NOTES for Act 13:48

Thus, hearing the word of the Lord the gentiles were glad. But it is only those who "were ordained to eternal life" believed. What does it mean: some are "ordained" and called to the eternal life, whereas some are not "ordained" and condemned for the death? Man and his choice have then nothing to do here at all. Why do we have then to witness about Christ to whoever may be, if nothing depends on us, neither on the preaching, or on the man listening?

But isn’t the Holy Scriptures that speak so often about the decisive role of human choice, that "we enter with strength into the Kingdom of God"! And what about the commandment given by Christ Himself concerning witness! How to coordinate all this? It is not probably about predetermination for salvation, but about the readiness of man to accept the Good News. God begins His work with every person from the moment this person comes into life (from fetation), and every person has his way, his rate of development of his relationships with God. At a certain moment, on this way appears a meeting with the Gospel, and a man may be already prepared for this meeting through his previous way, or may not be prepared yet. In the second case, preparation has to continue, and the meeting will be possible at any other moment. It is important to understand that having faith, coming to God is neither only the result of someone’s predication, nor the result of only a spontaneous human decision ("I am going to believe and that’s all!"), but it is the corollary of a long process of development of relationships between man and God, where the initiative belongs to God, witness – to the gospeller, and decision – to man.

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.

Paul and Barnabas say that the Word of God must first be preached to the chosen people—the Jews. Yet the preaching addressed to the Jews is also heard by the Gentiles, and the Word sometimes penetrates their hearts more deeply than the hearts of the Jews. Paul says that by rejecting the Word, people make themselves unworthy of eternal life. The Jews thought the Gentiles unworthy of eternal life. Some modern Gentiles claim that the Jews are worthy of neither eternal nor temporal life. The Lord sees everything differently: for Him, no one is unworthy—except those who freely reject Him.

Paul and his companions no longer strictly followed the rule followed by the first witnesses, who had been forced to leave Jerusalem because of persecution. Those witnesses testified only to Jews; these were ready to testify to anyone ready to listen and accept their witness. In this respect the situation had changed radically. And the point is not simply the widening of the audience. The point is where the boundary of God's people runs. To those first witnesses it seemed self-evident that these boundaries coincided with the boundaries of the Jewish people.

They were, of course, Christians, or more precisely messianists, since messianists from among the Gentiles came to call themselves Christians. They had no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and the Son of God. But they were just as sure that one could follow Him only by being a Jew. And if you were not born a Jew, then first you needed to become one by accepting Judaism, and only then could there be talk about the Messiah.

They saw the Church as a continuation of the Jewish people and as part of it, as its messianic component. Paul and his companions saw the situation quite differently. For them the Church was not a simple continuation of the Jewish people and not its messianic part. For them the Church is the people of God in all its fullness. And belonging to it is not determined by belonging to the Jewish people. Of course, the Church is open to every Jew who accepts Jesus as the Messiah and as the Son of God. But it is just as open to anyone else, even if that person has no connection to Jewishness at all.

Only one thing matters: a person must accept Jesus as the Messiah and as the Son of God. And he must have his own deeply personal relationship with Him. The point here, of course, is not that Paul deliberately revised the traditional norms of the Torah in order to widen the boundaries of the Church. The point is that God opened His Kingdom to the Gentiles, and Paul could not fail to know this. And the boundaries of the Church, the one with a capital letter, coincide with the boundaries of the Kingdom. To cross them, one does not have to be a Jew.

This means that if somewhere in a large, or not very large, city the Jewish community as a whole remains indifferent to the witness about Christ, then one can and must testify to everyone else. Not in spite of the local synagogue, but simply because in that same city there may be people ready to enter the Kingdom and therefore the Church. To make their entrance into the Church depend on the attitude of the Church of the local Jewish quarter would be wrong and unjust toward them. More than that, it would be a direct violation of God's plan and an obstruction of His action in the world. No true witness of Christ would do such a thing, including, of course, Paul and his companions.

At first glance, what is happening here is the birth of a new religion: the Christian proclamation, not accepted by its mother environment, the Jews, goes beyond it and turns to the Gentiles. Formally, this is indeed so, but the preachers themselves, led by Paul, plainly do not think so (and this is clear from his preaching).

The point, perhaps, is that Christianity (not as a religion, but as a new experience of life with God) first touched those who were seeking not a religious system, but true, eternal life; those who were seeking Christ and finally received His presence in the Spirit. This directly concerns us as well: those who have not yet made up their minds and those who have long considered themselves Christians.