Separation Ended (part 1 of 2)

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. – Ephesians 2:12  (ESV)

Separated.  Alienated.  Strangers.  No hope.  Without God.  These are quite descriptive terms that the Apostle Paul is using to paint the picture of a dire situation for those that are outside of God’s covenant of promise.  That covenant of promise had begun with Abraham, and had been extended, through Isaac and Jacob, to the sons of Jacob, or Israel.  Those that were not part of national Israel, those who were “Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision” (2:11b), did not have the hope of experiencing the fulfillment of God’s promises. 

That was the case until Christ came.  In being “separated from Christ,” that is, separated from the expected fulfillment of God’s promises through Israel’s expected Messiah, the Gentiles were not a part of God’s redemptive plan for all creation.  “But now,” Paul says, all that has changed, for “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13).  You who were far from being a part of God’s covenant people have been brought near to God by Christ.  Prior to that, there had been enmity, not only between man and God, but between Israel and the Gentiles. 

That enmity, that hostility, was primarily directed towards the Gentiles by Israel for a couple of reasons.  The first reason had to do with the presence of the Mosaic law (and that down to which the Mosaic law had been whittled---the covenant markers of circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food laws) which Israel held to as what it was that distinguished them from all of the rest of the peoples of the world, which became to them an unfortunate source of pride, and which the Gentiles sought to get them to violate so as to remove their marks of national identity and so make them an easier people with which to deal and over which to rule.  The second reason for the hostility stemmed from that very rule of the Gentiles, over the land and people of Israel, for even though it was the manifestation of God’s cursing on Israel for their own failure to extend God’s covenant to the whole of the world and so glorify their God, prompted Israel to naturally resent their rulers. 

Paul addresses this situation and writes, “For He Himself is our peace” (2:14a).  Jesus is the one that brings this hostility to an end, because He “has made us both one” (2:14b).  How has He done this?  Because He “has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (2:14c).  Partly by what He did on the cross, through the physical, bodily suffering and sacrifice that He endured, Jesus broke down the wall that separated God’s chosen people (national Israel), from the rest of God’s chosen people, that being the renewed Israel, that were a group that was to be gathered out by God from all of mankind.  Jesus did this “by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (2:15).  The covenant of God expressed exclusively for His chosen people (Israel) through the law was no longer necessary, for now the covenant would be expressed exclusively by His chosen people, which now included all the people of the world, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In this proclamation of the Gospel, which included that Jesus had defeated sin and death (borrowing from enhancing the gospel proclamation that Caesar Augustus had defeated darkness and dissolution), the evidence of which was His Resurrection, and that Jesus the Messiah was not only the King of the Jews, but the King of all peoples and the One for whom every knee would bow, Paul says that Jesus has served to “reconcile us both (Israel and Gentile) to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (2:16).  There was no longer a dividing line when it came to God’s covenant to Abraham.  He had promised that all families of the earth would be blessed through the seed of Abraham, who was looked to as the Messiah; and that seed, Jesus, had now done what was necessary to bring that about.  What was the greatest blessing?  It would have to be that “through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (2:18), where previously, all had been separated, by sin, from God. 

All had been “strangers and aliens,” but through Christ, Paul tells the Gentiles that “you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Israel alone had been the saints, or the “called-out-ones” of God, but now the grouping of those referred to as God’s called-out-ones, God’s chosen, would extend to all the races of man.  Now, not even the Temple in Jerusalem, from which Gentiles were barred from entering, need be a source of division, for Paul looks to a new Temple for a new people of God, that is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (2:20-21).  There is an underlying Jesus-as-Temple theology built into all of this, as Paul declares that the God of Israel has moved beyond what might be thought of as the confines of the Jerusalem Temple, through the work of Christ, and that “In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (2:22).