Excerpt from his new book Chosen to Proclaim:
The Irrevocable Call of the Jewish People to World Mission

Why did the apostle Paul write in Romans 1:16 that the gospel must be proclaimed “to the Jew first and also to the Greek [gentiles]”? Paul was Jewish, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, and educated in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel.

But God didn’t call him to be the apostle to his fellow Jews. God commissioned him to be his apostle to the gentiles—a task that, he later admitted, grated on him at first (look at Acts 22:17–21). Yet, it was Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, who always began his work in every new city by first bringing the gospel to his fellow Jews. And it was Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, who wrote that the gospel must go “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Why that order of events?

Some of us might assume that he was simply expressing a partiality born out of his great love for his Jewish people. He certainly did love us with an ardor only matched by the love of Moses and only surpassed by the love of Yeshua. Both Moses and Paul were willing to be stricken from God’s book of life (Exodus 32:32) and cut off from the Messiah (Romans 9:3) for the sake of us, their countrymen. Of course, what the prophet and the apostle were willing to undertake, the Messiah accomplished for us and for all peoples. But I don’t believe that Paul’s declaration, “to the Jew first,” amounted to a statement of preferential treatment, motivated by his love for his own.

Nor do I think he spoke merely about a theological priority, as though to say, “first to the children and natural heirs and then to those far off.” No, Paul was a missionary and a strategist. There’s vital strategy in Paul’s words, if we’re willing to hear it. Paul, the apostle to the nations, understood God’s plan for bringing the gospel to the world. He understood the pivotal role of that “Jewish” call in evangelizing the nations. So, Paul first brought the gospel to the people whom God called to be messengers so that the messengers could bring the message to the world.

If the call remains to this day (and Paul says that it does), then the urgency of bringing the gospel to the Jewish people remains to this day as well. The logic can’t be plainer: We Jews must be given the gospel first because we can’t proclaim the gospel until we believe the gospel. And we can’t believe the gospel until we hear the gospel. And we can’t hear the gospel unless someone brings it to us first. Perhaps the best way to interfere with the cause of world evangelization is to keep the gospel away from us Jews. . . .

But give Jewish evangelism the strategic priority that Yeshua and the apostles gave to it, pray for Israel’s salvation, even as the apostle Paul prayed (Romans 10:1), provoke us to jealousy, take up whatever part God wants you to play for the sake of bringing the gospel to [the Jewish people], and [those of us who believe] will give the gospel to everyone we meet.

That’s why we were created. That’s why we were called. We were chosen to proclaim.

Get your own copy of Chosen to Proclaim here.