Verse 22
‘Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I.’
His roots are every bit as good as theirs. They boast of their antecedents as ‘true Hebrew speaking Jews’ connected with Jerusalem - For this use of ‘Hebrews’ see Acts 6:1. Well, so is he. For he grew up in Jerusalem under the teaching of Gamaliel. Are they ‘genuine born Israelites’? Well, so is he. His parents were Hebrews, and he is of the tribe of Benjamin. Are they the fleshly ‘seed of Abraham’, well, so is he. See Philippians 3:5. It would appear that his opponents were laying great stress on these connections as demonstrating their superiority to the Corinthians. They were the true children of the covenant given through Moses, in which the Gentiles have a secondary part. There is here a demoting of Christian Gentiles. That is why elsewhere Paul argues that Gentile Christians equally are part of the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16; Ephesians 2:12-22) and are the true seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:28-29).
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