NOTES for Act 13:48
As seen, the sermon of the apostles touched the hearts not only of the Jews, but also the gentiles. There is of course nothing surprising here: because the Kingdom was revealed from the beginning to whoever was ready to rely on the Savior. Another thing is interesting: these people coming to the Church, who were still recently gentiles are perceived by the holy writer as an integral part of the new people of God, as those who were "ordained" to the eternal life, the life of the Kingdom. In principle, there is of course nothing particularly extraordinary in such vision of the Church, as new people of God. The people of God, according to the representations generally accepted in those days in the synagogue environment, were conceived by God even before the world, as well as the Messiah. And the Church already during the life of the first Christian generation transferred this understanding on itself too, as the new people of God. But in regard to the Gentiles, the situation was not so unambiguous. Of course, the prophets said many a time that with the coming of the Messiah the gentiles will address the God of Israel and will enter the people of God as its integral part.
But such an entry did not apparently mean that God's plan in regard to the people of God included from the beginning the gentiles also. It was the manifestation of the mercy of God, Who, promising nothing beforehand to the gentiles, nevertheless through the Messiah gives them the possibility of becoming participants of His plan for the salvation of the world. And the Church, as seen spread the representations about the intention of God in regard to His people on all its members, independently of the origin.
Such reconsideration of the borders of the people of God was extraordinarily important: because according to the traditional Jewish definition of these borders, none gentile, even believing in the God of Israel, did not enter in their frameworks, if he did not accept the Judaism in all its fullness, by becoming a Jew. The church from the very beginning connected the borders of the people of God not with the Jewish people, as an ethnic group, and not with the Synagogue, but with the personality of the Messiah.
The borders of the people widened with this point of view, but the old alliances concluded by God with His people, were not furthermore depreciated: because relationships with God are a unique and spiritually holistic process, in which is important every stage, beginning from Abraham and finishing with the Christ. And there was still a covenant with Noah, by this collective image of all the righteous of gentile world, to which a new view on the people of God opened the way to the Church, passing the Synagogue. So the Kingdom joined the former people of God with all righteous, seeking for real life in all its fullness.