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).

          But the jealousy issue, which I’ll come back to shortly, also 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 who 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, 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 the Lord 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 understand why He did what he did. And the mystery is solved.

          To understand God’s purpose for inserting the Gentiles into the middle of His plan of salvation, we have to go back to Mount Sinai and see how God used the Mosaic Law to solve another problem – 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 “dumb” 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. He accomplished that 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 to give them any more excuses for justifying their anger towards them and 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, raising up 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 made it 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 included 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 it did come later, it did not replace the first. Why? Because that second covenant was law-based. And the covenant with Abraham was based on a promise requiring faith. 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 screen. After all, it was just one verse among thousands. Besides, it wasn’t time for it to become kingdom law until Jesus came.

          The principle of faith remained an obscure passage in 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. And suffered persecution for it 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.)

“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 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 was based 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. 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 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.

          But later the Gentile believers stumbled over their own 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 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 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 a prophecy of Moses.

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 Paul quotes this verse from Deuteronomy in support of his contention that the Jews had not only heard the Gospel (and rejected it). But that they should realize that their jealousy for the Gentiles is evidence that the prophecy of Moses was being fulfilled. That these bozo 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. 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). Because 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? 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 Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, 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.

          Now you might ask, “why did He need Abraham’s seed among the Gentiles? Couldn’t He have just used real 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).

          Well, how do we know these “Gentiles” weren’t just ordinary Gentiles being invited in?  Especially since Paul begins by addressing them, “That formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh.” Doesn’t that automatically mean these Gentiles were true Gentiles, both spiritually and physically? No. As our missing Israelites, they could be addressed as “Gentiles in the flesh” because they were human beings who had been spiritually and physically declared to be “not My people,” and banished to live as Gentiles in all the nations where they were scattered. And again I remind you, the promises God made to the family of Abraham through Isaac were exclusive. If they were exclusive, they can’t be inclusive. That means true Gentiles could never be included! Any more than the promises can be received by following a covenant based on law. Because that’s not 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 four verses later 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