God Opens the Front Door for All Races and People Who Would Enter
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.
The big struggle for the people that Paul was writing to involved a racial division between Jewish people and non-Jewish people. There were some that believed that no matter how faithful or evil they were, simply because they were born Jewish, they would enter eternal life with God. Those same people often believed that no matter how much faith you had or how much you followed the law, if you weren’t Jewish and circumcised, you were fuel for the fires of Hell.
Paul is trying to tell them here that everyone stands before God in judgment on their own. You can’t claim how holy your parents or even your great great great grandfather was in order to receive God’s mercy. It’s actually even better than that. God will show you mercy straight because of Himself and His own sacrifice, not yours.
So the salvation issue here isn’t “What must I do to be saved?” but “Is there any hope for me because I’m a Gentile?” The good news is that God doesn’t care about race or cultural background or nationality. God is bigger than all of those things and He invites us, as His children, to be bigger than those things too.