abounding in love” as much to Gentiles as to those who initially were his elect people. Yet, Jonah as a book reveals little of what some other prophets declared concerning the leading position Israel is to adopt when many Gentiles are saved, and when we are all living under the reign of the Messiah on the renewed earth. So Jonah sheds no light on Israel’s future status as the center of the Davidic Kingdom, in the exercising of a unique form of kingship as a royal priesthood, if Exodus 19:6 as a promise is to reach fruition.
With the salvation that came to Nineveh, the experience of Jonah serves as a rare example of salvation to Gentiles before Christ, so that Peter still had to be compelled by a vision to see God’s intention to save Gentiles, that is, in addition to saving homeland Jews and Diaspora Jews. Says Keil and Delitzsch: “ . . . (the reluctance to seek the salvation of the Gentiles no doubt saw Jonah sharing on his part as the prophet) the feelings and general state of mind of the Israelite nation towards the Gentiles.” Keil and Delitzsch as Old Testament scholars wisely speak only of a general state of rejection of the Gentiles by the Jews. There were instances of Gentiles being accepted but acceptance of any Gentile was somewhat of a rarity when God exercised his free will and prerogative in favor of revealing himself almost solely to Israel of the time, for familiarity with God’s forgiveness became virtually exclusive to Israel and therefore led to the godly of Israel thinking the Gentiles may well be outside the pale of salvation when their Messiah appeared.
The psalmist of Psalm 130 seeks God’s forgiveness and then beseeches Israel to put their hope in the Lord, “for with the Lord there is unfailing love and with Him full redemption”, saying also that “He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.” Forgiveness and redemption clearly lay in the reach of Israel, though any godly Israelite knew it was nothing to boast about—it hinged on God’s unfailing love for that nation. As for the many Gentiles who were passed by in those ancient days, the withholding of such a world-wide pardon appeared not to be questioned when all mankind was justly condemned by the law of God. If there was any pardon and release from condemnation among any Gentile, then the unpardoned and the unreleased still remain rightly condemned.
Prior to the Apostle Peter’s vision, he would not have considered it unjust if God in Christ did not turn to the Gentiles for their salvation. Neither would it have been unjust for God to pass Israel by, except the ancient promises of forgiveness for Israel were confirmed at the appearance of Jesus as Messiah. It was God’s intention to save a people of Israel. Yet wonder of wonders! In days when religion was bound up the world over with a strong ethnic character (as Bock observes), through an emphatic vision Peter sees that the God of Israel was prepared to “grant the Gentiles repentance unto life (Acts 11:18).”
Forgiveness through the Eyes of Israel (2)
If it can be seen that God exercised his free will and prerogative in favor of Israel before Christ and that the Early Church needed to be “convincingly convinced” before it began in earnest to reach out to the Gentiles, and when as a nation God’s ancient people were accustomed to the fact they had been singled out by God to the exclusion of all the nations for his ancient revelation, then with respect to the New Testament use of such terms of “all” and “the world” and “many”, as related to the people for whom Christ died, a certain consensus may appear to be reachable by all believers regarding the frequent meaning of those terms, irrespective of any view of the efficacy of the atonement.
It may seem that no matter what view may be held about the way we come to salvation in Christ, that for both those who believe that salvation is conditional upon men exercising their alleged natural power to co-operate with God so as to make the death of Christ effectual, and those who hold to the belief that men are incapable of believing unless chosen of God to make Christ’s death effectual, the Jewish perspective of simply seeing “the world” in terms of peoples beyond the Jewish nation may seem embraceable to both groups when it comes to defining the terminology of “all” and “many” and “the world.”
Yet, those who espouse the view that Christ died only for the elect appear to be the sole champions of what is the Jewish perspective, seriously considering the fact that the Early Church at first comprised Jews only, and evangelized Jews only. Then, she reached out to both Jew and Gentile with the gospel in what seemed to her a most radical step, when once she was enlightened about the command to evangelize Gentiles also.
Is it possible for “free-willers” (for want of a better term and without appearing necessarily demeaning) to embrace the Jewish perspective also, where it is applicable, so that Christ is seen as having died for the whole of mankind? If one believes that salvation is contingent on free-will, and even acknowledges that the term “the world” as the Jews understood the term, can he still hold to the opinion that Christ died for every single Jew and every single Gentile?
However, it appears that “free-willers” treat the Jewish perspective with suspicion. It seems that they suspect that those who hold to Christ dying only for the chosen are seeking a poor escape clause in the Jewish perspective to justify their belief in what has been traditionally called Particular Redemption. Or, it seems like a wrecking ball that destroys the doctrine Christ died for all men. Yet, the Jewish perspective—reducing the terms such as “all” and “the world” to mean inclusively Gentiles as well as Jews in general—is only one of a number of arguments that those who espouse Particular Redemption advance for the doctrine.
John Owen, the great Puritan scholar of seventeenth century England, wrote a monumental work The Death of Death in defense of Particular Redemption, and in it refers to how the Jewish context needs to be considered when discussing the efficacy of Christ’s death. Owen says there are certain texts where “all” and “the world” are related merely to the breaking down of the division in Christ between Jew and Gentile. He says the Jewish context determines the first type of texts that seem to appear to support Universal Ransom through Christ’s death as “free-willers” see it, yet the first type is solely connected to the Jewish perspective in that it saw “the removal of all personal and national distinctions, (that is), the breaking up of all the narrow bounds of the Old Testament.”
Even though many may disagree with Owen’s view of the design of the death of Christ and cling to the belief that Christ died for every man, and that the redeeming work of Christ can be rendered ineffectual on account of man’s so-called free-will, it must be conceded by any right-thinking Bible believer that Owen is correct in identifying certain general and indefinite expressions from the Jewish perspective.
As the reader of the Death of Death can see, Owen enlists Jewish context for only one type of texts to support Particular Redemption, for Owen knew that such a perspective does not establish with complete solidity the truth about Particular Redemption. Owen held also that election and predestination of the redeemed without the obstructing contingency of free-will must also come into play for the complete establishment of what he held as the true doctrine concerning the object behind Christ’s death.
The Jewish qualifier may lend itself in a sense to a terminology that is general and indefinite. Yet it is common for those who hold to the autonomy of free-will in man, and who regard Christ’s ransom as universal in the sense that he has ransomed everyone, to not only view the use of such a qualifier by the adherents of Particular Redemption with suspicion—they persist in believing Christ died for all by ever stating “all” always means “everyone”, and “the world” means “everybody all over the earth.”
Yet the Jewish perspective ought to be viewed as more than a limitless qualifier in the New Testament. Even in our western culture ‘world’ concerning people often carries more than one connotation. We need to enter the Jewish mind when we survey the New Testament. We must view the coming of Christ through Jewish eyes, through the eyes of the race to which Jesus belonged, the race that even found among the formidable disciples of Jesus a refusal or a reluctance to consider the possibility of Gentiles being saved.
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