Last week I posted a short video of Dr. Mark Saucy talking about Paul’s teaching concerning the remnant of Israel in the book of Romans.
One important point that I want to highlight that he made is the following:
A lot of folks think that the church is a nation-less entity, where we don’t recognize our ethnic identities. I think there is a too heavy-handed reading of passages like Ephesians 2 and Galatians 3, where it says there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. Paul in all of these places is not saying we lose these parts of our identity. He is saying something else; he is saying that you cannot weaponize them for access to God, that was going on in the first century. Males and Jews and the free people and the economically advantaged people were claiming advantaged before God. Paul says “no” to this. But he was not saying “no” to their identity as ethnic or as gender or even social place having a role in the church. So we do not lose these things; they become focused and redeemed in Christ. And that is what I think is going on with messianic Jews. I am not Jewish ethnically. I am a messianic gentile. I think messianic Jews have something to tell us still and I think Paul alludes to this in Romans 11.
