The nations

The word "Gentiles" simply means the nations: everyone who is not ethnically part of Israel. It sounds like a category of outsiders, and for much of the Old Testament story, that is exactly how it functions. But even from the beginning, the Gentiles were never meant to stay outside for good.

God's call to Abraham already points outward. In Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Israel is chosen, but not chosen to keep the blessing to itself: chosen to carry it to everyone else. The prophets pick up the same note centuries later. Isaiah says of God's servant that he is given "for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6). The mission was written into the story before most of Israel's history had even happened.

When Jesus is a baby, brought to the temple, the old man Simeon holds him and calls him "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel" (Luke 2:32): Jew and Gentile named in the same breath, both blessed by the same child. Jesus finishes his earthly ministry with the same widened scope, sending his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19). The good news was never meant to stop at a border.

The book of Acts shows this promise breaking into real history, and it is not tidy. Peter has to be shown a vision before he will go to a Gentile household, and even then he needs convincing: "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34). When he reports back to the other apostles, their response is astonished relief; God has granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles too (Acts 11:18). Paul takes the message further still, quoting an older word about himself: he is set to be a light of the Gentiles (Acts 13:47).

Paul's letters spell out what this means in practice. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16). And in Christ, the old dividing line dissolves: there is neither Jew nor Greek, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). To the Ephesians, once Gentile outsiders themselves, Paul writes that they who were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13). Distance is not the last word; nearness is.

The whole story ends the way it began: with the nations. John sees a great multitude, too large to number, of every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9). What started as a promise to one man's family becomes, in Christ, a gathering too large to count. The Gentiles were never an afterthought. They were the point, all along, of a blessing that could never stay small.