, He knew they weren’t out of the
woods yet. He realized that because the nation had been practicing
their “holy, good, and righteous” (Rom 7:12) Rule Book for 1400 years,
that their whole identity as a people was still wrapped up in it. He
knew they would be sorely tempted to continue practicing it - even
after coming to Christ. It was a unique problem that required a unique
solution. And to solve it God brought forth a unique man, the Apostle
Paul, and a bunch of lost Gentiles.
The Faith of a Gentile
The introduction of the Gentiles into the middle of the plan of
salvation was God’s way of prying His people’s hands off the Law that
He might give them “a better covenant, which had been enacted on
better promises” (Heb. 8:6). He accomplished this by showing Israel
that a people who neither knew the Law, nor practiced the Law, could
be saved through faith alone.
Saved Gentiles, God knew, would dramatically demonstrate the principle
of faith righteousness like nothing else. And it was vital that His
people, both Jew and Gentile, understood that this faith was a
principle. That we saw that this was how He wanted us to live our
lives from then on. It was not just the way to get saved - but the way
to stay saved and to finish the race! He knew the Jews especially
would lose sight of that in all the excitement of their salvation
unless He made a huge thing of it. The Gentiles were that huge thing.
Now God knew it was not just an identity issue that would cause His
people to skim right over the principle of faith righteousness. The
Jews had also developed a false understanding of the Law over the
centuries that had given them sticky fingers. They thought, because
the Law was righteous, that the keeping of it (which they weren’t
doing anyway) made them righteous. As Paul later explained, “I
bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance
with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking
to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the
righteousness of God” (Rom 10:2,3).
God’s righteousness was different from the righteousness of the Law.
The righteousness of the Law (minus the religious requirements) is a
moral righteousness that demonstrates a godly lifestyle. But if that
righteousness is applied to salvation it becomes self-righteousness.
In other words, although the Law itself is righteous in that it
originated from God, and the practice of it even constituted a form of
righteousness, it was never meant to reward the practitioner with
God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness can only be obtained by
faith. And as we know, “the Law is not of faith” (Gal 3:12).
What is this faith? It is simply saying “Amen” to all the promises of
God, no matter where they are found in the Bible. “For as many are the
promises of God, in Him [Jesus] they are yes; therefore also through
Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20). In
other words, all the riches of the promises God made to Israel are
ours through our faith in Jesus. For salvation. Healing. Peace.
Direction. Deliverance. Wisdom. Etc. If you can find it in the Bible,
it’s yours. But those promises must also be received by faith. They
must be believed in the heart and spoken with the mouth, “For with the
heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the
mouth he confesses [it], resulting in salvation” (Rom 10:10).
With the New Covenant, God provided a way for us to achieve His
righteousness and blessings through faith, and in so doing enabled us
to serve and worship Him apart from the Law. And the Gentiles stepped
into it only by the grace of God.
“What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue
righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is
by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive
at that Law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as
though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Rom
9: 30-32).
Now look at the hubbub the Gentiles caused as they came tumbling into
the ecclesia through Paul’s ministry. Their presence quickly made the
Law the number one issue on the Jewish calendar. The Jews assumed, as
God knew they would, that observance of the Law was still required of
all those who were called by His name. A special meeting even had to
be called in Jerusalem (Acts 15) to resolve the issue. At the council,
those Jewish believers who had not yet separated from the Law demanded
that the Gentiles be circumcised and put into “Law School.”
Thankfully, God had shown the truth to Peter beforehand through the
conversion of the family of Cornelius (Acts 10), so that he was able
to support Paul in his case against imposing the Law upon the
Gentiles. And when the Holy Spirit showed James the same truth during
the meeting (see my article “Rebuilding the Tent of David”), the Law
was officially taken off the table as something required for following
Christ. Only four restrictions were given to the Gentile believers
(Acts 15:29), most likely to avoid offending the Jews who lived in
their midst and adding any unnecessary impediments to them hearing the
gospel or excuses to justify their anger towards the gospel.
Paul’s Gospel Insight
Now if saving the Gentiles represented God’s first step in
establishing the principle of faith righteousness under the New
Covenant, the apostle Paul was step two. Like Moses who was called to
receive and write down the conditions of the Old Covenant, Paul was
given the wisdom and understanding to write down and explain the
conditions of the New Covenant.
It is no secret that Paul had a unique insight on the gospel. When
secular commentators start looking for ways to discredit or blunt the
gospel message, they often accuse Paul of adding his own personal spin
to the gospel that Jesus and the other apostles never preached.
Although Paul freely admits his message was different, it definitely
was not something he conjured up on his own. “The gospel which was
preached by me is not according to man. 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).
So what was it about Paul’s gospel that made it so different he would
on occasion refer to it as “my gospel” (Rom 2:16). Was it in fact
another gospel? Absolutely not! There is only one gospel of salvation,
and it has been preached from the days of Abraham (Gal. 3:8) until
now. There is no other. Paul himself states that “if anyone is
preaching to you a gospel contrary to what we [which includes what the
other apostles were teaching] have preached to you, he is to be
accursed” (Gal. 1:9). Well if Paul wasn’t preaching another gospel,
what was he saying that was different?
The gospel the other apostles were preaching, which was strictly to a
Jewish audience, was a simple gospel of justification by faith. It
explained how a person could get his or her sins permanently cleansed
through faith in the risen Messiah. Listen to the message Peter
preached on the day of Pentecost: “Repent and let each of you be
baptized in Messiah Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins; and you
shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). It was a good
gospel message as far as it went; one you would hear preached in a
Christian church on any given Sunday morning. But it wasn’t a full
amplification of the gospel!
Paul’s gospel, thanks to the revelation given him, not only emphasized
justification by faith, but also sanctification by faith! In
other words, Paul realized that the gift of faith we exercised to get
saved was simply our introduction into a lifetime of walking
with Him by faith - “that we may become acceptable, sanctified by the
Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:16).
“Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have
obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we
stand.” (Rom 5:1,2)
Paul understood, as none of the other apostles did at first, that
their salvation experience by faith had signaled a major change in the
way Israel would now be serving and worshipping God. He knew that when
they believed in Jesus it meant they were exiting the Old Covenant, a
conditional covenant of works, and entering the New Covenant, an
unconditional covenant of faith. And there was no going back. When the
Galatians were being deceived into doing just that, he confronted
them: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now
being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3).
It was Paul’s task to explain the importance of this covenant
transition to the rest of us, both Jew and Gentile, through his
divinely inspired writings, which we now call “the Scriptures.” To
accomplish that goal, Paul based his case on two powerful insights.
Paul’s Double-Barreled Argument
The first argument Paul set out to prove was that the Law was only a
temporary, interim covenant. That it was never meant to become a
permanent way of life for Israel. And his second argument was that the
true “religion” of Israel was always faith righteousness. That if you
wanted to please God and walk in His righteousness, you had to look
back to the faith of Abraham - not to the Rulebook of Moses. Just as
Isaiah had instructed us:
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord: Look
to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you
were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave birth to
you in pain. When he was one I called him, then I blessed him and
multiplied him.” (Isa. 51:1,2)
To establish his first argument that the Law covenant had an
expiration date, Paul reminded everyone that it was fundamentally
different from the covenant God made earlier with Abraham. And even
though the Law did come later, it did not replace the earlier one made
with the Patriarch. Why? Because that second covenant was law-based
requiring strict obedience. And the covenant with Abraham was based on
a promise requiring faith and grace. If the second had indeed replaced
the first it would mean Israel’s inheritance was now based on law and
not on a promise. And that’s not how God set it up.
“What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty
years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by
God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on
law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to
Abraham by means of a promise.” (Gal 3:18, 19)
Paul then asks, why introduce the Law then? His overall teaching, as
I pointed out earlier, was that God needed a way to reveal the
presence and power of sin to cause Israel to despair of ever
overcoming it in her own strength. This odyssey of self discovery, as
Paul described it in Romans Seven, would lead them inevitably to
Messiah. For “Messiah was the end [goal] of the Law for righteousness”
(Rom. 10:4). And since Messiah had come, the goal of the Law in
preparing Israel for His arrival had been met and now could be
retired. Like John the Baptist, He must increase, and it must
decrease. Once the temple was destroyed in 70 AD it was officially
over, because the sacrifices could no longer be offered. And the Law
said you must keep the whole Law or you are guilty of breaking
it all (see Deut 28:15; James 2:10). The Law came as a complete
dinner, not a la carte.
The second argument Paul hammered home was the fact that the Law was
never the primary religion of Israel to begin with. The true
“religion” of Israel pre-dated the Law. It was established when
Abraham first believed and acted on the words spoken to him by God,
and God “reckoned [his faith] to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6; Rom.
4:3). However, this connection of faith to God’s righteousness was not
yet revealed as a principle. That took place when God declared
it so through the prophet Habakkuk: “But the righteous shall live by
his faith” (Hab. 2:4). But even then it largely flew under Israel’s
spiritual radar. After all, it was just one verse among thousands.
Besides, it wasn’t time for that principle to become kingdom law until
Jesus came.
The principle of faith remained an obscure passage buried in the Book
of Habakkuk until Paul quoted it in the opening chapter of his letter
to the Romans, where he positioned it now as the sole
operating principle of Israel’s new covenant relationship
with God through faith in Jesus. “The righteous man shall live [and
keep on living] by faith” (Rom 1:17).
That verse became the heart of Paul’s gospel, and he preached it till
his dying day, to both Jews and Gentiles. As a result, he was
persecuted every step of the way, from both Jews and Gentiles. (It was
that verse, by the way, that opened the eyes of Martin Luther some
fourteen hundred years later and launched the Protestant Reformation.)
Here is what Paul wrote:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation to every one who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to
faith; as it is written: ‘But the righteous man shall live by
faith.’” (Rom 1:16,17)
In emphasizing that a true believer’s walk should be “from faith to
faith,” Paul was dismissing any thought that a follower of Jesus could
return to the Law. It was two completely different ways of living,
which he contrasted in his letter to the Galatians.
“Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident for,
‘The righteous man shall live by faith.” However, the Law is
not of faith, on the contrary, ‘He who practices them [its
commands] shall live by them.” (Gal. 3:11,12)
If you lived by the statutes of the Law, you weren’t living by faith.
And vice versa. They didn’t mix. They were like oil and water. One
relied on works, the other on grace. “If it is by grace, it is no
longer on the basis of works, otherwise it is no longer grace” (Rom
11:6).
Paul understood how dangerous it was for a believer to return to the
Law after believing on Christ, or to any form of religious works-
righteousness. He knew that it would slowly undermine our sole
dependence upon the Lord’s sacrifice for righteousness, and we’d begin
to lean on what we ourselves were doing. If continued long enough, our
initial statement of faith would become meaningless, and we would lose
our righteous standing with God and forfeit our inheritance. We would
become as one not saved.
“For if I rebuild what I was destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor.
For through the Law, I died to the Law. I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and
the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of
God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify
the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law,
Christ died needlessly” (Gal 2:18-21).
Now the Gentile converts as a rule did not have the same problem as
the Jews in disengaging from their former religions of works
righteousness. They realized immediately that their pagan beliefs were
incompatible with the principles of their new “Jewish” faith. So they
would usually abandon their former religious practices pretty quickly
and begin to follow the teaching of the apostles regarding faith
righteousness. Ironically, their biggest problem came from those
Jewish believers who would not depart from the practices of the Law,
and who would try to “bewitch” (Gal 3:1) them into adopting a hybrid
New Covenant Judaism. That’s what was going on with the Galatians, and
why Paul wrote his most combative letter to them, alternately pleading
with them to realize the consequences of their actions, and attacking
the arguments of those Judaizers who were trying to entice his sheep
into a false gospel.
Later, of course, the Gentile believers also stumbled over the stone
of stumbling, just as Paul prophesied.
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but
wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for
themselves teachers in accordance of their own desires; and will turn
away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Tim.
4,3)
It took a couple of centuries, but after the Gentiles had replaced the
Jews in leadership in the ecclesia we began to introduce pagan ideas
into our practices that slowly transformed the community, that once
lived only by faith, into a full-blown ecclesiastical religion called
Christianity. Like New Covenant Judaism (which is making a comeback
today within Messianic Judaism), Christianity promised us a means of
sanctification, and eventually even justification, by works. It proved
Moses was absolutely right when he called us “a foolish nation,” for
this religion has made fools of us all to this very day. From its full
blown inception as Roman Catholicism to all its protesting variations
that did not, unfortunately, protest seriously enough to ever depart
from it.
But I want to return now to the issue that sparked this whole
investigation - the jealousy of the Gentiles.
Zealous to Jealous
As I stated earlier, I realized that the true purpose God had for
making the Jews jealous was not to attract them to the Gospel, but to
cause them to resist it. As I pointed out, jealousy just makes you
angry and resentful. It certainly doesn’t precipitate true sorrow for
ones sins and a genuine humbling of oneself, which are the conditions
needed to get saved.
So how do we explain Paul’s statement, “as an apostle to the Gentiles,
I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow
countrymen and save some of them (Rom 11:14). That seems to
imply a link between making Jews jealous and saving them. Even
suggesting a quick turn around. Like Paul’s slogan was, “save a
Gentile, save a Jew.” But I don’t think that’s what Paul meant.
Part of the problem lies in the word “jealousy.” Sometimes
it is not a bad thing. In Exodus 34:14 we are told “that God is a
jealous God.” And in 1 Corinthians 3:14, Paul declares that “I am
jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one
husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.”
But then we are told that “love is not jealous (1 Cor.
13:4). And in Paul’s list of the sins of the flesh, “jealousy” is
listed right between “strife” and “outbursts” (Gal 5:20). So clearly
there is a fleshly jealousy that is envious and self-centered, and a
jealousy that is protective and concerned for the well being of a
loved one.
It is interesting to discover that the word for “zealous” and
“jealous” come from the same Greek word – zelos. If you recall,
Paul told us that the zeal the Jews had for God “was not
according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). Their “zeal for God” was more a
zeal for the strict adherence to their religious precepts, as the
Pharisees continually demonstrated. So you can see how the gospel of
faith-righteousness that Paul was preaching to the Gentiles, which
promised favor with God apart from observance of the Law, would drive
them nuts. From their perspective, he was preaching heresy. So the
trip from zealous to jealous would be a short emotional trip. You
could say that in magnifying his ministry, Paul was simply trying to
bring the ugly boil of works-righteousness to a head and make it pop.
But again, why did Paul think that if he could move his fellow
countrymen to jealousy he might “save some of them? (Rom
11:14).
To solve this mystery, we have to go back to the original prophecy of
Moses I quoted earlier.
This Is That
Shortly before Moses went home to be with Lord, he told Israel that he
knew they would turn to worshipping false gods after he departed. He
then prophesied about the punishment God would inflict on them for
this great sin. And that the punishment would fit the crime.
“Then God said, ‘I will hide My face from them; I will see what their
end shall be, for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom is no
faithfulness. They have made Me jealous with what is not God. They
have provoked Me to anger with her idols. So I will make them jealous
with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a
foolish nation.’” (Deut. 32:20,21)
Now, as we know, Paul quotes this verse from Deuteronomy in Romans
Chapter Ten to support his contention that the Jews had heard the
gospel and rejected it. Furthermore, he argued that they were without
excuse because they should have realized – based on the evidence of
their own jealousy for the Gentiles - that the prophecy of Moses was
being fulfilled. In other words, their jealousy over these ignorant
Gentiles coming to Christ was the evidence these believing Gentiles
were the “foolish nation” Moses had spoken about.
“But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they? At the first Moses
says, ‘I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation, by a
nation without understanding will I anger you.’ And Isaiah is very
bold and says, ‘I was found by those who sought Me not; I became
manifest to those who did not ask for Me.’ ” (Rom. 10:19,20)
I believe Paul hoped that if he turned up the volume of his ministry
to the Gentles that he might get a few Jews riled up enough so they
would be able to put two and two together and say, “this is that.”
They would realize that the reason these Gentile believers were making
them so hopping jealous mad was because this was God’s righteous
judgment on them. That this was what Moses and Isaiah had told their
forefathers would happen. And in realizing this, they would come more
quickly to their senses, see the error of their ways, repent and be
saved.
Although Paul knew it was a long shot, it was the only hope he had to
save a few of his brethren for whom he had such “great sorrow and
unceasing grief in his heart” (Rom: 9:2). However, he realized most
would not make it. That their time was not now. And he would have to
wait for the “fullness of the Gentiles to come in, for all Israel to
be saved” (Rom 11:25,26).
In a Nutshell
God used the Law to provoke Israel to failure so He could reveal to
them the hidden presence of sin in order to lead them to forgiveness
in Messiah. In the same way, He used the Gentiles to provoke Israel to
jealousy to reveal their hidden dependence on works righteousness, in
order to lead them to unconditional love in Messiah. And isn’t that
the parable of the Prodigal Son? Didn’t the unconditional love of the
father for the wayward brother provoke the law-abiding, stay-at-home
brother to jealousy and anger? Which means that that parable by Jesus
was a prophecy of the restoration of Israel to the Jews (the
law-abiding brother), revealing that soon their wayward brothers would
be coming home to God and would make them jealous. Isn’t God an
amazing God? “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became
His counselor? Or who has given to Him that it might be paid back to
Him again? For through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the
glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:34-36)
A Bonus Revelation
There was a third “mystery” that got solved for me when I finally
understood the true purpose of the Gentile jealousy. This one
concerned the inexplicable reason why centuries before God had
pronounced His ultimate judgment upon the northern kingdom of Israel
by utterly rejecting them as being part of His people and throwing
them out of His land.
As you may recall, God delivered the divorce papers to the northern
kingdom through the names of the prophet Hosea’s children (see Hosea
1: 1-9). The prophet’s first son, Jezreel, was understood to
mean “I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.” His
daughter, Lo-ruhammah, meant “I will no longer have compassion
on the house of Israel.” And his second son, Lo-ammi, meant,
“You are not My people.” Later, Assyria came along and took them all
away and deposited them among the rest of those who were “Not My
People.” Namely, the Gentiles.
Now the reason the judgment was so puzzling was not because they
didn’t deserve it. They did. But because God didn’t do the same to the
southern kingdom of Judah – who were actually worse.
It was the prophet Ezekiel who revealed that Judah was more sinful
than the kingdom of Israel. Even worse than Sodom of Sodom and
Gomorrah (see Ezekiel 16:46-51). But still they weren’t rejected. In
fact, God went out of His way to assure the southern kingdom of His
continued favor by saying through Hosea: “But I will have compassion
on the house of Judah” (Hosea 1:6).
Even later, after the Jews (the descendants of the kingdom of Judah)
committed the ultimate sin by rejecting and turning against their
Messiah, Jesus, even then they were spared and not rejected by God. As
Paul informs us, “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He?
May it never be” (Rom. 11:1).
So if Judah could be that bad and still not get rejected by God, why
was the northern kingdom cut off and scattered among the Gentiles for
its sins? It doesn’t quite make sense, does it? Until you realize once
again God had a problem He needed to solve. Namely, He needed some
descendants of Abraham out there among the Gentiles so He could save
them through Paul’s ministry to make his point about faith
righteousness. And also demonstrate His mercy and grace.
Now you might wonder, why did He need Abraham’s seed among the
Gentiles to make His point? Couldn’t He have just used any old
Gentiles to make that point?” He could have, but His promise to
Abraham was exclusive. “Through Isaac your descendants shall be named”
(Gen. 21:12; Rom 9:9). That meant only those chosen from among that
specific branch of the family could inherit the promises (and that
included salvation in Messiah), thereby excluding all other families
on earth. And even those from that line of the family who God chose
not to include, like Esau.
Paul affirms this understanding that the Gentiles had no part in the
promises of Abraham’s seed in his letter to the Ephesians. He tells
the Gentile believers that:
“Therefore remember, that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who
are called ‘uncircumcision,’ by the so-called ‘circumcision,’ which is
performed in the flesh by human hands – remember that once you were
separate from Messiah, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and
without God in this world. But now in Messiah Jesus you who formerly
were far off have been brought near through the blood of Messiah”
(Eph. 2:12,13).
Now you would no doubt agree the Gentiles
had no part in the promises to Israel before we were included by faith
in Jesus. But you might also say to me, look how Paul defines
“Gentiles.” He calls them
“Gentiles in the flesh.” Doesn’t that automatically mean
these Gentiles were true Gentiles from other families and not lost
descendants? No. When Paul described us as “Gentiles in the flesh” he
is not referring to lineage here but the absence of our circumcision
“which is performed in the flesh.” He was saying our non-circumcision
is what marks us as Gentiles “in the flesh.” Besides, as the missing
Israelites we could still be legitimately described as “Gentiles in
the flesh” simply because we are physical human beings who had been
banished to live among the nations. When God declared us “not My
people” we were then spiritually and physically to be considered
Gentiles.
Again, let us not forget that the
promises God made to the family of Abraham through Isaac were
exclusive to his family.
And if they were exclusive, they can’t be
inclusive at the same
time. That means true Gentiles can never be included! No more than the
promises can be inherited by following a covenant based on law. “for
if the inheritance is based on Law, it is no longer based on a
promise; but God has granted it to Abraham based on a promise” (Gal.
3:18). That’s just how God set it up!
The proof of the pudding for me is found in his words “you who
formerly were far off (Eph. 2:13).” Paul was using code language that
any Jew would have instantly recognized. It was a clear reference to
the scattered descendants of the Northern kingdom.
You’ll find this phrase used in the intercessory prayer of Daniel
after he realized Judah’s 70 years of hard labor in Babylon were up.
Acknowledging that God’s punishment was not only righteous for Judah,
but for all Israel, he cried out, “Righteousness belongs to You, O
Lord, but to us open shame, as it is this day – to the men of Judah,
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near by
and those far away in all the countries to which You have driven
them, because of their unfaithful deeds which they have committed
against You” (Dan 9:7).
Paul also repeats the phrase in Ephesians when he quotes Isaiah who
had prophesied that the chosen descendants of the two nations would
become one in Messiah: “He came and preached peace to you who were
far away (the lost ten tribes), and to you who were near
(the Jews)” (Eph 2:17; Isa. 57:19). This reiterated what all the
prophets had said, starting with Hosea, that one day God would go and
find the banished ten tribes of the northern kingdom again and reunite
them with Judah.
“Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the
sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; And it will come about
that, in the place where it is said to them, ‘You are not My people,’
it will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of the living God.’ And the
sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, and
they will appoint for themselves one leader [Messiah Jesus], and they
will go up from the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.” (Hos.
1:10,11)
And who today are called the “sons of God” but “Christians?” In fact,
Paul quotes that verse in Romans 9:26, applying it directly to the
Gentile believers. This tells me Paul knew exactly who the Gentiles
were.
Understanding that God had to have descendants of Isaac scattered
among the Gentiles to get saved to make Judah jealous to deliver us
all from our addiction to works righteousness, for me explains why
Israel was rejected, and Judah was not. “For God has shut up all in
disobedience that He might show mercy to all” (Rom 11:32).
And when will He show mercy to all Israel? In looking to the prophetic
story of Joseph again we see that a time did come when the family of
Jacob was reconciled and restored. So it seems to me that just as God
put Joseph in Egypt so that in His perfect timing He could provide
bread to save all Israel from the famine, so too He has put Jesus into
the Gentile world so that through us He could provide the Bread of
Life and save all Israel again.
“The Deliverer will come from Zion [us], He will remove ungodliness
from Jacob, and this is My covenant with them, when I take away their
sins.” (Rom 11:26,27)
Jeremiah had prophesied this forgiveness and reconciliation for all
Israel, also:
“In those days and at that time, declares the Lord, search will be
made for the iniquity of Israel [the northern kingdom], but there will
be none; and for the sins of Judah [the southern kingdom], but they
will not be found; for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.”
(Jer. 50: 20)
Paul informs us this will occur once the full number of His people who
had been lost among the Gentiles have been found and brought to
Messiah. That is when God will provide the grace needed for the
Jews to repent and finally receive their Messiah. And then “all Israel
will be saved” (Rom. 11:25,26).
I believe we’re there now.
June, 2009
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