Gentiles

Acts 10:45 states:

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.

This has been a long time coming, so long in fact that the Jewish people were unaware of it. If we go back to one of my favorite reference points of the Old Testament, Genesis 12:3, we read God's promise to Abram:

I will bless those who bless you,
   and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
   will be blessed through you.”

Not being an Old Testament scholar (or a New Testament one either, for that matter), I can state that I had never fully understood the import of that verse that we read so long ago. The Jewish people clearly understood that verse to refer to them, but it's hard to argue that "all peoples" wouldn't have a future meaning that would expand the covenant beyond just the Jews.

Through Peter and Paul, God was preparing the way for the spread  of the Gospel to ALL who believe, not just those of a given ancestry. This was intentional--when we refer back to the Pentecost passages, Acts 2:14 makes it clear that Peter was at that time speaking only to the Jews. However, in the vision that God gave to Peter, it was time to expand the audience, and he was going to use an unwilling Peter in order to do it. We will read how this will cause some rifts in the early church in the weeks to come, but God's message was clear and indisputable--Jesus died and rose again for ALL believers.

In the modern world, what then is a Gentile? We all are, in the sense that very few of us are of Jewish ancestry, but also in the fact that we all look to God as "our own." There's not a religion that doesn't claim to be the one true religion, some just say it more gently than others. We used to run this ad in the paper, I'm guessing sometime in the 50s or 60s:

 

It's an interesting way to answer the question that was chosen, but every denomination (except the Catholic church--they claim they aren't a denomination since they're the only true church) claims some form of exclusivity to God, when the truth is we're ALL wrong in one manner or another. Christianity is belief in God--religion is our man-made attempts to understand and comprehend the divinity and mystery of God, and since they're man-made, ALL religions will be wrong in one manner or another. 

Lucky for us, it isn't our religion that will grant us eternity with Christ, indeed, it isn't ANYTHING we do. As a consequence, a Gentile these days is anyone who differs from us on any level--race, creed, color, nationality, anything that separates us, and just as God told Peter he was to minister to the Gentiles of his day, we're instructed to do the same exact thing. When Jesus told the apostles to make disciples of all nations, he meant ALL, and he didn't mean just back then either. Until he comes back, that's our job as well.

Scott