-Yes, it’s about two groups being brought together and made one. And the one group only existed as a group because they were the ones excluded from God’s family, whereas now they are no longer excluded. Collectively those referred to by the Jews as ‘Goyim’ were many peoples, but they had one thing in common - God did not choose any of them. They had many languages, many customs, many beliefs, but no knowledge of God and no hope. God initially made the nations at the Tower of Babel, confusing the languages and scattering the peoples throughout the earth from there. Then as part of the first covenant, God chose the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be His people, a new nation, His nation (goy) - one that would bless (with a distinct call to do so in fact) all the other nations/goyim (Genesis 12.2-3, 18.8, 22.18, 26.4), one that would help the world know what God was truly like (Psalm 67.4-7). What happened instead is that the relationships between Jews and non-Jews went straight downhill. Things became politicized, militarized, adversarial. Self-righteousness reared its ugly head, and the Hebrew word for nations - Goyim - came to refer to all non-Jews in a derogatory sense. Jews looked down upon the Goyim, disrespected them, saw themselves as being better since they were supposedly so in God’s eyes. Standards of ethical treatment did not always even apply towards Goyim. Contrary to the edict to bless the nations, the prevailing perspective came to be such that self-respecting Jews were not actually supposed to have any dealings with Goyim - never go to their homes, never eat with them, walk around their region if you can, and never associate with them. And gentiles returned the favor of mistrust and mistreatment with regularity. This is one practical reason why Jesus was ultimately rejected by the Jews as Messiah - the Jews wanted a zionist Messiah who would deliver them from subservience to the dirty rotten Goyim, one who would defeat the Gentiles and kick them out of the promised land God had only given to His chosen people. They wanted Jesus to clean out their country, clean out the Gentile riff raff, not clean out their temple. They would never embrace a Messiah who would make peace with the Goyim, much less let Himself be killed by them or bring them wholesale into the fold.
-And so into this racially-charged divide plunged Almighty God, the consummate Peace-maker forging an unlikely peace between two parties who had come to hate each other going back hundreds of years. God sent an emissary, an Ambassador of peace - His only Son, to blow up the barrier and create peace where there was hatred and hostility. Christ removed the barrier separating the two. That’s what He does - He removes barriers of separation. Barriers of personality, of economic disparity, of racial diversity, of familial disharmony. Remember that peace is not simply absence of war or conflict. We must harken back to the Jewish concept of shalom. It is overall well-being and harmony, completeness. Peace on earth - announced by angels at His birth (Luke 2.14), that is why He came in the first place. World peace, peace and harmony - an elusive Shangri-La, this. Many seek it, some promise it (the old Coke jingle would have us believe that Coca Cola could somehow produce it), but only Jesus actually delivers. In Christ, in the Prince of peace Himself, both groups, all the peoples of the earth will be finally brought together in real and deep abiding shalom towards one another as well as towards their Creator.
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