Someone else

In the past month and a half-ish, I finished reading Revelations and started back again with Genesis. This time around, I've got more colored pens than I did when I started last time, so I'm keeping an eye out for the details I've yet to color-code, but more than that, I've been fascinated with how God's love works in the Old Testament. Most if not all Christians understand God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Sure, okay, nifty, but that's the New Testament God.

The Old Testament God is the exact same entity as the New Testament God, just saying.

God doesn't change, got it. Except, the Old Testament loves getting all nationalistic for the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Considering,they're God's chosen people, I can't help feeling a little out of the loop.

But, God loved the world, not just the Jewish people. Where is that in the Old Testament? The New Testament tells us that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Jesus. Surely that doesn't mean before Jesus was born, God loved non-Jews (aka Gentiles) less than Jews.

If Jesus is the promised messiah, the promised savior of the Jewish people (which, praise God, he is!) and he told his followers to make disciples of all nations, then there should be some indication in the Old Testament of his awesome salvation being available to non-Jewish people also.

The first example that comes to mind is the promise made to Abraham, that through his offspring, the whole world would be blessed. I don't know about you, but I've always found that idea to be a bit vague. True, you can, by a long process of analyzing both the language used and the family tree of Abraham down to Jesus, and see that yes, it is theoretically possible that because of Jesus, all nations are blessed.

The only problem is that we're back at the idea that all non-Jews before Christmas 0000 were screwed. Sucks to be them.

I use a purple exclamation mark in the margins of my bible when I discover a verse that shows God's love for non-Jews or the faith they have in him. Sometimes, I put the exclamation mark in parenthesis to indicate the possibility the verse shows God's love for non-Jews or their faith in him. I've only made it halfway through Numbers since starting the bible over again, and most of the purple exclamation marks I've drawn had parenthesis around them.

A few verses in Numbers 15 did not.

Numbers 15:13...blah, blah...when one of God's chosen people by birth brings an offering he should do it like this...Numbers 15:14...when a foreigner living among you presents an offering to the Lord, he must do it the same way...

Wait, what?

Numbers 15:15...same rules for native born and foreigner living among you...You and the alien shall be the same before the Lord.

Say again?

Numbers 15:16...the same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.

For some odd reason, I feel like there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free but Christ is all, and is in all.