Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:4,5)

One can see immediately the disadvantage of the Gentile when it comes to understanding the Divine redemption. He does not have a tradition that looks for the restoration of the Throne of David. He does not, in most instances, have a background of striving to be righteous in terms of the Law of Moses.

When someone makes an effort to convert a Gentile to Christianity, he informs the Gentile that all people are sinners. He shows the Gentile a few verses of the Scriptures to prove all people are under condemnation and cannot please God by their own efforts. Such an effort to create an awareness of the need for righteousness is contrived, artificial, shallow, when compared with the heart cry of the Apostle Paul for deliverance from a sinful body.

The evangelist then presents Christ as the sin-offering by which the Gentile can make Heaven his eternal home. The goal of gaining the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is nowhere in sight. The goal has become eternal residence in the spirit paradise after the Gentile dies. Thus the Gentile version of the Gospel of the Kingdom is far removed from the preaching of John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostle Paul.

The Gospel of the Kingdom is to the Jew first. The Gentiles do not understand the Gospel of the Kingdom and have made the Christian religion a chaos of contradictory doctrines and practices. The Gentiles are not seeking righteousness but paradise in the spirit world. They are looking for mansions and golden slippers in Heaven where they can rest for eternity.

The Gentile is not, in the majority of instances, given the promise by his teachers that by following the Lord Jesus he can become righteous in behavior. To the contrary, he is advised that he now is under "grace," meaning that however he behaves he will go to the paradise in the spirit realm to dwell forever. Since he has no tradition of a kingdom on the earth, the promise that Jesus will sit on the Throne of David means little or nothing to him.

The Gentile understands the term "get saved" to mean, "be authorized to go to Heaven when you die." All of his arguments over doctrine, faith versus works, eternal security, the keeping of the Law, predestination, and so forth, are presented against the backdrop of the definition of being saved as "being authorized to go to Heaven when we die." His arguments thus are irrelevant and meaningless in terms of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

The scriptural definition of saved is, "delivered from sin in spirit, soul, and body, created in the moral image of Christ, and made one in the Father and the Son." To be "saved" is to be saved from sin and rebellion and made one with God.

To be continued.