Acts 22:17-23

Everything seemed fine until Paul mentioned the word “Gentiles.” Why would the fact that God wanted to take the message to the Gentiles upset them so?

Remember, Paul is in this predicament because the Jews thought he was ignoring God’s laws and had brought a Gentile into the Temple. This statement seemed to confirm their suspicions.

However, the real issue at hand was not that God wanted to include other nations in His covenant promises—He had promised that to Abraham. It was more the fact that they didn’t have to become Jews first. That was where the real rub was. On top of that, the nation of Israel had suffered greatly under Gentile rule and was now under Rome. Their expectation was that the Messiah, when He came, would deliver them from Gentile oppression. That didn’t happen when Jesus came, so they rejected Him. And now Paul was explaining that God’s promises were available to the Gentiles apart from the Mosaic Law. Yeah, that might upset them.

Paul enlightens us in Romans 11:11:

“Did God’s people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! They were disobedient, so God made salvation available to the Gentiles. But he wanted his own people to become jealous and claim it for themselves.”

Change is always hard. Nothing was taking place that hadn’t already been foretold in the Old Testament, and yet many of the Jews were so hard-hearted that God had to shake them out of their stupor another way.

Unfortunately, this tension between Jew and Gentile still exists today—a tension I personally experienced on a trip to Israel a few years ago. While in Jerusalem, a religious Jewish man overheard some of us speaking about Messianic Jews and asked for clarification about what that meant. My husband said plainly that they were Jews who believed in Jesus. His reaction was immediate and filled with disdain when he said, “You all believe in a dead Jew!”

He was only partially right. He was dead, but He lives again! That is the message!

And that was the message Paul was trying to convey. The Messiah they were waiting for had come, but not in the way they expected. They wanted deliverance from Gentile rule; Jesus came to deliver them from sin. They expected the Gentiles to come under Judaism; instead, God was inviting both Jew and Gentile to come to Him through Christ.

Sometimes our greatest obstacle to recognizing what God is doing is what we have already decided He should be doing. Everything happening had been foretold in Scripture, yet their traditions, expectations, and prejudices made it difficult for them to see it.

We have to guard against the same thing. God’s truth does not change, but sometimes our understanding needs to.When Scripture challenges what we have always believed, are we willing to examine our thinking and let God’s Word have the final say?

The Gospel leveled the playing field. Jew and Gentile alike needed the same Savior, and neither could earn their way in.

That is the beauty of grace—we all come to God the same way: through Jesus.