As gentiles, because of our exclusion from Israel and thus without hope of God (Eph 2:12), we naturally stood as enemies against God, for what excludes does not tolerate, and what does not tolerate in hated. So we hated God and came against His people. Yet the Law stood opposed to us; its regulations an abhorrent code of exclusivity we could not condescend to.

But in His great love and mercy, God took His son Jesus Christ and through him, fulfilled all the requirements of the Law (Mt. 5:17). The Law thus having been fulfilled, God then “cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross.” (Col 2:14).

Then, in raising Christ from the dead and placing him on the highest of high places, God destroyed the barrier of life from death between His people and the gentiles, for the Law had now been met fully in the body of Jesus Christ. Christ’s risen body is a new flesh; a body that is no longer subject to the law, but that transcends it to allow all who may come, to enter in. In Christ Jesus, there is now no gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, man or woman, slave or free. We are, in entering through faith and repentance, one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28).

Christ has made irreconcilable opposites one. He has given us, who otherwise stood eternally opposed to God, a hope in this world and an inheritance in the next. We, who once were gentiles, have so much thanks and praise and glory to give God for His son Jesus Christ. For without Christ’s being born a baby in a manger and living in perfect accordance with the law for thirty odd years; without his obedience of going to the cross to be the sacrificial lamb to take way the sin of the world, our lives would have remained eternally hopeless, with only the eternal wrath of God to face. But in Christ we have glory, honour and peace, whether gentile or Jew, for God does not show favouritism. What joyous news we have to share with those who still are gentiles.