8
`But God hath showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean' (10:28 with 14).
*
Peter, therefore, knew nothing of the tradition that the `Church' began at Pentecost. Peter's attitude was not
personal, it was the attitude of all believers at the time:
`They of the circumcision which believed were astonished ... because that on the Gentiles also was poured out
the gift of the Holy Ghost' (10:45).
words which absolutely forbid the idea that a single Gentile received the baptism of the Spirit on the day of
Pentecost.
The Church at Jerusalem were equally ignorant of this tradition:
`When Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou
wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them' (11:2,3).
Truly the Church of the One Body is hard to find in these chapters.
Finally, the testimony of 11:18,19 is conclusive. For the first time the Church at Jerusalem recognize the
possibility of a Gentile being saved:
`Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life'.
`Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen ... preaching the word to
none but unto the Jews only'.
The Jew first in Romans.
Space will not allow us to traverse the whole field of the Acts and the epistles of the period; it will suffice,
however, to discover the dispensational position of Jewish and Gentile believers in the last epistle (Romans) written
by Paul to Gentiles before the crisis in Acts 28:
In Romans 1:16 the gospel is to the Jew first.
In Romans 2:9 judgment is to the Jew first.
In Romans 2:10 blessing is to the Jew first.
In Romans 3:1,2 advantage and profit are admitted as pertaining to the Jew, although on the basis of sin there is
no difference (3:9).
So tenaciously did the Jewish Church hold to their privileged position, that the apostle had to ask the question:
`Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles?' (3:29).
In Romans 9:4,5 the advantages and privileges of the circumcision are detailed, every item of which is exclusive
to Israel according to the flesh.
The wild olive.
In Romans 11:17-25 the position of Gentile believers dispensationally is set forth under the figure of an olive
tree. Israel is the olive (Jer. 11:16,17), but `some of the branches' had been broken off. The Gentile believers who
`stood by faith' were `wild olive branches graffed in among them'. There was no such thing as perfect equality,
however:
`Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee'.
When we come to the epistle to the Ephesians, we find a completely different state of affairs.
*
The Church which is His Body - Ed.