The New Humanity and Existing Distinctions

There is great significance to the theme of a new man drawn out in the New Testament. The bringing together of the Jew and Gentile under one body is a proclamation that the Church is Israel. In Romans 11, Paul masterfully demonstrates how the gentiles are grafted into the covenant promises contrary to nature. In line with this theme, Paul teaches that distinctions between Jew and Gentile, ethnicity and social standing are subsumed by the new man’s identity in Christ (Col 3:11). This doesn’t indicate that these distinctions are wiped out in the present age but that they are not categories of eternal significance and we shouldn’t be consumed by them, even while accepting their existence for a time (Eph 6:1-9, 1 Pet 2:18).