In some ways, Gentiles have always been a part of God’s story. When Moses parted the Red Sea to make a way for the children of Israel to escape Egypt, Jewish tradition makes note of the Erev Rav: those not of Jewish descent who chose to escape alongside the Children of Israel. Perhaps most notably, even the Savior’s lineage includes four important and faithful Gentile women: Tamar, Rahab Ruth, and Bathsheba. To be the ancestor of Yeshua is no small part to play in the story of humankind. Yet there were, and have always been, barriers between the Gentile in the Jew. Today, Gentiles are not full members of the Jewish community and cannot participate in many things unless they convert.
Galatians 3:28 proclaims,
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NIV)
And no better story reveals the importance of unity in Christ than that of Cornelius and Peter.
In the book of Acts, in the early days of the Gospel being spread, Cornelius was a Roman centurion — a Gentile — who had a vision of an angel of the Lord. The angel told him to send people to Joppa to find Peter. In the meantime, Peter had his own vision:
[Peter] became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they were preparing something, he fell into a trance. He saw the Heavens opened, and something like a great sheet coming down, lowered by its four corners to the earth. In it were all sorts of four-footed animals and reptiles and birds of the air.
A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
But Peter said, “Certainly not, Lord! For never have I eaten anything unholy or unclean.”
Again a voice came to him, a second time: “What God has made clean, you must not consider unholy.” This happened three times, and the sheet was immediately taken up to Heaven. — Acts 10:10–16 TLV
Soon, men arrived where Peter was, asking him to return to Cornelius’s house. Upon arriving there, seeing a large crowd, and hearing of Cornelius’s experience, he said, “’You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean’” (NIV). Their corresponding visions helped Peter to see that God does not favor one over another, and the Holy Spirit came to those who listened that day.
Cornelius’s vision flew in the face of what Judaism taught, but it served to bring unity — Jew, and Gentile together as followers of Yeshua.
This unity of God’s people created a wildfire of transformation. I hold firmly to the fact that God’s presence, power, and provision are in direct proportion to the unity of His people.
I believe one of the reasons we don’t see the kind of revival we desire is because Adam and Eve, Jew and Gentile, are not partnering together. They are not unified. We cannot be genuinely fruitful without each other.
Jesus gave us the Great Commission. He said,
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:19–20 NKJV, emphasis added
We can’t fulfill Yeshua’s command if we are apart from each other. In a sorely divided world, may we, as God’s people, work harder in unity to accomplish our assigned mission.
Excerpted with permission from The God of the Way by Kathie Lee Gifford and Rabbi Jason Sobel.
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