Ephesians 2:11-22

Ephesians 2:11

Judaism and Christianity.

I. To Paul the moral confusion and the religious desolation of the Gentiles were appalling. He believed that they were enduring the just penalties of their own sins and the sins of their ancestors. The first chapter of Romans is a terrible commentary on what he meant by the Gentiles being without God in the world. Everything was changed by the coming and the death of Christ. By Him the whole world had been brought within the range of the grace and redemptive power of God. The external institutions of Judaism, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, had been the middle wall of partition between the elect nation and the rest of the world; these institutions had isolated the Jews from all pagan races, and had restrained within the limits of the elect race the great revelation of the righteousness and love of God; and the reason for the existence of these institutions ceased at the coming of Christ. He was the true Temple, the true Priest, the true Sacrifice; and He came to found a spiritual kingdom in which descent from Abraham was to confer no privileges. By bringing to an end the religious supremacy of the Jews, Christ brought to an end the estrangement, the enmity, between Jew and Gentile. He created in Himself of the twain one new man, so making peace.

II. The restoration of the universe to an eternal unity in Christ has begun; the old division between the descendants of Abraham and the heathen world has disappeared; in their religious life, all Christians of all nations, whatever their temporary and external distinctions, are already one in Christ. "Each several building" the Church at Ephesus, which was largely composed of Gentiles, as well as the Church at Jerusalem, which was almost exclusively composed of Jews each Christian community is included in the immense plan, has its relations adjusted to the rest of the great structure, and in Christ being "fitly framed together," groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.

R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians,p. 201.