A Gentile is any person who is not of the Jewish people — those outside the covenant of Israel. In the Old Testament, the nations (goyim) are alternately the recipients of God's judgment, the objects of His mission (Jonah), and ultimately the beneficiaries of His saving purposes (Isaiah 49:6: "I will make you a light for the nations"). The drama of redemption is fundamentally about how God keeps His promise to Abraham that "in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." In the New Testament, the inclusion of Gentiles into the covenant people through faith in Christ — apart from circumcision and Torah — is the great "mystery" revealed (Eph 3:6): Gentiles are "fellow heirs, members of the same body." Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, and the church is the one new man composed of both Jew and Gentile.
GEN'TILE, n. In the Scriptures, a pagan; one of any nation except the Jews; one who does not worship the true God, and is not circumcised. In the New Testament, the term Gentiles is applied to all nations except the Jews, whether they are idolaters or Christians. GEN'TILE, a. Pertaining to pagans or heathens.
Replacement theology (supersessionism) erases the ongoing significance of Jewish identity by collapsing Israel entirely into the church, while hyper-dispensationalism artificially separates Israel and the church as if they are eternally parallel programs with no overlap. The biblical vision is more nuanced: the church does not replace Israel, but Gentiles are grafted into the one olive tree (Rom 11). The Jewish-Gentile distinction carries redemptive-historical significance that informs how we read the whole Bible — flattening it produces distorted theology at both ends.
Genesis 12:3 — "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." — the Gentile mission rooted in the Abrahamic covenant.
Isaiah 49:6 — "I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
Ephesians 3:6 — "The Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus."
Romans 11:17 — "But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others…"
Revelation 7:9 — Every nation, tribe, people, and language gathered before the throne.
H1471 — goy (גּוֹי): nation, people — often "the nations" as distinct from Israel
G1484 — ethnos (ἔθνος): nation, people, Gentiles — root of our word "ethnicity"
G1672 — Hellēn (Ἕλλην): Greek/Gentile — used in contrast to Jew in Paul's letters
"The Gentile believer stands in a long line of grace — a wild branch grafted into the cultivated olive tree of God's covenant promise."
"Every church composed of non-Jewish believers is living proof that Isaiah's prophecy has come true: God's salvation has reached the ends of the earth."
"To understand Paul's letters, you must understand the Jew/Gentile question — it is the axis around which much of his theology turns."