God's Secret Plan: File #5
In verse 11 and following, Paul is specifically addressing the Gentile members of the Ephesian church (“Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision”). There were both Jews and Gentiles in the city of Ephesus and, apparently, within the Ephesian church. It appears that the Gentiles in the church were very conscious of this division. The line between the Jews and Gentiles was an extremely concrete one and one that both sides, but especially the Jews, took very seriously. To see how seriously, we can go to an event earlier in the life of Paul, in Acts 21:27-29. The very rumor that Paul might have brought Trophimus, a Gentile Ephesian, into the temple was enough to cause a riot and nearly get Paul killed. This was the formal accusation brought against him in the trial before Felix. This was, in one sense, the reason that he was in prison at that moment. There was a wall in the temple which divided the Court of the Gentiles from the Court of Israel which it was death for a Gentile to enter. This wall of division was a very real and serious thing and wherever Jews and Gentiles came together, both felt this wall.
And Paul does not deny the reality of this separation. In verse 12 he pictures his readers as being on the outside of this wall. (1) They were without Christ, without the Messiah. The Jews, through all their long years of suffering and problems, always had this to look forward to--that someday their Messiah would come. It had been promised throughout the Old Testament; they knew that somehow, someday, the Messiah would come “and ransom captive Israel.” The Gentiles did not have this hope. (2) They were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise. God had created an arrangement, a kingdom through which His truth and His worship could be preserved--that was the Jewish nation and the Jewish religious system. With all its problems, it had preserved the knowledge of the true God through the centuries from Moses to Paul. But the Gentiles were not part of this system--they were separated from it, alien to it, they did not belong to it--they had no right to the privileges and responsibilities of it. God had covenanted to fulfill certain promises to the Jews, but the Gentiles had no part in this. (3) They had no hope. Certainly, outside of God's revelation, they had no well founded hope and most of the religions of the ancient world offered little even false hope. Many ancient peoples had no hope beyond the grave and so had to try to do their best with the life before the grave. The Latin poet Catullus expressed the hopelessness of life in these words: “Let us live... and let us love, and let us value the tales of austere old men at a single halfpenny. Suns can set and then return again, but for us, when once our brief light sets, there is but one perpetual night through which we must sleep.” (4) They were without God in the world. The Jews knew God and many of them tried to follow him. But the Gentiles did not have this privilege. The did not know who God was--the best they could find was an Unknown God.
The Jews had the privilege of knowing and preserving God's revelation, His Word. (Romans 3:1-2) They had a revelation and, therefore, a lifestyle, a culture, a religious form which came from and pointed to the true God. The Gentiles did not have that. This caused a wall of division between them. In fact, God had insisted on such a wall of separation--sometime try to count how many times in the Old Testament God warned or rebuked the Jews for mingling with the people around them. The Gentiles were, by necessity, outside. Verse 13 refers to them as being “far off.” The Jews used the term “far off” to refer, literally, to being far from Jerusalem (the spiritual center of their religion) and, metaphorically, to people who were outside of the Covenant or who were not at peace with God. (Clarke, Ephesians 2:13) A Christmas song speaks of being home for Christmas, if only in our dreams. But the Gentiles were not near to God, even in their dreams. That was the state of things--but once again Paul introduces a conjunction, a change, a “rest of the story.” Earlier in chapter we saw this before--once we were dead, but now alive. Here we have it again--once far off, but now brought near. Verse 13 summarizes his message: “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes [or, formerly] were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Everything that we just saw about how the Gentiles were alienated and far away from the promises of God had been undone. They had been brought near to God. Note that this was done by the blood of Christ; verse 15 speaks of it being done by or in the flesh of Christ; verse 16 “by the cross”--all clear references to the physical, literal death of Christ as the foundation of our salvation.
Not only were the Gentiles brought near but God “hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” That division between the Jews and the Gentiles, that tension--it was now gone. But not in the way most people would have expected. The usual way for two opposed groups to come to terms is for one side to give up their position and move to the other side. So the Jews and the Gentiles could have been brought to peace by all the Gentiles becoming Jews (some of the early church supported this) or by all the Jews rejecting their heritage and becoming Gentiles. Or both sides could have given up some of their points, the Jews becoming less Jewish and the Gentiles becoming less Gentile-ish, and so met in the middle. (It is by this method that the world and the church have stayed at peace in America for the last hundred years.) But that is not the way God arranged things.
To help understand this division between the Jews and the Gentiles, we should go to the book of Acts. Acts 10 contains the story of two men, a Jew and Gentile--Peter and Cornelius.
Peter and Cornelius were very different men. They had different professions; one was a fisherman turned preacher, while the other was a soldier. They were of different nationalities; Peter was a Jew, while Cornelius was Italian, that is, from Italy, probably from the city of Rome itself. They had different financial standings; we don't know how rich Peter was a fisherman, but he had given up that life years before and now was a preacher and we all know preachers are poor (unless they have a television ministry, which Peter did not), while Cornelius is pictured as being at least somewhat well-off, having a household with multiple servants. They had different levels of authority--Peter (except for his position in the church) had no power in the world, while Cornelius had a hundred soldiers at his command. And while we shouldn't oversimplify matters, it is broadly true that the Romans as a whole were in a position of power over the Jews--they were the conquerors and the Jews the conquered. Cornelius stood with the rulers and Peter with the ruled.
These are major differences, and they are differences which still divide men today. Differences in profession, in nationality or ethnicity, in financial standing, or in position and power--those are among the things that still pit man against man. But as important as all these things were, these were not the main thing that divided them.
The main division between them was the fact that Peter was a Jew and Cornelius a Gentile. And this was the most important, because it had been put in place by God. Peter, as a devout Jew, could not look at Cornelius, as a Gentile, the same way he would have looked at another Jew. The Mosaic law had put into place a complex series of ritual requirements, all for the purposes of keeping the Jews separate from the Gentiles. We saw before that this division existed in a physical form within the Temple. There was an outer courtyard or foyer that was open even to the Gentiles, but there was a wall beyond which they could not pass, a wall posted with warnings that for a Gentile to enter was death. If Cornelius and Peter had gone together to the temple, they would have had to part company at that wall. Peter, as a Jew, and Cornelius, as a Gentile, could not even come to God in the same way, could not worship God the same way.
This becomes more startling if we look at the story and see what kind of man Cornelius was. Acts 10:2 states that Cornelius was devout, that he feared God, that gave alms, and that he was a man of prayer. These are the marks of someone who is following God--giving alms and praying, especially, were seen as pillars of piety by the Jews. (Robertson's Word Pictures, Acts 10:1) In Acts 10:22 it is added that not only was Cornelius a just or righteous man and a God-fearer, but he also was well-respected by the Jews. In other words, the Jews recognized what Cornelius was, that he was righteous and feared God. But for all that, we find Peter (in Acts 10:28) addressing Cornelius with these words: “Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation.” Cornelius was a righteous, God-fearing, devout, prayerful man, well-respected by the Jews--and for all of that, Peter (as a Jew) would never have come into his house and met with him as a friend if God had not first told Him to, because Cornelius, for all his good qualities, was a Gentile, outside the wall of division, not circumcised, not a member of the Mosaic covenant. Since the Jews recognized Cornelius's piety and respected it, they had to realize that (in some sense) he was accepted by God--but because he was a Gentile, he could not (in a full sense) be accepted by them. They might come to the same God, but they could not come in the same way. They might worship the same God, but they could not worship Him together. That was the division erected by the law of commandments contained in ordinances, the Mosaic law. And this is the division that Christ came to end. There had been a division, an antagonism, an enmity between the Jews and the Gentiles, but Jesus, in his death, has destroyed it--literally, He killed it. (“Having slain the enmity” v. 16)
Verse 15 shows what is the foundation for all this. It says that Jesus abolished in His flesh the enmity, the division between the Jews and Gentiles which was the law of commandments contained in ordinances. The word abolish is a legal term and means to render legally null and void. Something that has been nullified does not cease to exist but it ceases to be in affect. We can picture it like a machine being turned off. The law of commandments contained in ordinances--that is, the Mosaic economy with its complex system of ritual cleanliness--had been deactivated because its purpose had been fulfilled. Its purpose had been to preserve the Jewish people and pave the way for the coming of Christ. Without the Mosaic covenant and the separation it imposed the Jews, they would have been absorbed into the other peoples around them--which nearly happened anyway. It was right and necessary in its place, but now it had done its work. It did not cease to exist--you can still read it anytime you want. The Gentiles did not become Jews and the New Testament Jews--especially Paul--very much remained Jews. But the division became null and void because it ceased to be a division at the highest level.
The Jews and the Gentiles were still different people groups, but they were no longer different in their relation to God. In the temple, the Gentiles could not enter the inner courts of the temple. But both the Jews and the Gentiles could come together to the foot of the cross. Jesus ended the division between the Jews and the Gentiles by providing a new covenant, a new plan of salvation, in which the Jews and Gentiles met as equals. “That he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross.” The Jews and Gentiles could now be united to each other because they were united with Christ who reconciled them to God.
Verse 14 says that Jesus “hath made both one” and then, in verse 15 adds that he made “in himself of twain one new man, so making peace” and, finally, in verse 16 Jesus spoken as reconciling “both unto God in one body.” Jesus did not destroy the division by turning the Jews into Gentiles or the Gentiles into Jews but by turning both into something new--not by rearranging their old lives, but by giving to both the same new life, by making one new body, a new person, a new community--a church. They were all passengers on the same ark, citizens of the same kingdom, members of the same body. This brings us back to the theme of chapter 2, which is new life. Each member of the body is alive because it shares in the life of the whole body, and because each member shares in the life of the body they all share in the same life.
Paul points to several things that unite the Jews and the Gentiles--they have one Savior, one sacrifice (v. 16: “one body by the cross” also possibly v. 14, “He is our peace” or [some put it] peace-offering), one corporate identity (v. 15 “one new man”), one gospel (v. 17 “came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh”), one Spirit and one Father (v. 18 “we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father”), and going into verse 19 we have one citizenship and one household and in verse 21 we are one temple.
And as with the division between the Jews and the Gentile, so (even more so) with all the others. They have been nullified by Christ's sacrifice. Divisions of profession, nationality, ethnicity, wealth, power, and position do not entirely cease to exist. On a practical level, the divisions between man and man still exist and still have their place in the church. Paul will talk later in Ephesians about how a husband's duty is different than a wife's; a father's different than a child's; a master's different than a slave's. These divisions are real and have practical and even spiritual ramifications, but they have no power to divide us on a foundational level, because we all come to one Cross of One Savior who offered One Sacrifice so that One Spirit could bring us to our One Father. You could title this section “Unity in Salvation, Unity in the Church”--and the point to grasp is that the unity in the church is built on the unity of salvation. And this also ties back to what we saw earlier in chapter 2, that salvation is by grace alone. If it was of works, we would each be alone in our separate lives, earning our own separate salvation. If it was of works, we could boast and boasting people can seldom get along. But because our salvation is by grace, by Christ, we are all united in the receiving of it.
This concept reaches its climax in verses 19-22 where Paul pictures Christians as a building, a “holy temple.” First we have the chief corner stone (a stone laid at the corner of a building to support the walls, sometimes the first stone laid)--see Isaiah 28:16 which describes God placing such a cornerstone as a foundation. This cornerstone is “Jesus Christ himself.” He is the anchor and source of our salvation, the only reason we are Christians at all. Built out of this cornerstone is “the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Some see prophets as referring to the Old Testament as a whole, while others see it referring to the prophets who were part of the New Testament church. In either case, most commentators see the conjunction of apostles and prophets as meaning the revelation of God's word which is the basis of the church. On this foundation, the whole building is “fitly framed together.” Barnes explains: “The word here used means, to joint together, as a carpenter does the frame-work of a building. The materials are accurately and carefully united by mortices and tenons, so that the building shall be firm. Different materials may be used, and different kinds of timber may be employed; but one part shall be worked into another, so as to constitute a durable and beautiful edifice.” (Barnes, Eph. 2:21)
In the Lord, we are built together for a “habitation of God through the Spirit.” Every temple is built to be the home of a god, in some sense. But this holy temple, the church, is, though the Spirit, the habitation of the most high God. This is what we have been called, been enabled, to be a part of. We have unity like the individual boards and stone in a building have unity because, though separate and distinct entities, they work together to form one thing and serve one final purpose.
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