Fellow members of the body (4954) (sussomos from sun = with, together, implying a closer relationship, intimacy or union + soma = body, used figuratively here of the Church) refers literally to a joint body and figuratively to fellow-members of the Christian community. It describes a "co-member" or one who is a member of a group, with emphasis upon the coordinate relation to other members of the group. The best commentary on this unique word which appears to have been coined by Paul what he had just explained in Ephesians 2 writing... But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. 17 AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; 18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. (See notes Ephesians 2:13; 14; 15; 16; 17; 18) As Wayne Barber says... Gentiles are not in the body because of the courtesy of the Jews. The Jews didn’t stop and say, "Well, okay guys, we will let you in." They had nothing to do with it. The Jews are not in by the courtesy of the Gentiles. Both of them are in solely by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been allowed in. (Ephesians 3:1-9 God's Divine Mystery - 2) The Gentiles are at no distance or disadvantage now, but share a position of equality with saved Jews. Both groups are united in one body as members of the "Mystical Body of Christ", the Church, which corporately is a new man, a new creation, in which the line of separation (the barrier of the dividing wall) between Jew and Gentile has been broken down In Jesus Christ we are made fellow members of one body, and all the middle walls that separate us are removed. This has been demonstrated clearly again and again when people of different backgrounds and cultures and classes, different outlooks, different races, have come together in Christ and found that all the differences which once seemed to be so tremendous are reduced to nothing, and they are able to overleap them and be healed in their fellowship together. S Lewis Johnson had some enlightening comments on this section writing that what... we have today in the church of Jesus Christ is something new. Now, the church is not the mystery, but it’s the relationship of the Jew and Gentile within the church that is the secret. It was not a secret in the Scriptures that the Gentiles would be saved. Now the Apostles had difficulty with this. Do you remember who had difficulty? Well, Peter had difficulty. Remember, when he had the vision, he was looking out, fell asleep, had the vision of the sheet that came down from heaven and those unclean animals within it, and he was told arise and eat; he said, not so Lord, I’ve never eaten anything unclean. All of this was to prepare him for the preaching of the Gospel to Cornelius and the Gentiles. Because they had the idea, carried over from Old Testament times, where it was a proper idea, that the person who was converted through the preaching of the Gospel, in order to be related properly to the true God, he became an Israelite. He became a part of the company of Israel. Think of Ruth, for example. Ruth was a Moabitess, but because of Ruth’s experience and finally her conversion, she became an Israelite. And actually, as you know, became one in the line of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are other illustrations of that in the genealogies in Matthew chapter 1. So when a person in the Old Testament became a believer, they identified with Israel. They became a member of that company of people. Now Peter had difficulty with that, the idea that Gentiles could be saved. That was just natural, because Israel had the revelation of God, and God had spoken to them, and he had appeared to them, and he had ministered through them, and he had difficulty with that. But finally, God overcame his difficulties, and he came to Cornelius’ house, and he preached the Gospel, and he came to Jerusalem and told them how God has been saving Gentiles. Now there was still one other thing that they didn’t understand. And that was, not simply that whether or not Gentiles could be saved, but if they were saved, were they in the believing company on the same level with Jewish saved people? Did they have to be circumcised? And of course, that question arose in Antioch. And after a lot of disputing there, Paul and others, like Barnabas, came down to Jerusalem, and there they had some more disputation and had a lot of arguing with people standing up and citing Scripture, seeking to understand the mind of the Lord, and finally Peter stood up, and he gave what came to be ultimately, the decision of the council, and that was, God saved people by faith through grace, and that the Gentiles not only could be saved, but they were saved in the same way. “But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they.” Now Peter turned it around, because anybody who had the slightest idea that there was any advantage so far as salvation was concerned in being a Jew, didn’t understand the grace of God. So he said, you people who wonder how the Gentiles can be saved and whether they can enter the church on the same basis with us, you need to have your theology purified. We’ll send you back to theology 101 if you don’t watch out, when you get to heaven. So we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ not, “they shall be saved even as we,” but “we shall be saved, even as they,” in case there’s somebody with this lurking sense of self-righteousness. (See Acts 15:11) So in history, they had to go through the experience so that the Gentiles might be saved (cp Ro 11:15ff-note), and when they are saved they don’t have to become Jews. They are saved, and they stand on the same plane as the Jews. That, I think, is what he means when he says that the Gentiles in Ephesians 3:6, should be fellow heirs and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel. You know, if you look at that in the Greek text it’s a rather interesting construction that the Apostle uses in connection with the three words. I’m going to read it out of the Greek text because the relationship of the Jews and the Gentiles is seen more plainly in the Greek text. The Apostle writes, “that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ through the Gospel.” Now in Greek he takes three nouns and he puts the little preposition “with” with them, and coins — doesn’t coin in the sense of making up new words entirely — but rather puts these words together so that you get the overwhelming idea of the sameness of relationship between Jew and Gentile in the Church of Jesus Christ. So the Gentiles are fellow heirs, they are fellow members of the one body, they are fellow partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel. That’s the mystery. That’s the secret. That’s the relationship that did not exist in Old Testament times. That’s the content of the mystery. Now notice, too, the means by which they come to these blessings is through the Gospel. Just as in the Old Testament times individuals were saved through the Gospel, so in New Testament times they are saved through the Gospel. The Gospel is not different now. The Gospel is the same Gospel that was preached in Old Testament times. It’s not the Gospel that’s changed. The results of the Gospel are different in the sense that in the Old Testament, when Jews were saved, they became a member of the theocratic company. They also were responsible to be put under the Law of Moses, and they also were responsible to submit to the sign of the covenant. But now, in this age, the law done away with, they are fellow members, fellow partakers of the promise. Paul in Romans says, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God which he had promised before by his prophets and the holy Scriptures.” So in the Old Testament we have the Gospel. In the New Testament we have the Gospel. In this age we have the secret. That was not made known in ancient times as it is revealed through Paul and the apostles and prophets of New Testament times. And that’s a magnificent relationship we have it is not? Gentiles and Jews now brought together in one redeeming company, fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, this one new man, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel. We are, Sunday morning, studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, and in Romans chapter 11 he goes into more detail concerning the fact that the natural branches were cut off, broken off, and the unnatural branches of the Gentiles were grafted in among them, that is, the faithful ones, the remnant, and have become fellow partakers of the root of the fatness of the olive tree. In other words, the Gentiles have been brought in to this one body and they have been made partakers of the blessings which are called the promise in Christ by the Gospel. What we have now in the church of Jesus Christ, then, is a group of redeemed people who are made up of Jews and Gentiles who stand on the same plane before the Lord God. It is a new international community, too. Jews and Gentiles, all equal in Christ. They are not joined to the Jewish nation and subordinated to them in significance, but there is one new, or to use the adjective “new” in its stress, one fresh man, for that’s the idea of the Greek word kainos which is used there instead of the word neos. One fresh man. Isn’t that a magnificent thing, that we Gentiles are now members of the church of Jesus Christ, fellow partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel? We’re called Children of Abraham, seed of Abraham, because we possess those promises. Something remarkable and new in the unfolding of God’s program. (Ephesians 3:1-13 The Dispensation of the Grace of God) AND FELLOW PARTAKERS OF THE PROMISE IN CHRIST JESUS THROUGH THE GOSPEL: kai summetocha tes epaggelias en Christo Iesou dia tou euaggeliou: (Gal 3:14; 1Jn 1:3; 2:25) Ruth Paxson tells the following story which indicates that there is a great need for a proper understanding of this foundational truth of Jew and Gentile in one body... Just recently a decree was issued by a Christian church that hereafter no Jew could worship there because of governmental threats. A very consecrated Hebrew Christian missionary in that country who had membership in that church and often preached there, was among those ejected. He and other Christian Jews were compelled to form a Hebrew Christian church. Christian Jews not allowed to worship with Christian Gentiles as fellow-heirs, fellow-members, fellow-partakers! Not "both one," but both two. Not "both one body," but each one body. Oh! the awful shame and sin of such an act! (To this she responds writing) Did not God put that word "remember" in Ep 2:11 (note) for such a day as this? "remember" that "in time past" you were an helpless, hopeless outcast in the deepest depths of sin. "Remember" you would still be there, as "far off" from God as any Jew you know to-day, had you not been "saved by grace." "Remember" that you were then the "alien" and the "foreigner" belonging to a pagan, unprivileged race, while the Jew belonged, and still does, to God’s chosen people, a nation privileged in God’s sight beyond all nations of the earth. "Remember" that apart from the blood of Christ you could never have been "made nigh" unto God. "Remember" that, as a Gentile, you have nothing in yourself or in your race of which to boast; and that your position as a "wild olive tree grafted into the good olive tree as a branch" is held only through faith, and not because of any personal, national or racial merit or superiority (Ro 11:11-34-note). "Remember" that God has no favorites in His family, and that both Jew and Gentile have the same access unto the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. "Remember" that, when once either Jew or Gentile has been incorporated into Christ through faith in His blood, he is a fellow-member of Christ’s Body and a "fellow citizen" with all saints. "Remember" that "we twain" are made "one new man" in Christ, and that henceforth we belong to a heavenly race that is super-racial and super-national, sharing alike both the privileges and the responsibilities of the Christian Church. O yes, ye Gentiles "remember" that your two most precious possessions, your Saviour and your Bible, came to you through the Jew; that the door to the Church was opened to you by Peter, the Jew; and that the revelation given of your equal possession of all its blessed privileges came to you through Paul, the Jew. And to any Gentile Christian who gives over all the curses to the Jew pronounced upon him in God’s Word, while he glories in all the blessings as promised to himself, even those plainly and exclusively given to the Jewish nation, "remember" the Word of God spoken centuries ago to the father of the Jews: Genesis 12:3. "I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." And the Word of God through the Psalmist: Psalm 122:6-note. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee." And our Lord’s own touching word regarding "my brethren": Mt 25:40, 45. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me... Inasmuch did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me." (The Wealth, Walk and Warfare of the Christian)