Paul's Love for His Fellow Jews!

Paul’s Anguish Over Israel

9 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
If anyone wondered if Paul was anti-Jewish, they haven't read this passage. Though Paul shook the dust off his feet in protest of the religious Jews in Pisidian Antioch who tried to persecute him, he clearly shows his love for his fellow Jews in these verses.  He is in anguish that they are rejecting all of the promises God has made to them through their descendants all the way down to Abraham.  
Paul goes on in the rest of the chapter to say that though the gospel originated with the Jews as a result of Jesus being born through the line of Abraham and David, Gentiles have also been accounted as righteous because of faith.  It was not just the children of natural descent who became the "True Israel", as is seen by Jacob and Esau.  For God chose Jacob and not Esau, as Jacob was the child of the promise.
So why is it then that some believe and some don't?  If I knew I would be God.  We don't know why some accept the promises of God as they have been revealed through His son, and some don't.  Paul didn't know which Jews, or Gentiles for that matter, who would accept his message of the gospel.  But it didn't change his passion for preaching the gospel.  Paul knew, as he says in verse 16, it does not depend on human effort but on God's mercy.  For God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and compassion on whom he will have compassion on.  
May we have a heart like Paul's that longs for others to know Christ.  The first step we can do is to pray for people we love and know who don't yet know Christ.  Second, we can be a model of Christ's love for them.  And finally, when God presents the opportunity, we can share the hope we have been given through faith in Christ. 

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