Our Jewish neighbors can refer to us, the non-Jewish, as the “goy”. “Goy” is short for the Hebrew word, “goyim”, which means the “nations”. The Greek New Testament word for the nations is “ethne”, from which comes “ethnic”. The Latin word for the nations is “gentium”, from which comes the English synonym for “goyim”: the Gentiles. One of the features of this WordPress site in the dashboard is to see daily which country, on a map of the world. where each of you have who has viewed this blog for a posting, your country of origin. In the Lord, this is awe-some. The reign of the Lord, His Kingdom, is in every country, not to topple secular governments, but as a witness to the Lord for all governments. Truly, it is reflective of the Gentiles which is most of us reading this posting. Truly, in Christ Jesus, the Word of God has come forth from Zion and the Gospel, according to our Lord’s command and promised is preached and taught to the ends of the earth. The Word of God is the miracle of tongues. The Gentiles are aptly part of the last of the 7 Great O Antiphons:
O Emmanuel, our King and our Lord,/the anointed for the nations and their Savior:/ come and save us, O Lord our God.
I opine that when the Ethiopian eunuch believed and was baptized by Phillip, then Ethiopia was in a sense saved…and sure enough, there are millions of Christians in that country, for 2,000 years, many of whom are Lutherans: in fact, according to Wikipedia, there are 10 million Ethiopian Lutherans which is three times the number of Lutherans in the USA! And the worship of the Lord by the nations was first manifested when magi, pagan astrologers, the goyim, came to worship the Child.
The universality of sin is met by the universality of God’s grace appearing this Eve in His Son, born of the blessed Virgin, of the House of David, of the people of Israel, God’s chosen. This gift keeps on giving to the 4 corners of the world. He has borne the sins of the nations, the ethne, the goyim so we are re-born as His.
In the many tongues of man, the greeting Merry Christmas, conveys the Joy of the Savior to you all.
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