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THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS
DIVISION IV. § 5 67 . CHAPTER XI. 13-36.
God's present purpose for the Jews through the Gentiles: and so for all humanity
ОглавлениеSt. Paul would not have it supposed that, in his zeal for the recovery of Israel, he was proving faithless to his vocation as the apostle of the Gentiles. On the contrary, he explains (assuming the Roman Christians to be Gentiles in the mass) that he is, by this very zeal, fulfilling that vocation. The conversion of the Gentiles was meant to react as a stimulus on the Jews. When St. Paul magnifies his Gentile ministry, he does so always with the motive of stinging the jealousy of his own people, and so bringing some of them to salvation. How can such a consummation be too eagerly desired? For if even so pitiable an event as their rejection has yet, in God's providence, been overruled for a good end – the bringing back of the outside world into the fellowship of God68
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Cf. 2 Cor. v. 19, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'