Ephesians 2

Section Two - 2:1-3

Our previous fellowship and condition

Introduction to Section Two

Here we see the indices Two (2) used in the sense of contrast. All that we were has been changed in our “New Creation” selves. The New Testament Believer is a completely ’new order’ of creation, one that had not existed until Pentecost. The Christian is not a Jewish retread. Nor is the Christian an improved man in any sense of the word. The Christian is a “new creation”, something that is completely new and unique within the entire history and family of man.

It is important that we recognize the degree to which we have left behind everything that motivated us (as regards our new spiritual life). At the same time, it is important to identify those traits of the Old Nature, which are still very much alive in the physical body of flesh in which we dwell in time. There is such a contrast between the ’new creation’ and the old nature that is flawed and controlled by Sin. It is a provision of God that we are enabled to learn to avoid living on the basis of the flesh (to which we have died) and to live on the basis of the Holy Spirit (to Whom we have been made alive).

Section Two of Division Two will focus on that which we were before Christ was revealed to us. It draws before us a clear picture of our utter lostness and the source of the Old Nature, which moved us prior to our salvation.

Chapter 2:11-4:16

The Church Mystery, the House of God and the Body of Christ

Introduction to Division Three

In Division Three we will see enclosure. It is best illustrated by the triangle, the simplest line structure that may enclose an area. This speaks to us of the Trinity, of the work of the three persons of the Godhead as it applies to man and his salvation. Consistent with this being the Third Division, we will see the involvement of the Trinity.

• The Father: First, there is the original state in which we are found by the Father and in which preparations were made according to His will.

• The Son: Then, there is the work of the Son, which brought us into a position of acceptability to the Father.

• The Holy Spirit: Finally, there is the spiritual house into which we are formed by the Holy Spirit, which is the Church. Because we are the beneficiaries of that work, Division Three will present the completion of the plan of our redemption and its revelation to us and to all of the heavenly onlookers.

The Church, the Body of Christ, is properly presented in Division Three as the central object in the completion of the plan of God for all of time and all of mankind. It is through the Church that the “manifold wisdom of God is made known” to the angelic realms who watch (that “great crowd of witnesses” Hebrews chapter 11). It is they who must learn of God’s character from the plan of redemption for man, in which plan they had no place or benefit.

Section One - 2:11,12

The original state

Introduction to Section One

In Section One we can see principles revealed associated with the numerical order noted throughout this study. For instance; being in Division Three, you can expect to see the total work and involvement of the Trinity. This work is presented in prefect order, the First Section dealing with the work of the Father as the single source of will and devised the whole of time, space, and history. In this Section, look at the unilateral way that God chooses His own and brings them to Himself according to His will and election. As Gentiles, they had no claim on any relationship with God as did Israel.

As regards the Gentile, he was born without obligation to the Law of Israel and without a relationship to God. Because of that, there was no hope of any gentile achieving the promises made to Israel. His birth position was one of separation from God.

Section Two - 2:13-18

The enmity put away

In Section Two we see the work of God the Son, the second person of the trinity. In Him, God is made flesh and comes to dwell among men. Christ is the embodiment of deity and humanity as the unique being in the universe, God and Man. We will also see that the Gentiles who were separated from God and the promises of God given to Israel are now brought into a new position before God. They have been brought into a single, unique body that includes Israelites. This is both growth and expansion as Jew and Gentile, once separate, are now drawn together “in Christ”.

Section Three - 2:19-22

The spiritual house

Introduction to Section Three

Because we are now joined to Him, we are enclosed entirely within His provision. We have become totally identified with Him and are now members of His household, citizens of heaven, even while still on earth.

The “Temple” of the Holy Spirit is the physical body of each believer and the collective body of all believers gathered “in Christ” is the spiritual house of God on Earth. This “house” will ultimately be removed to Heaven by Christ at the Rapture. Until then, we occupy this real estate as citizens of heaven and live on the basis here of our assets drawn from there.

Remember that Israel was an Earthly people with an Earthly destiny. They will inherit precisely what was promised to them; real estate. Theirs is “the Land” forever. The Church, however, has no such earthly promise or destiny. The Church, the Body of Christ, has a heavenly inheritance. It is the Church, which is joined to the Son in unbreakable union forever.

Since Pentecost, there is no program of redemption for Israel under the Law. All men are now faced with the same decision regarding the Lamb of God and His perfect sacrifice without distinction as to race, ability, or national origin. In his letter to believers in Rome, Paul states “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

What that means to us is that a completely different economy of the grace of God is in effect, beginning with Pentecost and ending at the Rapture of the Church. That economy, which was defined by the Law of Israel is no longer in effect, being replaced by one in which the life of the Lord Jesus is the criteria for living day-by-day.

Ephesians 2:1

Our Prior Condition

(2:1) When man was created in the image of God, it was in these respects:

l. Self-aware, possessing personhood distinct from all other creatures.

2. With moral reasoning, the capacity to assess right from wrong.

3. Self-determinate, possessing freedom of choice and a will to exercise in obedience.

Self-awareness mirrors God’s existence, but is limited to time and space. God, in comparison, is unlimited by being both eternal and omnipresent. Man’s moral reasoning mirrors God’s holiness. Man concludes that an issue is right or wrong based on the information he has at his disposal, including the Word of God. God determines that an issue is right or wrong based on His absolute Righteousness and Justice. Man’s freedom of will and the capacity to act in accord with his decisions mirrors God’s sovereignty. While man is limited to the sphere of his existence, God is unlimited, because He is omnipresent.

Following his creation, man was given a body made out of the earth. Into that body, God breathed “the breath of lives” (plural). That was (1) the life associated with the Soul and (2) the life associated with the Spirit. Soul, defines that capacity in man to accept, respond, understand and relate to the created world on the basis of human or physical phenomena. Spirit, defines that capacity in man to accept, respond, understand and relate to the spiritual world which is the kingdom of God.

Adam’s Fall

When Adam acted on the basis of his freedom to choose to obey, and he disobeyed the specific instruction of God; he died spiritually. His human spirit died and he no longer was able, intrinsically, to receive unfiltered communication from God. He began to see, hear, and understand the world and all of its ramifications, only in terms of his soul. He thought like an animal–the highest form of animal, to be sure, but not like the crown of creation as intended by his creator. He was lost and bound up by his transgression.

Ephesians 2:2

Adam’s Fall Inherited by All

(2:2) Like our father, Adam, we too “used to live” (past tense) in the sphere of sin and were “dead”. Alive soulishly, we were nonetheless spiritually dead as we lived according to the dictates “of the ruler of the kingdom of the air”, who is Satan. “Those who are disobedient”, refers to those men or women who live in a state of disobedience to the Gospel, which has the power to set them free and unto God.

Ephesians 2:3

A great contrast

(2:3,5) The conclusion of Section two is very significant. During the first part of this segment of the epistle, we see the prior lost state laid out for our perusal. This is the foundation for Paul’s assessment that men are “by (our) nature objects of wrath”. That is, we are deserving of God’s righteous judgment.

By nature, we were objects of wrath

Look at our previous life style–“all of us…lived among (those who continue in this), gratifying the (desires) of our sinful nature.” He excludes no one of us. “By nature” then, we stand condemned according to His standards.

Ephesians 2:4

By grace, we have been claimed as God’s own.

“But”, introduces a contrast of the greatest extent possible. Rather than declaring us objects of wrath, “God, because of His great love for us”, not on the basis of any merit on our part–“made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our sins.” This all occurred while we were still disobedient, recalcitrant, lost souls. He did not wait until our hearts were changed and we turned to Him for deliverance from our individual messes. He saved us while we were totally antagonistic towards Him and His work.

Ephesians 2:6

Ascended with Christ

(2:6) Here is one of the most neglected doctrines of the Church today–It is not that we have been merely saved from the wrath that is to come on the world of unbelievers. Nor is it only that we have been assured of His protection from the Evil One while we are still on Earth awaiting His return. The truth which is so often left out of current teaching is, that Jesus, the Man, who lived, died, and was raised from the grave by the Father, is now at the Father’s right hand and we (every individual believer) are now irreversibly joined to Him where He is! What that means to us is that we have a position before the Father that is exactly the position that the Lord Jesus occupies. The practical implication is this: the Father does not see us in any light other than in the person of His own dear Son!

Ephesians 2:7

Divine Purpose

(2:7) If we could take the Father’s view, we would see that the object of this union is that we are to display to all creation, in heaven and earth, every facet of His grace, mercy, and kind intentions, just as He provided for His own Son.

Ephesians 2:8

Divine Means; First of Salvation

(2:8) Did we come to Him or did He come to claim us? How strong the urge is to say that we turned from our ways and grasped the grace offered to us by Christ on the basis of our knowledge, out of our futility and the pain in our lives. Many believers are saying just that and clinging to the end of their own faith as their lifeline to God rather than the faith of the Lord Jesus that His work is sufficient. It is tragic and wrong for them to be falsely comforted by the strength of their resolve and tenacity in enduring suffering or in witnessing.

Here, Paul tells us otherwise. We have been granted salvation “by grace”, that is, on the basis of God’s favor and provision freely given. It is appropriated on our part, “through faith”, that acquiescence to the hounding of the Holy Spirit that tracks us down and overtakes us as a fleeing prey. And, the key is that “this faith is not of yourselves”. The faith that we have, moving us to accept the free gift of union with God, is itself a “gift of God”.

Ephesians 2:9

(2:9) There is no sense in which our faith can be deemed a “work” of man. Nor can anything, done by anyone, be construed as meriting salvation as a response from God. Thus, there is no basis for boasting that we had anything to do with our own personal redemption.

Ephesians 2:10

Divine Means; Secondly, for Service

(2:10) “Good works” are those works which meet God’s standard of absolute righteousness, not simply acts which are meritorious in the view of man. Those works are also “prepared in advance for us to do”, making them experiences brought into our lives by the Father to serve His own purposes.

Ephesians 2:11

Their former state

(2:11) Those believers in Ephesus were primarily Gentiles. Though they are now joined to Christ, they had never been under obligation to the Law of Israel, having been born outside of national Israel. They were “called uncircumcised” by Israelites in a demeaning sense (circumcision being a requirement of the Law).

Ephesians 2:12

(2:12) Because of their birth as Gentiles, (and this is true of every believer today) they had not inherited either the promises that God made to Israel, or the obligations of the Law. They were considered by all Israelites to be “foreigners to the covenants of the promise” and thus, “without hope and without God”.

Paul is making the point clear–they were alone, without God and without hope. In other words, as long as Israel had the promises and the covenants as the means to standing with God, Gentiles who did not know the God of Israel were separated from God and truly without hope.

Ephesians 2:13

Union of Jew and Gentile in a “New Body”.

(2:13,14) Where the Gentiles were once alone, now they “have been brought near” to Israelites by means of the sacrifice of Christ. Where there was a barrier of sin which separated Gentile from Jew, Christ “has made the two (Gentile and Jew) one”. It is not an amalgamation of national Israel with an entire company of Gentiles, but of individual Israelites with individual Gentiles into a single third company, the Church. In other words, both Gentiles and Jews now stand on the same ground of condemnation and at the same door of redemption, the door–Jesus Christ. This is illustrated in the Old Testament tabernacle as the gate of the congregation and in the Temple as the gate to the Women’s Court. Christ said it to the disciples; “I am the door of the sheep…” and, “I am the door…” (John 10:7,9), speaking of Himself as the only access to Heaven that was possible for man.

Without the door of access, the barrier would forever separate man and God and Gentile from Jew. With Christ the “door”, the barrier is no longer a separation, but is penetrated with His own sacrificial offering of Himself, allowing free access between those who had been hostile and at the same time creating one body of both Jew and Gentile.

A word of caution! Take care that you do not extend that privilege of access backwards in time and make the melding retroactive to Israel under the Law. Until Christ passed through death on the Cross, there was true separation according to the will of the Father. It is only under the administration of Grace that the single body is a reality.

Ephesians 2:15

The End of the Law

(2:15) This verse is a key to understanding that the Church is not a continuation of Israel or of God’s promises to that nation. From the raw materials of Gentile and Jew, God drew a new purpose expressed in special creation–“His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two”. God took “the Law with its commandments and regulations” and “abolished” it. This is so clear. The Law was done away with–all of it–every commandment and regulation, which served to; (1) define Israel as distinct from the Gentiles and (2) define righteousness as distinct from unrighteousness. The life of the Lord Jesus now defines both.

In “abolishing” the Law, He set it aside totally, inclusive of all of its “commandments and regulations”, as either a rule of life or a standard of righteousness for man, whether Jew or Gentile. In place of the Law, He created “one new man”, a new order of being which is neither Jew nor Gentile, and thereby put them on an equal footing before Him. Regardless of the past, each must now come to God through acceptance of the crucified Jesus. He, Jesus the Christ, is that representative “new man”, the “Last Adam”, in whom we are now placed at the right hand of the Father. Whether we are Jew or Gentile, we must each come to the Father through this new order of mankind. We are either identified with the risen Christ, or we are utterly lost.

Ephesians 2:16

Therefore, the Church may not be viewed as an advancement of Israel, for it is made up of an entirely new order of created mankind. The existence of the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church, makes clear a path into a new relationship with God. That is the fact of reconciliation. It is God’s purpose “to reconcile both” Jew and Gentile to Himself through the life of His Son. That believer out of Israel, one who was living in light of the Law with his faith in the God of the covenant of promise, must now of necessity come through regeneration into the only relationship available to man in this age. Whatever difference (“hostility”) there might have been between the Jew and the Gentile in the past, as a result of God’s election of Israel, is now forever ended.

There is but one company of the redeemed in this age from the birth of the Church in the upper room on Pentecost until the Rapture. It is inclusive of both Jew and Gentile by natural birth, but exclusive to the reborn as “new creations”.

Ephesians 2:17

One Gospel is to both Jew and Gentile

(2:17) Since Pentecost, there is but one Gospel to all men. There is no special program in effect for the Jew today. All of the promises associated with the covenant relationships God established with Israel are set aside while the Church, the Bride of the Son of God, is called out and claimed by Him.

Both, “you who were far away” (Gentiles) and “those who were near” (Israel) now are the recipients of the message of “peace”–peace with one another and peace with God. The Israelites’ place of preference has been eliminated until such time as God draws them together in the land to deal with their rejection of Messiah and cleanse them of their unbelief. Until that occurs, there is but one Gospel available to them–Jesus was God come in the flesh and is now the ascended Lord of All. Today, the Israelite cannot, on the basis of any prior claim, redefine Him or reach the Father apart from invoking the name of Jesus. This means that those within the Church who seem to enjoy toying with the heritage and practices of things Jewish are running the very grave risk of drawing into the life of the Body of Christ elements of Jewish principles that are intended to bind one under the Law. That Law defined the barrier, which no longer exists! To assimilate things Jewish into our Christian experience is to embrace the very bondage from which Christ set us free!

Ephesians 2:18

One Spirit

(2:18) It is “through Him (Jesus)” that any man has “access to the Father”. It is the same means for “both” Jew and Gentile, and is actuated by the Holy Spirit. It is not possible for any man to come to God by any other means than acceptance of the Son of God, Jesus our ascended Lord.

This verse thoroughly discredits the claim of those who would address God by any other name or who attempt to identify with Him on the basis of their “honest heart”. Many would have us believe that the relative honesty of the individual has merit and can earn one a place for eternity. That is simply not true according to this message by the apostle Paul. It is only “through Him” that we “have access to the Father”.

Ephesians 2:19

One People-One House

(2:19) Furthermore, we are individual members of a company comprised of all who have accepted God in Christ and who have been elected to union with Him. Where we were once “foreigners (not of Israel) and aliens (not numbered among the Old Testament elect of God)” you are now “fellow citizens”. This means that our resources and provision are from a heavenly home. We are of “God’s people… members of God’s household”. The sense of intimacy here should not be lost to the reader. It is not that we are God’s property, but we are now members of His family. We, in being joined to His Son, are now His children, Sons of God.

Ephesians 2:20

(2:20-22) Note in this passage that there is no reference to the priesthood of Israel in the building. First, there is the “chief cornerstone”, Jesus our Lord. Second, there are the “apostles”. From them, we obtained our specific instructions as to our relationship with God in Christ. Third, there were the “prophets”. Through them, we learned of the first advent of Christ and of His rejection by Israel and mankind and of the election of a people apart from Israel as His own.

In contrast to the temple in Jerusalem, built solely for the function of the priests of Israel, this building is “joined together in Him and rises to become a temple set apart” not “to”, but “in the Lord”. Where the first temple was built “to” God, the second is built “in” God. This is a very important distinction to make.

In the same manner, “we too are being built together”. Here, we are enclosed entirely within God, and are irreversibly joined together in that position. The purpose is that we are “to become a dwelling in which God lives”. The company of believers, the Church, has become that temple, the place where God meets and comes face-to-face with mankind. The “temple” is the Church universal–that composite of individual lives which is the dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit.