ANNOUNCER: Are Jewish believers and Gentile believers in the Church age any different? Are there any distinctions? What do you think? Let’s discuss it today on Grace in Focus. Grace in Focus is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society and our website is faithalone.org. Find our bookstore and pre-order your copy of the Grace Old Testament Commentary Volume One. This is a pre-order, it ends May 1st, and you will get a discount if you get your pre-order in by that time, May 1st. Also our national annual conference is coming up on May 18th through the 21st. Online registration ends on May 7th. Our theme this year is “Believe in Christ for Life.” We also have VBS for the kids. Their theme is rewards and crowns. Let us know if your kids are coming and get registered as soon as possible at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, we’ve got a question from Ron and the question, we’ll be in Galatians for this, but his question, let me read it is, if a Jew today becomes a believer in Jesus, is there any way in which he is distinct from a Gentile believer during the Church age? And he says he’s thinking about this based on Galatians 3:28. So let me read Galatians 3:28 and then we’ll get into it. Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

BOB: Okay, so Galatians 3:28 is a very famous verse, and it’s widely used. It is sometimes used to suggest there’s no distinction between Jews and Gentiles. However, I think Ron in his own question says, he thinks not, that we should not see distinctions, doesn’t he say that, in light of that, we wouldn’t see distinctions. 

And I guess it depends on what you mean by distinctions. If you mean are Jewish believers better than Gentile believers during the Church age, or are Jewish believers to be more honored than Gentile believers, something like that, then the answer would be no, all believers are equal in the body of Christ, all have equal honor, that sort of thing, all have equal standing. 

But it’s different to say, are they all the same. Look at verse 28, there’s what is it? Three different couplets, right? One is you’ve got Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, right? So you’ve got three different groups. 

So let’s consider the other two first and then come back to the Jew and Gentile. When you think of male and female, Paul writes about distinctions between the way males and females are to be treated in the church. For example, only older males can be elders in the local church. Young men cannot be elders in the local church. Boys cannot be elders in the local church. Only what he calls presbuteron or presbuteroi in plural. Only those can be leaders who are the teaching and ruling members of the church and they have to be male and they have to be older. 

And he also says, for example, that older women should teach younger women. So that’s a distinction. He doesn’t have older men teaching younger women. He’s got older women teaching younger women. In 1 Timothy 5, he says that widows are to be put on a list to receive financial support. Only if they’ve been the wife of one man. So if they’ve married multiple men, then they’re not permitted. But he says nothing about widowers being put on the list. The same thing in Acts chapter seven, isn’t it where they pick the first deacons? Is it Acts six? What’s the verse that says they pick the first deacons? Is it Acts 6:3? They pick men full of wisdom in the Holy Spirit. 

SAM: Verse two is, “Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, ‘It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business,’ ” and then they name all the names. 

BOB: And what was this business, wasn’t it the distribution to the widows? 

SAM: Yes, see, because the widows were neglected in their daily distribution. 

BOB: Okay, notice it says nothing about widowers being neglected. So that’s a distinction Paul makes. And he makes lots of distinctions between males and females. Females are not to be teaching in the worship service. Whatever you call that, like in most American churches that would be the sermon during the worship service. Women are to keep silent during that, according to what Paul says. So Paul clearly has distinctions between males and females. He even, and Peter as well, discusses how women are to dress and they’re to dress modestly and that sort of thing for the, in the church service. 

And then you’ve got slave and free. Well, Paul, as well as Peter, talk about the fact that he gives some instructions on how slaves are to treat their masters and also some instructions on how masters are to treat their slaves. They’re not the same. And so there are distinctions. But when you’re in the local church, the slave is on equal footing with the master in the church. The woman is on equal footing with the man in the local church, even though they may have different responsibilities and roles in the local church, yet they are equal, and the same thing with slave and free. 

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BOB: Jews and Gentiles are one in the body of Christ, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t distinctions. For example, in the first century, about zero Gentile males were circumcised. But of the Jews, essentially 100% were circumcised of the males. Also, of course, there’s distinctions in the way Jews and Gentiles dressed in the first century. And there’s in some countries a difference between the way Jews and Gentiles would dress. For example, if you’re in a Muslim country, the men and women are gonna dress differently than if you’re in the United States, or if you were in, let’s say, Japan, or if you were in Israel, the style of dress is not the same. But yet, if you’re a born-again person and you’re in a Muslim country, you may dress differently, but you’re still a born-again person. 

So I would say that Paul is not saying that Jews and Gentiles have no distinctions. For example, some Jewish Christians eat kosher, right? They think that it’s important for them to follow the dietary laws, even though it’s not required, but some of them may think it is, and they follow kosher practices. And there are actually Gentiles who follow, Islamic people, who follow what’s pretty close to kosher practices. And so the point is, there are distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, between slave and free, which today I think we would say between the boss and the employees, or maybe between the rich and the poor or something, and there are distinctions along ethnic lines, along gender lines too.

SAM: Yeah, but the important part of what he is talking about in Galatians is, within the body of Christ, and I think verse 29, if we keep moving, gives even more clarity what he’s really talking about, where it says, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” So what he’s making clear here is it’s not just Jews that are the descendants of Abraham in this sense, the seed that was promised, it’s all believers. And then he goes on in chapter four to talk about the two covenants of the two women. 

So there’s a lot of language in here that’s making it clear that God’s plan for Abraham’s seed goes beyond just the actual blood-related people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s the believers who are one in the body of Christ, and because the issues that the church in Galatia, that these church or churches were facing, is that people were still segregating Jews and Gentiles, you know, Peter wasn’t eating with the Gentiles, when he knew he should have been, Paul calls him out, but there was even more than that, they were separating them on things like circumcision, trying to require Gentiles to be circumcised. 

So those were all conflicts and divisions in the church that didn’t need to take place.  It’s Paul saying, look, we’re all Abraham’s promised seed, we’re all believers, we’re all one in the body of Christ, doesn’t matter if you’re a Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman. So those, in this context, that’s where there’s no division. 

So back to Ron’s question for a Jew today, because this is, you know, what Paul, when Paul was writing, this is what we would consider the Church age, the age of the apostles, but still the Church age. But for today, if someone is Jewish, they’re born Jewish, maybe they grew up under the practice of Judaism, but convert and believe in Christ for everlasting life, and they’re now a believer in what ways are they distinct from a Gentile believer, I think is his question. 

BOB: And the answer is they’re the same except for the fact, they’re ethnically different, they have a different ethnic history. It’s kind of like saying, is there a difference between being, let’s say, an Aboriginal Christian, or an African Christian, or a Chinese Christian, or a Japanese Christian, and they’re all ethnically different. Even if you think of people in Asia, there’s a big difference between being Chinese and being Japanese, or between being Japanese and being Indian, or Indian and even Pakistani, which they have the same ethnicity, but they have different religious positions. 

Let me mention one other point real quick. We’re talking about now. Everyone needs to understand, we’re not talking about the coming kingdom. In the coming kingdom, there will be a separate nation called Israel, and it will be made up of people who are Jewish, not Christian, and they will be Jewish believers in the Messiah. And so anybody who died before the birth of the Church that was Jewish, they’re gonna be Jewish forever, and they’re gonna be part of Israel, not the church, and any Jew that comes to faith during the Tribulation, same thing, or during the Millennium, same thing. And Gentiles who died before the birth of the Church, but they were believers in the Messiah, they’re gonna be part of the nations forever. They won’t be part of the Church. The Church doesn’t replace Israel. That’s important to recognize. 

But during this age, yes, Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing in the body of Christ. We’re all one, we’re all sons of God, we’re all children of God, and we all have equal access. 

Well, I hope that helps Ron, I think it’s a great question, and Sam, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: can we see God’s wrath today? Join us again next time, and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.