Signs were posted in the first century on the central religious institution of Israel, the temple. The temple was surrounded by a series of courts beginning with the innermost court, the Court of the Priests; then the Court of the Israelites; then the Court of the Women; and finally the outermost court was the Court of the Gentiles.

Signs on the wall surrounding the Court of the Women warned gentiles that if they proceeded any further toward the temple, the penalty would be death. But when Jesus Christ was in the temple, days before His crucifixion, He quoted the prophet Isaiah, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations" (Mark 11:17; Isaiah 56:7 emphasis ours throughout).

How could a gentile come to God? How were the Israelites to treat these newcomers? Let's examine the process of becoming a part of the godly community.

"Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.... Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven...both Jews and proselytes" (Acts 2:1, 5, 10).

A Jew, in the Bible, commonly denotes a descendant from the tribe of Judah. There was another road, though less traveled, which also brought one into the Jewish culture. This road was traveled by gentiles who had, to one degree or another, converted to Judaism and became known as "proselytes."

God has always made provisions for His people to receive newcomers. Many important lessons can be gleaned from the proselyte experience in regard to our modern day challenge of overcoming prejudices among the races.

Gentiles living within Israelite territory were required to keep the weekly and annual Sabbaths (Exodus 20:10; 12:19; Leviticus 16:29), refrain from blaspheming God's name (Leviticus 24:16), abstain from sexual immorality and idolatrous worship, among other things (Leviticus 18:26; 20:2). God expected these basic behaviors from the foreigners even if they never adopted all of the tenets of the religion He delivered to Israel.

The Old Testament Hebrew does not use the term "proselyte"; however, the origins of this concept are found in Exodus 12:48-49, "And when a stranger sojourns [dwells] with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat it. One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who sojourns [dwells] among you." The New Testament translates "proselyte" from the Greek proselutos meaning a newcomer; one who has come over from a gentile religion to Judaism.

Interestingly, the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Old Testament, used "proselyte" instead of "stranger" in Exodus 12:48-49 (though Judaism did not emerge until many years after the Exodus). Rabbis had different categories of proselytes according to how fully a gentile had come to Judaism. For instance, gentiles who were circumcised and came completely over to Judaism while displaying sincere, religious motives were called "proselytes of righteousness" or "proselytes of the covenant."

According to God's scriptural instruction, a gentile could actually become "as a native of the land." Likewise, in the minds of those within Judaism, "proselytes of righteousness" were understood to be full-fledged Israelites rather than circumcised gentiles. In Judaism, the gentile conversion was both religious and cultural. In the Jewish New Testament Commentary, David Stern describes the gentile conversion: "[I]f they undergo conversion to Judaism, they obligate themselves to become Jewish completely" (page 563). The New Unger's Bible Dictionary states: "Should he desire to enjoy the full rights of citizenship a stranger submitted to circumcision, thus binding himself to observe the whole law, in return for which he was permitted to enjoy to the full the privileges and blessings of the people of the covenant" (Exodus 12:48-49).

Therefore, within the social milieu of the New Testament, that which God revealed concerning gentiles is religiously and culturally explosive "because it removes a major barrier, namely, the requirement, in addition to trusting God and the Good News, that gentiles should leave one culture and join another" (Stern, page 526). When Judaism gained a convert it also gained another member of the Israelite culture. Stern recounts how he had to destroy a culturally prideful attitude upon accepting Christ as the Messiah: "[W]hat I destroyed was not only a legalistic system but also a form of idolatry, namely ethnolatry, in which I took pride in being Jewish and insisted that keeping Jewish distinctives is essential to being part of God's people, even for Gentiles" (ibid., page 541).

The Jews are not the only culture that has to guard against the secret trap of ethnolatry. When the lines become blurred between a man's culture and God's community, then the process of ethnolatry has begun. When one views distinctives within his human culture as being the embodiment of God's community, then ethnolatry thrives. Therefore, both religion and culture were the two-edged sword of resentment toward the apostle Paul for essentially saying, gentiles need only to repent of sin and not be concerned with their cultural distinctives.

With this backdrop let's return to the book of Acts to ask this question: Who was the first gentile convert in the New Testament Church?

According to the biblical definition of "gentile," the correct answer is Cornelius (see Acts 10). However, from a modern day perspective one might answer, "Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch" (Acts 6:5). Remember, "proselytes" were gentiles at birth and Nicholas was "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom" years before the conversion of Cornelius (Acts 6:3).

There were plenty of gentiles in the Church before Cornelius, according to today's definition of one's race by skin color or lineage. Nevertheless, within the biblical society Cornelius was the first. Through circumcision, one's conversion to Judaism and the Israelite culture was so complete that "Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch" was considered to have already been an Israelite at the time of conversion. An untold number of proselytes received the Holy Spirit among the first 3,000 converts on Pentecost (Acts 2:5, 10). Indeed, Cornelius, an Italian, was the first uncircumcised gentile convert (Acts 10:1). Nevertheless, many circumcised gentiles (Egyptians, Romans and others) were already in God's church before Cornelius' conversion.

God commissioned the disciples to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19-20). "Nations" is translated from the Greek ethnos, from which the English ethnic is derived, and it can denote a nation (including Israel) or, exclusively, a gentile nation, race or ethnic group. The gospel was to be preached "to the Jew first" (Romans 1:16; 2:9-10). Therefore, initially, the disciples understood "make disciples of all ethnos" to mean that they should visit Israelites only, including proselytes, all over the world. This was the understanding for 10 to 15 years before God expanded the ethnos of Matthew 28 to all "ethnic groups" in the world.

Some in the early church may have thought, "We didn't have racial problems until the apostle Paul and gentiles were in the church. We were one happy church and culture but now look how divided we are. Why can't they be like the proselytes before them? Why are they so rebellious?!" As long as the gentiles were expected to suppress their cultural distinctives and adopt Israelite cultural distinctives there was racial harmony in the synagogues or congregations. Gentiles who didn't happily exchange their culture with Israel's, may have been viewed as "rebellious" by some. However, in order for the church to mature, God decided to disturb the mental and cultural comfort zone of virtually the entire church. God illuminated a spiritual blind spot that His church had for many years.

One of many ways that this blind spot can be described is an inability to be "all things to all men" (1 Corinthians 9:22). God's church, to one degree or another, struggled with race relations from the top down as was reflected when Peter, Barnabas and "the rest of the Jews" were "carried away with their hypocrisy" while in the company of uncircumcised gentiles (Galatians 2:11-13). They unconsciously gave into the historical tendency to "compel gentiles to live like Jews."

When Paul said "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Galatians 3:28), he was not ignoring these differences between members in God's church. Rather, Paul was reminding them that the spiritual playing field has been completely leveled in Christ regardless of physical factors.

David Stern recounts the morning prayer given by free Jewish males: "Praise be you, Adonai our God, King of the universe, because you have not made me a gentile. Praise be you, Adonai our God, King of the universe, because you have not made me a woman. Praise be you, Adonai our God, King of the universe, because you have not made me a slave" (page 555). Paul taught that it is useless to thank God for such a thing when he said, "There is neither Jew nor Greek...slave nor free...male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." We are citizens in God's community, which is on a higher plane than any human culture where "true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth" (John 4:23-24).

God desires that we learn the same lesson that ancient Israel and the foreigners among them were to learn-that the way to welcome strangers is through the way of love. Note the following verses:

Leviticus 19:33-34: "And if a stranger sojourns [dwells] with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. But the stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."

Deuteronomy 10:17-19: "The great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality...and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in...Egypt."

Deuteronomy 27:19: "Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, 'Amen!'"

Deuteronomy 29:9-11, 14-15: "Therefore keep the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do...all the men of Israel...and your wives-also the stranger who is in your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water.... I make this covenant and this oath, not with you alone, but also with him who stands here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with him who is not here with us today."

What a challenge it must have been for Israel to love those who were reminders of the abuse they and their ancestors suffered for many years in Egypt. Likewise, the stranger had to learn to love those whom they may have previously looked down their noses at as slaves. This is the paramount lesson of life. "God is love," therefore "the purpose of the commandment is love" (1 John 4:8, 16; 1 Timothy 1:5). The act of a gentile being physically circumcised was so powerful in the minds of Israelites that they were able to transcend racial differences. How much more transcending power should one have as a result of his inward, spiritual circumcision?