Ephesians 2:15

having abolished, &c. Lit., The enmity, in His flesh, the law of the commandments in decrees, annulling. In this difficult verse our best guide is the Ep. to the Romans, esp. Romans 7:1-6; Romans 8:2-3, passages very possibly in mind when this was written. See also the closely parallel passage, Colossians 1:21-22. With these in view we may interpret this to teach that the Lord, by His death (Colossians 1:22), "in the likeness of the flesh of sin" (Romans 8:3), broke ("annulled") for all believers their condemning relations with the Law (in the highest sense of the word Law), as a preceptive code, prescribing but not enabling, a code imposing absolute decrees as the absolute condition of acceptance; and thereby, ipso facto, brought to an end the Mosaic ordinances with their exclusions, which existed mainly to prefigure this Work, and to enforce the fact of its necessity, and incidentally to "fence in" the race through whom the Messiah, as the Worker, was to come.

The passage thus teaches that Christ has "annulled" the old antipathy between Jew and Gentile, by what He did in dying. But it cannot teach this without teaching also the deep underlying truth that He did it by effecting relations of acceptance and peace between Man and God; not putting aside the Preceptive Law as a thing obsolete, but so "going behind it" in his Atonement as to put believing man in a different relation to it, and so, and only so, removing the external hedges of privilege and exclusion. Comparing Colossians 1:21-22, it is plain that this greater reconciliation lies, in the Apostle's thought, behind the lesser, though the lesser is more immediately in point.

" The commandments in decrees" are, doubtless, in part, the "touch not, taste not," of ceremonial restrictions; but not these only. They are the whole system of positive edict, moral as well as ceremonial, taken apart from enabling motive, and viewed as the conditions of peace with God.

" The enmity, even the law&c.," may be fairly paraphrased, "the enmity, expressed and emphasized (under the circumstances of the Fall) by the Law, by its existence and claims as preceptive Law."

for to make In order to create. "It is a new creation," 2 Corinthians 5:17; where the reference is to the regenerate individual, as here to the community of the regenerate.

in himself Perhaps, in Him. But the reference is in either case to Christ, the subject of the whole context. Cp. Colossians 1:16, where "In Him were created" is used of the First Creation. In both Creations, Old and New, Christ is the Cause and Bond of being. The New Man, like the Universe, exists and consists by vital union with Him.

one new man The phrase "new man" occurs only here and Ephesians 4:24, where see note. Here the great organism of the saints, Jew and Gentile, is viewed as, so to speak, one Person; a view closely akin to that of the "One Body" of Christ; 1 Corinthians 12, &c. "We are all in God's sight but one in Christ, as we are all one in Adam" (Alford).

The Old Race is solidairewith its Head, Adam, by solidarity of Nature in itself and of standing towards God. So the New Race is solidairewith its Head, Christ, in Whom, and at once, it both receives the standing of justified acceptance for His Merits, and derives "Divine Nature" by His Spirit. And solidarity with the Head seals the mutual solidarity of the members. As the Old Race is not only men, but Man, so the New Race is not only new men, but New Man.

so making peace Here, as just above, the immediate thought is of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in Christ, but behind it lies the thought of that greater reconciliation which is expressed fully Ephesians 2:18; "access through Christ, for both, in one Spirit unto the Father;" and just below.