It was not accomplished by any contemptuous repudiation of the age-long exclusiveness of Israel. Such repudiation would have involved the discrediting of the Old Testament, and to the Old Testament the Church was intensely loyal. Jewish particularism had been ordered of God; the Scriptures were full of warnings against any mingling of the chosen people with its neighbors. Jehovah had made of Israel a people alone; he had planted it in an inaccessible hill country, remote from the great currents of the world's thought and life; he had preserved its separateness even amid the changing fortunes of captivity and war. Salvation was to be found only in Israel; Israel was the chosen people.
The Church never abandoned this view of Israelitish history. Yet for herself she transcended the particularism that it involved. She did so in a very simple way—merely by recognizing that a new era had begun. In the old era, particularism had a rightful place; it was no mere prejudice, but a divine ordinance. But now, in the age of the Messiah, particularism had given place to universalism; the religion of Israel had become a religion of the world. What had formerly been right had now become wrong; God himself had ushered in a new and more glorious dispensation. Particularism, in the divine economy, had served a temporary, though beneficent, purpose; God had separated Israel from the world in order that the precious deposit of Israel's faith, pure of all heathen alloy, might finally be given freely to all.
The recognition of this wonderful new dispensation of God was accomplished in two ways.
2. THE DIVINE GUIDANCE
In the first place, it was accomplished by the direct command of the Holy Spirit. The first preaching to Gentiles was undertaken not because the missionaries understood why it should be done, but simply because God commanded.
(1) Philip.—For example, when Philip preached to the Ethiopian—who was not in the strictest sense a member of the Jewish people—he was acting not in accordance with any reflection of his own—a desert road was a very unlikely place for missionary service—but under the plain and palpable guidance of the Spirit. What is emphasized in the whole narrative is the strange, unaccountable character of Philip's movements; evidently his actions at such a time were not open to criticism; what Philip did God did; if Philip preached to an outsider, such preaching was God's will. Acts 8:26-40.
(2) Cornelius.—In the case of the conversion of Cornelius and his friends, Acts 10:1 to 11:18, the divine warrant was just as plain. Both Cornelius and Peter acted altogether in accordance with God's guidance. On the housetop, Peter's scruples were unmistakably overcome. "What God hath cleansed," he was told, "make not thou common." Peter did not fully comprehend the strange command that he should eat what the law forbade, and it was not explained to him; but at least the command was a command of God, and must certainly be obeyed. The meaning of the vision became clear when Cornelius' house was entered; a Gentile had evidently been granted the offer of the gospel. God was no respecter of persons. Finally the Holy Spirit fell on all the Gentiles who heard the message; they spake with tongues as the disciples had done at the first. That was the crowning manifestation of God's will. There was no reason to wait for circumcision or union with the people of Israel. "Can any man forbid the water," said Peter, "that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?" Acts 10:47. All opposition was broken down; only one conclusion was possible; the Jerusalem Christians "glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life." Acts 11:18.
(3) The Grace of God in the Gentile Mission.—Scarcely less palpable was the divine guidance in the subsequent developments of the Gentile mission. After the momentous step of certain unnamed Jews of Cyprus and Cyrene, who founded the church at Antioch, Barnabas had no difficulty in recognizing the grace of God. Acts 11:23. Not suspicion, but only gladness, was in place. When Paul and Barnabas returned from the first Gentile mission, they could report to the Antioch church that God had plainly "opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles." Ch. 14:27. If God had opened, who could close? At the apostolic council, in the very face of bitter opposition, the same great argument was used. The missionaries simply "rehearsed all things that God had done with them," ch. 15:4, especially "what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles through them." V. 12. There was only one thing to be done; the Gentile mission must be accepted with gladness as a gift of God; he that wrought for Peter unto the apostleship of the circumcision wrought for Paul also unto the Gentiles, Gal. 2:8; James and Peter and John could recognize, both in the Gentile mission and in the inner life of the chief missionary, the plainest possible manifestation of the grace of God. V. 9.
3. REASONS FOR GENTILE FREEDOM
The Church transcended the bounds of Judaism, then, primarily because of a direct command of God. Such commands must be obeyed whether they are understood or not. As a matter of fact, however, God did not leave the matter in such an unsatisfactory state; he revealed not only his will, but also the reason for it; he showed not only that the Gentiles must be received into the Church, but also why they must be received. The essence of the gospel had demanded Gentile freedom from the beginning; the justification of that freedom at the bar of reason, therefore, brought a clearer understanding of the gospel itself.