Insiders Beware!

We all want to feel like we belong. There is comfort in being included and valued, particularly when we feel that we are in God’s good graces. But there are dangers in feeling that we are uniquely part of God’s chosen people. We may become exclusive and judgmental. We may become less grateful and humble and therefore less receptive to the grace we think we already have!

The apostle Paul extends this warning in chapters 9-11 of his epistle to the Romans, and echoes of this argument ripple throughout the Book of Mormon.

Clay and the potter

Paul begins with a reminder of a fundamental truth: Blessings and opportunities are not evenly distributed in this life. Some people have access to advantages which they didn’t earn, while others lack those advantages through no fault of their own. Why? We don’t know. All we can do is trust that God knows what He’s doing.

When Rebekah was pregnant with twins, God said to her, “The elder shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23; see also Romans 9:12). Malachi put it more starkly. In his account, the Lord says, “I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau.” (Malachi 1:2-3; see also Romans 9:13). Of course God didn’t hate Esau, but why would He privilege Jacob over his brother?

We don’t know. God told Moses, “I…will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” (Exodus 33:19; see also Romans 9:15). In other words, God has reasons for privileging different people at different times, and we can’t expect to understand those reasons, at least not yet. Why did God allow Pharaoh to have so much power and to oppress the children of Israel (Exodus 9:16; see also Romans 9:17)? We simply don’t know. As Isaiah taught, we are like clay and God is the potter. (See Isaiah 29:16, Isaiah 45:9; see also Romans 9:20-21.) We can’t understand why He has shaped us the way we are. We simply have to trust that He knows what He is doing.

Who are God’s covenant people?

With that background, we’re ready to talk about God’s relationship with two groups of people: the house of Israel and the Gentiles. The house of Israel, of course, is the group of people who inherited the covenants God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Gentiles are everyone else. But we shouldn’t be surprised if these two designations are somewhat fluid and variable. Look at these Old Testament passages, which indicate that we may be surprised who actually belongs to each group:

• “I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God” (Hosea 2:23, see also Hosea 1:10, Romans 9:25-26).
• “For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return” (Isaiah 10:22, 2 Nephi 20:22; see also Isaiah 1:9, Romans 9:27-29). [Indicating that only some of them will return to God after being scattered.]

From these passages, Paul concludes that some of the people we label as outsiders may actually be insiders and vice versa. “The Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith” (Romans 9:32). Or as Nephi put it, “As many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord; and as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off; for the Lord covenanteth with none save it be with them that repent and believe in his Son, who is the Holy One of Israel” (2 Nephi 30:2; see also 3 Nephi 16:13).

Paul had plenty of experience to back up this interpretation of these scriptures. Soon after his conversion, as he prayed in the temple in Jerusalem, the Savior appeared to him and said, “Get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me…. I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles” (Acts 22:18, 21). Wherever he traveled, he went first to the synagogue, but if the Jewish people in that city refused to hear his message, he turned to the Gentiles. (See Acts 13:46-48, Acts 18:6.) Even after writing this epistle, when he traveled to Rome, he had the same experience there. (See Acts 28:17-28.)

The fulness of the Gentiles

Now we come to the main question: What happens when you’re an insider, and outsiders start receiving blessings from God? How do you react?

God warned Moses that his people would become envious when they saw Him helping other groups of people: “I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people,” He said; “I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation” (Deuteronomy 32:21). And He put it even more bluntly to Isaiah: “I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.” But He reassures Israel that He hasn’t neglected them; they just haven’t been listening: “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people” (Isaiah 65:1-2; see also Romans 10:20-21.

It turns out that God loves all of His children. If the people He originally called upon to receive His grace fail to receive it, He will call upon others. Paul uses imagery similar to the Allegory of the Olive Tree to make this point. If some of the “natural branches” (insiders) are removed from the tree and “wild branches” (outsiders) are grafted in, this is a great blessing for those new branches. But there is still time and room for the natural branches to be restored to the tree if they are willing to be grafted in again. (See Romans 11:17-24; compare Jacob 5:8-10, 56, 60.)

And this leads to a concept Paul calls “the fulness of the Gentiles:”

Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

And so all Israel shall be saved.

Romans 11:25-26, italics added

That phrase appears twice in the Book of Mormon. The first time, Nephi is explaining to his brothers some teachings of their father, Lehi, which were difficult to understand. He says:

The thing which our father meaneth concerning the grafting in of the natural branches through the fulness of the Gentiles, is, that in the latter days, when our seed shall have dwindled in unbelief, yea, for the space of many years, and many generations after the Messiah shall be manifested in body unto the children of men, then shall the fulness of the gospel of the Messiah come unto the Gentiles, and from the Gentiles unto the remnant of our seed—

And at that day shall the remnant of our seed know that they are of the house of Israel, and that they are the covenant people of the Lord; and then shall they know and come to the knowledge of their forefathers, and also to the knowledge of the gospel of their Redeemer, which was ministered unto their fathers by him; wherefore, they shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer and the very points of his doctrine, that they may know how to come unto him and be saved.

1 Nephi 15:13-14

The second time this phrase appears, Jesus is speaking to a group of people on the American continent after His death and resurrection. He commands them to write the words that He is teaching them…

…that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed [the children of Israel], who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer….

And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel.

3 Nephi 16:4-5, italics added

Both Paul and Jesus then proclaim that, when the gospel is rejected by Israel and embraced by the Gentiles, it blesses Israel too, because the Gentiles bring the gospel to them. Paul explains it this way (speaking to the Gentiles): “Just as you were formerly disobedient to God, but have now received mercy due to their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy” (Romans 11:30-31, New English Translation).

And Jesus declares to the people on the American continent that, when the words He is giving to them become available to the Gentiles (through the publication of the Book of Mormon), “they may know that the work of the Father hath already commenced unto the fulfilling of the covenant which he hath made unto the people who are of the house of Israel” (3 Nephi 21:2, 7).

God loves all of His children. He blesses them at different times in different ways, but His ultimate goal is to provide salvation by His grace to everyone who is willing to be saved.

Today, I will be grateful for Paul’s cautions about the dangers of insider status. I will be grateful for the blessings God has given me, and I will strive to make good use of the gifts I have been given, but I will always remember that these gifts do not bestow an exclusive status and that I am not more valued than His other children. I will celebrate the blessings He provides to others, and I will strive to be humble and grateful so that I can continue to receive His grace.

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Note: Many of the concepts in this post were heavily influenced by Adam Miller’s paraphrase of Romans: Grace is Not God’s Backup Plan. In particular, his characterization of Israel as “insiders” and Gentiles as “outsiders” helped me understand Paul’s message in a more personal way.