I recently read through Romans again, and it was clear to me that the letter owes much of its shape and content to the difficulties that existed in the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. It is possible to fix on almost any point in the letter and find some kind of reference to the Jew-Gentile relationship.

For example, in the first chapter, in the opening verses, we find reference to the Jewish Messiah, the descendent of David, giving Paul grace to call Gentiles to the obedience of faith. The very Jewish Paul longs for a harvest among the Gentiles. After acknowledging his debt both to Greeks and Barbarians, he shares his hope of making payments on this debt by preaching to the Gentiles in Rome.

Even the famous, theologically rich 16^th and 17^th verses, which speak of the power of the gospel, do so in the context of Jew and Gentile relations. It is a gospel that brings salvation to everyone who believes: to Jews first and now to Gentiles as well.

Chapter 2 specifically addresses the Jew/Gentile relationship and makes it clear that Gentiles are accepted into the people of God. In chapter 3, both at the beginning and at the end of the New Testament’s most famous passage on atonement theology, Paul brings up Jews and Gentiles. Both are sinners and both are “justified by faith apart from works.”

In chapter 4, Abraham is the example both to the circumcised (the Jew) and to the uncircumcised (the Gentile). Paul makes a point of stressing the fact that Abraham was justified before being circumcised, making the argument that Abraham was declared right with God when he was (effectively) still a Gentile!

In chapter 5, Paul traces sin’s roots back to Adam, from whom both Jews and Gentiles have inherited a sinful nature. (This is a summary statement of a more nuanced argument.) In chapters 6-8, Paul examines the role the Jewish law plays in God’s larger story. While there is no specific mention of Gentiles in these chapters, Paul does address the value of the Jewish law while stressing the limits of its power. We learn that what the Jewish law was incapable of doing, God has done by sending the Messiah.

Chapters 9-11 closely examine the question of God’s relation to the Jews in light of his acceptance of Gentiles. Paul raises the question of whether God’s promises to the Jews have failed. In this section, Paul goes to the Jewish Scriptures (see 9:23-33, 10:18-21, and 11:25-32) to address biblically and poetically the place of Gentiles and Jews in God’s salvation plans.

Chapters 12-14 focus more narrowly on how individuals and churches can live out the message of the gospel, but the relationship between Jew and Gentile has not been forgotten. Paul’s insistence that we who are many form one body in Christ may have originated in the Jew-Gentile issue, which was never far from his mind. In chapter 12, he seems to have Jews in mind when he states that “love is the fulfillment of the law,” and Gentiles in mind when he calls for an end to carousing, drunkenness, and sexual immorality.

In chapter 16, where Paul includes both Jews and Gentiles in his greetings, he lists more than a dozen people with Greek-sounding names, and celebrates their friendship, character, and hard work in the Lord. But before doing so, he relates how Jews who risked their lives (Prisca and Aquila) have served the Gentile churches.

Returning to chapter 15, we learn of Paul’s ministry-long effort to heal the rift between Jews and Gentiles. He has gone throughout Asia and Europe collecting money from Gentile believers to aid Jewish believers going through hardship in Israel. This offering was one of Paul’s greatest efforts. He spent time, thought, and energy to make it possible. He envisioned great results coming out of it: Jews and Gentiles who accept one another to the glory of God (15:7).

It seems to me that in every generation, Satan’s strategy is to divide God’s people. In Paul’s day, the division was most clearly seen between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. In 1054, the Western and Eastern church effectively divorced, creating a millennium-long split. When Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenburg Church door in 1517, that nail cracked the Western Church wide open, leaving a centuries-long rupture between Catholics and Protestants. One can find good, and perhaps even necessary, reasons for these divisions, yet in all of them, evil was at work.

Today, we see micro and macro fractures between white and black, young and old, male and female, political left and political right, not to mention denominational rifts. (There are something like 1200 distinct Christian groups in the U.S. alone.) But, as Paul himself earlier wrote the Corinthians, we must take steps so “that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes”—schemes to divide and disable the people of Jesus.

The step Paul counseled in 2 Corinthians was forgiveness. We certainly are in need of that. Hate for hate, contempt for contempt, disregard for disregard has only advanced the enemy’s plan. Is there any action we can take in our day that might correspond with Paul’s attempt to heal division—the offering he collected from Gentile churches all over the eastern Mediterranean to relieve the suffering of Jewish believers?

In the New Testament, division in the church is always seen as a terrible thing and is unequivocally condemned. Do we feel about the divisions in today’s church (between black and white, old and young, female and male, left and right) the way Paul would, or do we regard division as something we’ll just have to live with?

Our enemy continues to stay busy, working to divide Christ’s beloved church. Are we doing anything to nullify his efforts, keep the unity of the Spirit, and thereby bring glory to God?