Main news for 29 May 2026

Paul's words about salvation sent to the Gentiles are sometimes perceived as a kind of spiritual revolution. Yet there is nothing entirely new or unusual in them. The prophets said more than once that with the coming of the Messiah the Kingdom would be opened not only to Jews, but also to Gentiles who at that time would turn to the God of Israel. What was unusual in this case was only the fact that recent Gentiles were ready to accept the Messiah whom the Jews had rejected. From the standpoint of the views generally accepted in the Synagogue at that time, this seemed almost unbelievable: for it was the Jews who accepted the Messiah, it was they who were to decide who the true Messiah was, and those Gentiles who were interested in Judaism and worshiped the God of Israel were, by definition, left only to humbly accept the choice of their elder spiritual brothers.

In reality, everything turned out quite differently: recent Gentiles accepted the Messiah more readily than Jews did. One reason for this was precisely the Gentiles' freedom from those religious theories and concepts that at times so hindered Jews from seeing the Messiah in Jesus. And Paul sees no violation of subordination in bearing witness to Gentiles where Jews do not accept his witness, or where they have not yet made up their minds. The issue here is not even priorities, not who should hear first (and it should be noted that both always heard, since Paul always began his preaching in the local synagogue), but the fact that no one has the right to close the road to the Kingdom to others.

The apostle constantly reminds his readers of this in his letters: he keeps saying that the circumcised, that is, religious people, Jews, must not impose their religiosity on secular people, the uncircumcised, Gentiles. And if Paul now made the possibility of witnessing to Gentiles depend on the sanction of the local Jewish community, it would mean that he was making the Kingdom depend on religion. The apostle, of course, could not allow that, because he understood perfectly well that Christianity is not a religion and does not depend in any way on a person's religiosity. And if some part of the Synagogue, guided solely by religious considerations, closed the path to the Kingdom for those who were ready to go, such a state of affairs would contradict not only all the apostle's principles but also the will of God, who wants to save everyone regardless of that person's religious affiliation and regardless of the opinion of that person's fellow believers about the path he has chosen.

In essence, to refuse to preach in such a situation would have been, for the apostle, tantamount to betraying his witness and the people who believed his witness. It is no surprise that Paul continued his preaching: for him the Kingdom came first, not nation and not religion.