Finding Oneness

One New Man is a Biblical promise, yet how has it panned out in reality…? 

In terms of the relationship between Jew and Gentile, there are two key passages of Scripture. We have the One New Man of Ephesians 2, of course, but we also have the warnings to the Gentiles given in Romans 11. Taking the two together and using the tools of form and function I believe we can formulate a pretty good summary and way forwards in our search for ‘Oneness’.

We start off with the form. What is the form of a Jew and a Gentile? Who is a Jew and who is a Gentile? Paul gives us a good clue in Ephesians: Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands). (Ephesians 2:11)

The Jews are the circumcised ones, the ones with the physical mark. It is a physical indicator, not something that is chosen or spiritualised or imagined or even hoped for. Ironically the Nazis got right to the point with the Nuremberg Laws, forbidding ‘impure’ relations between Jews and Germans. For them a Jew is someone with three or four Jewish grandparents, it was purely a matter of blood not religion. So should it be for us, a bloodline, just like the one that connected Jesus to his forbears? This makes it easy for us to decide who is a Gentile… everybody else who isn’t a Jew.

Oh, if it were only this straightforward for some. It is beyond irony to realise that despite Jewish people being those most hated, reviled and persecuted in history, there are some who even wish to hijack their very identity. We have the anathema of Replacement Theology, taking many forms, and asserting that the Gentile Church is the ‘New Israel’, thus stripping away any spiritual identity Jewish people may have in God’s purposes and rendering ‘null and void’ many of the cast-iron promises that God gave the Jews in the Old Testament.

There’s more that draws us together …

So a Jew is a Jew and a Gentile is a Gentile. Now for the function. This is where it gets interesting and where we broaden our outlook, looking at individual Jews and Gentiles, but also at the Jewish and Gentile people as a whole.

As individuals it is easy, but often misunderstood. The clue is in Galatians: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

For an individual, in terms of your salvation and your place in God’s purposes, we are all the same, there is no difference in Jew or Gentile. We all share in the same function: And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Our function as Christians is to be transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus, our model. Does this also mean that, in Christ, our form is not fixed, with our goal to achieve the form of Jesus himself? No, we need to think about form in a physical sense. We are physically and biologically either Jew or Gentile and although we wish to be transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus, this is not a physical transformation, but a functional change, through the process of sanctification.

Yet there’s something strange going on …

There is only one rider to this, a controversial one and a mystery to all, save God Himself. In terms of the impact that individual Jews have made on our world – for good and for bad – there is something going on there. Perhaps it is an outworking of God’s blessings to Abraham (Genesis 12 etc.), or perhaps it can be explained in other terms, the fact is that … it is a fact. It has been estimated that 22% of all Nobel Prize winners in the 20th Century were Jewish, a people who comprise just 0.19% of the population! There is definitely something going on here!

Romans 11 provides an emphasis, that perhaps alludes to this: For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15)

Life from the dead! But there’s a warning for the Gentiles: Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. (Romans 11:20,21) It’s a warning to Gentiles that fell on deaf ears mostly. It is virtually a prophecy and God knew that Gentiles would fail here, that they would, in their arrogance, act against the natural branches, the Jews. I don’t see much trembling, perhaps there’s still a judgement coming on the Church? However you view this, perhaps the Gentile church still has a function to perform here? Those who have preserved the remnant Church largely have a good track record regarding their Jewish brethren, but perhaps there is more they can do to educate the rest of the Church and bring it to acknowledgement and repentance on the heinous crimes of their forebears and perhaps their current indifference (and maybe worse).

An unfulfilled promise

It has always been a puzzle for me that One New Man never seemed to find true fulfilment in history. The first generation of believers were Jewish and a critical issue that arose was ‘what to do with these Gentiles’? Once basic methodologies were established by the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, Gentiles began trickling, then flooding into the Church. Then we move into post-Biblical history, where there is an initial silence, followed by reports of an established Church run by the Gentile Church Fathers in the 2nd Century onwards, with every intent of purging all Jewishness from their thoughts and practices. Where was One New Man all this time? Did it flourish briefly during those silent years of transition … or had it not happened at all? It appears that, after that first generation, the Jewish and Gentile believers began to move apart, even physically, especially since the Jews flew to Pella in the east, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in AD70. From that point onwards, sadly, the Jews exit stage left for the remainder of the performance that was Church history. The Diaspora, the Galut, became a spiritual one as well as a physical one.

Does this mean that Paul, in Ephesians 2, was writing specifically about a fulfilment that may only just be flickering into existence a full 2,000 years later?

Let us revisit Ephesians and cut back on some of Paul’s flowery and devotional language and instead concentrate on the key concepts being developed. The story that begins to unfold is that in the context of God’s masterplan to bring unity to His creation (Ephesians 1:9-10), the major thrust is God’s own answer to that question, ‘what to do with these Gentiles’? The Jews were a given, they were the near people, the natural branches and the natural inheritors of the promise. God’s intentions were wrapped up in the mystery of the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:6), how the far people, the unnatural branches can be grafted in as an equal partner in the ‘Grand Undertaking’ of the Body of Christ, the great temple of believers.

Is there a way back?

Most Gentiles probably don’t understand what a privilege they have been granted, yet they must have known that right at the beginning, when Paul was first revealing his revelation. Yet how quickly this went sour and the Gentile Church was eventually responsible for creating a “Church of Unnatural Branches”, Christendom, the power structures that have dominated most of Church history. They have made a mockery out of a mystery and surely the promises of those chapters are still yet to be fulfilled, when Jew and Gentile can truly be reconciled in Unity: His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. (Ephesians 3:10-12)

This is a major declaration and speaks of a time when even the demonic world is going to sit up and notice, because it is going to see a church in true unity, characterised by the one-ness of the One New Man, of Jew and Gentile. This, I believe, is still in the future, but, perhaps a future fast approaching.

If these things can begin to happen then I believe we can finally see a shalom of Oneness emerging in God’s Church and a loud message proclaimed to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. The message is this: watch out, we have finally got our act together!

This is an abridged extract from Steve’s new book, Shalom, available at the end of March from all good Christian bookshops or from the website www.sppublishing.com