Wednesday
Wednesday
God’s New Society
His [God’s] purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.
Ephesians 2:15
Nobody can emerge from a study of Ephesians with a privatized gospel. For Ephesians might be called “the gospel of the church.” It sets forth God’s purpose to create through Jesus Christ a new society.
Firstly, however, in Ephesians 2 Paul depicts the gentile world in its double alienation—from God (“dead in your transgressions and sins” [v. 1]) and from his people Israel (“alienated from the commonwealth of Israel” [v. 12 RSV]). In the second half of Ephesians 2 the apostle concentrates on the plight of the Gentiles. It is almost impossible for us to grasp, let alone feel, the contempt in which the Jews held the Gentiles. They called them “dogs”; they were “far off,” alienated both from God and from the people of God.
Of this double alienation the “middle wall of partition” (v. 14 KJV) or “dividing wall of hostility” (RSV) was a standing symbol. It was a notable feature of the magnificent temple built in Jerusalem by Herod the Great. The temple was enclosed by three inner courts for the priests and the laypeople of Israel. Beyond these, and at a lower level, was the outer court or Court of the Gentiles. And between the inner and the outer courts was the dividing wall, a stone barricade one and a half meters high. Gentiles might look up and view the temple but not enter it. Warning notices at regular intervals on the wall forbade entry on pain of death.
The grand theme of Ephesians 2 is that Jesus Christ through his cross has abolished the dividing wall (even though physically it was not destroyed until forty years later) and has created a single, undivided humanity, whose characteristic is no longer alienation but reconciliation, no longer division and hostility but unity and peace.
It is a wonderful vision. But the contemporary reality tells a different story, namely of barriers of race, ethnicity, nationality, tribe, and gender. But how dare we erect walls of partition in the only community in which Christ has destroyed them?
For further reading: Ephesians 2:11–22