One in Christ
11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Dig Deeper
As a young teacher, I walked by the science room and saw the teacher there engaged with his class, showing them how to do one of the craziest experiments I had ever seen. They were taking equal parts water and corn starch and mixing them together into a substance that the teacher amusingly called "gloop." When you looked at the mixture, it looked like corn starch that had water in it. In other words, it didn’t look that impressive. You had to actually experience it to see the impressive part. If you took a stick or even used your finger and touched the substance slowly, it acted like a liquid. You could swirl your finger around or move it up and down and it felt just like a pretty normal liquid substance. When you hit it quickly, however, your finger would bounce off of it like it was rubber. The teacher even took a big bowl of it and threw a heavy screw down into the bowl and we all watched it bounce up several inches, land on the substance again, and then slowly sink into the liquid. He had taken two distinct substances and made a completely new substance that really had completely new properties from the old substances.
Paul continues his praise of what God has done in the Messiah, and here he focuses on the creation of an entirely new people. It is not as if God has taken two groups of people and simply put them together side by side in the same organization and told them to work out their differences. In Christ, they have actually become one people, a whole new race, in a sense. They ceased to be Jews or Gentiles, but had become a whole new sort of people. This is precisely what Paul said in Galatians 3:28, when he wrote that there "is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Gentiles and Jews have become one in Christ, a people that have completely new properties and a completely new identity from their old selves. This could only be done through God’s incredible grace in the life of the Messiah.
Paul begins by reminding the Gentiles that they were of no high and mighty stock in God’s eyes. They were called uncircumcised by the Jews who circumcised by the flesh of their hands. Paul, as he describes the need to become one in Christ, is going to deftly remind both Gentiles and Jews that they have nothing to brag about outside of Christ. The Gentiles were without five important things in Paul’s estimation. First, they were separate from Christ, which meant that they had no hope of being genuine human beings, unmarred by sin, and worthy of being in God’s presence. Second, they were excluded from citizenship in Israel, who are the true people of God. Third, They were foreigners to the covenants of promise, which pointed to and was the avenue through which the Messiah would come. Fourth, they were without hope, due to facts that Paul has already mentioned, they were separate from Christ, excluded from Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise. Finally, they were without God in the world. This charge would have been a bit ironic, because it had always been the pagans that accused the Jews of having no god because of their refusal to have any statues of their God or to sacrifice to the gods the way they did. Paul is not arguing that the pagans were atheists, simply that without the one, true God, they did not have anything at all except worthless idols and statues.
This road of hopelessness had all been washed away through the blood of Christ. In words echoing Isaiah 57:19, they once were far away but have been brought near to God. The reason that humans have been heading down the wrong road for so long, without realizing it, is that we have been separated from God. Life comes from God and can only be truly realized and enjoyed when in His presence. Everything else apart from God is a parody of the true life that God intended for His creation. The only solution to the fact that all humans are sleep-walking through the realm of sin and death with no hope of getting out on our own is the life of Jesus Christ, who takes us to the Father. In other words, all humans are in a deep pit, of which there is no way out. The Messiah is the ladder that comes down and gives us access out of the pit of sin and death.
Before Christ there was no apparent way for there to be peace between Jews and Gentiles, but he himself is our peace (see Is. 9:6; 52:7; Mic. 5:5; and Zech. 9:9-10). In the Hebrew way of thinking, peace or shalom was not just the ending of hostility, but was a comprehensive term that included wholeness and a complete and prosperous life with God (see, for instance, 2 Sam. 11:7 where David inquires about the shalom of his war). The peace of Christ was not merely the absence or cessation of conflict, it was the way that life was intended to be. Christ has brought these two different people together and made them one in his life; the two different substances are now a new substance with new properties altogether. There is some debate as to what Paul was referring when he spoke of the dividing wall of hostility being destroyed, but most likely he is speaking of both the way that the Jewish law functioned to keep Jews and Gentiles apart, and also the wall that symbolically and literally kept the Jews and Gentiles separate when in the Temple court.
Christ abolished the problem of this barrier in his flesh, or in other words, his incarnation and death on the cross. The source of the problem for Jews and Gentiles, as Paul pointed out in v. 11, was in the flesh, and God has made a way, in the flesh, to deal with the problem of the flesh. Just as Christ redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse (Gal. 3:13), so he has redeemed the flesh by becoming flesh. He thus abolished the commandments and regulations of the law that kept Jews and Gentiles separate, embodying the law and bringing both groups together in him. Through his death and resurrection, Christ has created a new corporate man, consisting of those who would enter into his life. Through the life of Christ, a new being was brought into existence, one in which people become one with Christ and one with each other. The life of Christ and the grace of God not only bring us union with God, but with each other. Reconciliation is a major theme for Paul when it comes to the Messiah. Because of him, there is a reconciliation between God and sinners who are enemies (Rom. 5:10-11), a reconciliation between the world and God Himself, giving us a ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-21), a reconciliation between God and all things on earth and in heaven (Col. 1:20-21), and here we have a double reconciliation between both God and humanity and between Jews and Gentiles. The point all along was that there would be a single, new humanity in Christ in place of the two.
Paul, in verse 17, does not mean to imply that Jesus literally preached to those far away those near, but rather, he sees the work of those in Christ as being so united and connected with the purpose of the Messiah that he can speak of what disciples do, as being done by Christ himself without a moment’s hesitation. We should always remember, though, that this is a great privilege but it carries with it great responsibility to carry the name and ministry of Christ in a worthy manner.
It all comes down to, Paul reminds his readers, that in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles have access to the Father by one Spirit. It all comes as a result of the life of Christ and the work of the Spirit. Although he doesn’t directly say it, it seems probable that Paul has the baptism through which we enter into Christ in mind throughout this passage. Access to God is gained through the one Spirit because we are all united by the Spirit at baptism into Christ (! Cor. 12:12; Eph. 4:1-6).
Devotional Thought
Paul says that in Christ there should be nothing that divides or separates the people of Christ. What are the primary temptations and things over which Christians today divide? Are there any things that might creep into your fellowship and cause division? What can you do to remain united in Christ?
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