Gentiles

Israel and the Nations in the Old Testament

'Gentile' translates Hebrew and Greek words simply meaning 'nations' — everyone who is not part of Israel, God's covenant people. The Old Testament holds two threads together about them: real separation (Israel was called out from the nations and warned against adopting their idolatry) and a real, standing promise that blessing would eventually reach them too. God's original call to Abram already contained this — 'in you all the families of the earth will be blessed' (Genesis 12:3) — and the prophets repeatedly envisioned a day when the nations would come to worship the God of Israel (Isaiah 49:6; 60:3), even while most of the Old Testament's own narrative focuses on Israel alone.

The Gospel Opens to the Gentiles

Acts records this promise beginning to unfold as a genuine turning point for the early, entirely Jewish church. Peter's vision and subsequent visit to Cornelius, a Roman centurion, results in Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit the same way Jewish believers had at Pentecost — astonishing 'those of the circumcision who believed,' since 'the gift of the Holy Spirit was also poured out on the Gentiles' (Acts 10:44-45). This event became the case study the Jerusalem church had to reckon with: was God really including Gentiles as full, equal members of his people, without first requiring them to become Jewish through circumcision and law-keeping?

The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) settled the question decisively. After hearing Peter, Paul, and Barnabas testify to God's work among Gentile believers, James cites the prophets' own promise that 'all the Gentiles who are called by my name' would seek the Lord (Acts 15:17, quoting Amos 9:11-12), and the council concludes 'we don't trouble those from among the Gentiles who turn to God' with the burden of the full Mosaic law (Acts 15:19). Paul's letter to the Ephesians describes the result theologically: Gentile believers, once 'far off,' 'strangers from the covenants of promise,' are now brought near by Christ's blood, who 'made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation' — abolishing in his own flesh the hostility between Jew and Gentile, creating 'one new man' out of the two (Ephesians 2:11-16).

Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles

Paul repeatedly identifies his own calling specifically as apostleship 'to the Gentiles' (Romans 11:13), and Romans 9-11 wrestles at length with how Gentile inclusion relates to Israel's own place in God's plan: Israel's partial, temporary hardening became the occasion for 'salvation' to reach the Gentiles (Romans 11:11), while Paul insists this is not God's final or complete rejection of Israel, anticipating that 'all Israel will be saved' in God's own timing (Romans 11:25-26). Paul's missionary strategy of going 'to the Jew first, and also to the Greek' in city after city (Romans 1:16) reflects this same conviction: the gospel is for Gentiles too, without in any sense abandoning God's ongoing purposes for the Jewish people.

Scripture references

• Genesis 12:3 — Abram's call promises blessing to 'all the families of the earth'
• Isaiah 49:6 — The Servant to be 'a light to the Gentiles'
• Acts 10:44-45 — Cornelius's household receives the Spirit; Jewish believers astonished
• Acts 15:1-29 — The Jerusalem Council: Gentile believers not bound by the law of Moses
• Ephesians 2:11-16 — Christ breaks down the 'middle wall of separation' between Jew and Gentile
• Romans 11:11-26 — Gentile inclusion and Israel's place in God's ongoing plan

Further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Gentile
• Got Questions: Who are the Gentiles?