In Ephesians 2, Paul talks about how God’s grace extends to Gentiles. It brings them into “one body”, which also contains those who were saved under the old covenant.
Was the old covenant an exclusive club?
I once listened to a speaker at a church talk about how in the Old Testament, Christianity was like a private club, where only certain people were allowed to join. But in the New Testament, membership is now open to everyone.
When I heard that, my first thought was Nineveh. At the time of Jonah, the people of that city were full of “wickedness” and, despite not being the chosen people of the Old Testament, they repented. The inference, though not explicitly written, is surely that there is an opportunity for them to be saved eternally.
Quite how we think about that is another question. Should we consider them as being “in Israel” and guided by the old covenant?
Craig S. Keener, in the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says that “some Gentiles had joined God’s people” in the Old Testament but that “most other Gentiles remained outside God’s covenant, even if they attended synagogue and were considered destined for eternal life; most Jewish people would not consider them as on the same level as full Jews. In Christ, Israel’s ultimate king, however, even Gentile followers became full members of God’s people and covenant”.
But Paul makes the point that, in practice, non-Gentiles were without God in the world and “without hope” before the new covenant came into being. He says that when they were labelled “uncircumcised” they (verses 12-13, NIV) “were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
God, in his new covenant, has replaced all the ritual synagogue stuff and circumcision, which Paul calls “the law with its commands and regulations” with what Jesus did on the cross.
Jesus brings Jew and Gentile together
Both covenants, new and old, are covenants of grace. What they provide, Paul emphasises, is not earned but “the gift of God”. And now, with Jesus’s death, “creates in himself one new humanity” out of both Jewish and Gentile followers “to reconcile both of them to God through the cross”.
Paul ends the chapter with the explanation that Jew and Gentile followers of God are now together part of God’s household, built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles (i.e. the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures come together) with Jesus as the “chief cornerstone”.
God’s grace is for all
What we might learn from all this is that God is not worried about people’s background and his offer of grace is offered to all. God, who created humankind in his image, told Abraham – the first patriarch in the Old Testament – that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3, NIV).
Contrary to setting up an exclusive club, God set up what became the Israel of the Old Testament to bless the rest of the world. It’s a prediction that ultimately came true through Jesus’s death, the most significant act to have occurred in human history.
John Stott makes the point that there were “nationalistic Jews who believed themselves to be God’s privileged favourites and forgot God’s original promise to bless all earth’s families”.
Stott says: “In our day there are other versions of the monopoly spirit of which we need to repent, e.g. racism, nationalism, tribalism, classism and parochialism, together with the pride and prejudice which are the cause of these narrow horizons. The truth is that God loves the whole world, desires all people to be saved, and so commands us to preach the gospel to all the nations and to pray for their conversion.”