On the outside looking in
Passover was not a sign of salvation, but of coming salvation. Passover constituted Israel a “peculiar” people, particularly redeemed by God, and given a special priestly task. How were the gentiles related to Passover? By watching it, and putting faith in it. Someday, according to the promise of the covenant, they would be let in the House. For now, they were to stand at the doors and windows and look in. They watched the peculiar people eat the Passover, and they trusted that God would save them as well. They watched the peculiar priestly people circumcise their children, and they trusted that the benefits of that act were theirs as well.
Passover was not only a sacrifice, but a sacrament. The eating of sacrament is a sanctuary privilege. The fact that only the elders of Israel ate with God in Exodus 24:11 does not mean that the rest of Israel was unsaved; rather, all were counted as eating in the persons of their representatives. Similarly, the fact that converted gentiles did not eat Passover did not mean they were unsaved. They were counted as eating it, because their Israelite representatives ate it.
Here in elaborate form is the principle of exclusion. There are degrees of exclusion, and of inclusion, but the message of this entire system of inclusions and exclusions is this: Man rebelled, and is not fit to sit enthroned as sabbath lord, priest and king. The fact that gentiles did not eat Passover did not exclude them from eternal salvation, any more than the fact that Israel did not receive manna on the sabbath day excluded them from eternal salvation. Rather, the exclusions were pedagogical in intention.
…the Pauline perspective is this: Under the Old Covenant all men were saved by faith. Yet within the category of those saved by faith, sons of Abraham, there was a division of labour and privilege. Some were of the circumcision, and some of the uncircumcision.
Those of the circumcision had greater privilege, and their position displayed the nature of salvation. Thus, salvation came to the gentile by virtue of his faith in the Seed of the circumcised line. When we get to the New Covenant, we do not find that gentiles are now incorporated fully into Israel. Rather, we find that the entire system is done away, and a new creation comes.
James B. Jordan, The Sociology of the Church, p. 103-4, 110.
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