day no 16,838: envy as evangelism

Acts 28:28-29

Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it. And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.

While listening to Johnny Cash read the New Kings James Version of the New Testament to me today (9/26/23), I heard him read the verse above. This reminded me of something Douglas Wilson mentioned on his Blog and Mablog earlier this week in a post titled, The Case of Owen and the Memorials:

"The place of the Jews in our theology is to be filed under eschatology and prophetic fulfillment. We do not share the quirk that some Christians have in their soteriology, by which they say that everyone must come to Christ except for Jews. No, no one gets a bye. God calls all men everywhere to repentance. Everyone is summoned to faith in the Messiah, the Jews especially. Jews are sinful, and wicked, and fallen, and broken, just like everybody.

God’s plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ’s lordship, thus leading them to long for the same. I am invested in this because it is the Puritan postmillennial approach to world evangelization. God’s plan for evangelizing the Jews, and then the world, is not only not antisemitism, it is the photo-negative of antisemitism. If antisemitism is Christians envying Jews, the pursuit of Deuteronomic blessing for Gentiles results in Jews envying Christians. This was Paul’s strategy, and he knew that it would work on his people. He laid it out plainly—'if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them.'"

The passage from Acts 28 above provides additional evidence in favor of Doug's assertion that Paul's evangelistic strategy, as far as it concerned the Jews who refused to believe the initial presentation of the Gospel to them, was to motivate them to reconsider through their envy of the blessings of the gentiles that did believe Paul's initial presentation of the Gospel to them. 

And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves (Acts 28:29).

It appears his intentions sparked quite the conversation behind closed doors. Paul knew his target and utilized well the principles of war (objective and maneuver).