Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/279

36* The apostles have set these congregations apart from other unbelieving peoples. They did not necessarily live apart physically, in a special district of the same city, but they were united in one fellowship of faith which they manifested in common participation in matters spiritual and religious. Because of this common fellowship and sharing of faith and of the word of God they have been called congregations, communities of believers. And in the days when the apostles were preaching, the Romans and their lords ruled over wide the parts of the world, lands, in Greece, in Syria and other countries, as can be found in the. And in all this realm the Jews were interspersed among the Gentiles. Thus, when the apostles preached the gospel, they spoke to a two-fold people. So, when some were converted, some came from the Jews and some from the Gentiles; both, separating themselves from (the pagans and Jews) their former co-religionists, they became a third people of a different faith. Therefore the Christians, a people set apart, were often servants among Gentiles as well as Jews, all of them paying taxes to the Romans. The translator took the liberty of re-arranging here several sentences in their logical sequence.