that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation,
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Ephesians 2:12-14 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Therefore remember that once you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “uncircumcision” by that which is called “circumcision” (in the flesh, made by hands), that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it. He came and preached peace to you who were far off and to those who were near. For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Parallel Translations
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that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation,
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Remember I saye that ye were at that tyme with oute Christ and were reputed aliantes from the comen welth of Israel and were straugers from the testamentes of promes and had no hope and were with out god in this worlde.
But now in Christ Iesu ye which a whyle agoo were farre of are made nye by the bloude of Christ.
For he is oure peace whych hath made of both one and hath broken doune the wall that was a stoppe bitwene vs
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That ye were, I say, at that time without Christ, and were alients from the common wealth of Israel, and were strangers from the couenants of promise, and had no hope, and were without God in the world.
But nowe in Christ Iesus, ye which once were farre off, are made neere by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, which hath made of both one, and hath broken the stoppe of the partition wall,
Cross-references (106)
- Acts 2:39 (v13) For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.”
- Galatians 3:28 (vv13–14) There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
- Colossians 1:20-22 (v13) and through him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through…
- Colossians 3:11 (v14) where there can’t be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all,…
- Colossians 3:15 (v14) And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.
Show all 100 cross-references
- Galatians 4:8 (v12) However at that time, not knowing God, you were in bondage to those who by nature are not gods.
- Colossians 1:13-14 (v13) who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have our redemption,…
- Colossians 1:21 (v12) You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds,
- Ephesians 2:15 (v14) having abolished in his flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man…
- Ephesians 2:19-22 (v13) So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being built on…
- 1 Corinthians 6:11 (v13) Some of you were such, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the…
- 1 Peter 1:3 (v12) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope…
- Isaiah 57:19 (v13) I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace, to him who is far off and to him who is near,” says Yahweh; “and I will heal them.”
- Jeremiah 31:31-34 (v12) “Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according…
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (v14) For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one…
- Isaiah 43:6 (v13) I will tell the north, ‘Give them up!’ and tell the south, ‘Don’t hold them back! Bring my sons from far away, and my daughters from the…
- Romans 3:23-30 (v13) for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ…
- Acts 26:18 (v13) to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins…
- Ephesians 2:12 (v13) that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the…
- Ephesians 4:18 (v12) being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of…
- 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (v12) But we don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don’t grieve like the rest, who have…
- Revelation 5:9 (v13) They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your…
- Ezekiel 37:26 (v12) Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant with them. I will place them, multiply them, and…
- Ephesians 2:16-17 (v13) and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it. He came and preached peace to…
- Colossians 1:20 (v14) and through him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through…
- Isaiah 9:6-7 (v14) For a child is born to us. A son is given to us; and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,…
- John 15:5 (v12) I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
- Romans 5:1 (v14) Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
- 2 Corinthians 5:17 (v13) Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
- Colossians 2:10-14 (v14) and in him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made…
- Ephesians 1:7 (v13) in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
- Hebrews 6:18 (v12) that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to…
- 1 Peter 1:18-19 (v13) knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your…
- Genesis 17:7-9 (v12) I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to…
- Luke 2:14 (v14) “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.”
- Acts 10:36 (v14) The word which he sent to the children of Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all—
- 1 Corinthians 1:30 (v13) Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:
- Galatians 3:16-17 (v12) Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, “To descendants”, as of many, but as of one, “To your…
- Ephesians 3:5-8 (v13) which in other generations was not made known to the children of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the…
- Colossians 2:20 (v14) If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances,
- 1 Thessalonians 4:5 (v12) not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don’t know God,
- John 10:16 (vv12, 14) I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one…
- 2 Chronicles 15:3 (v12) Now for a long time Israel was without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law.
- Psalms 22:7 (v13) All those who see me mock me. They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
- Isaiah 66:19 (v13) “I will set a sign among them, and I will send those who escape of them to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to…
- Acts 10:28 (v14) He said to them, “You yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to join himself or come to one of another nation,…
- Romans 9:8 (v12) That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as heirs.
- 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 (v13) We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to…
- Hebrews 9:18 (v13) Therefore even the first covenant has not been dedicated without blood.
- Hebrews 13:20 (v14) Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, our Lord…
- 1 Peter 3:15 (v12) But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is…
- 1 Peter 3:18 (v13) Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the…
- Genesis 15:18 (v12) In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I have given this land to your offspring, from the river of Egypt to the great…
- Psalms 89:3-18 (v12) “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David, my servant, ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build up your…
- Jeremiah 16:19 (v13) Yahweh, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth,…
- Jeremiah 17:13 (v12) Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be disappointed. Those who depart from me will be written in the earth, because they…
- Ezekiel 34:24-25 (v14) I, Yahweh, will be their God, and my servant David prince among them. I, Yahweh, have spoken it. “ ‘I will make with them a covenant of…
- Micah 5:5 (v14) He will be our peace when Assyria invades our land, and when he marches through our fortresses, then we will raise against him seven…
- Luke 1:79 (v14) to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
- John 16:33 (v14) I have told you these things, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble; but cheer up! I have overcome the world.”
- Acts 3:25 (v12) You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘All the families of the…
- Acts 28:20 (v12) For this cause therefore I asked to see you and to speak with you. For because of the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.”
- Romans 5:9-10 (v13) Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. For if while we were enemies, we were…
- Romans 8:1 (v13) There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
- Romans 9:4-5 (v12) who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises; of whom are the…
- 1 Corinthians 10:19-20 (v12) What am I saying then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But I say that the things which the…
- Exodus 24:3-11 (v12) Moses came and told the people all Yahweh’s words, and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the…
- Numbers 18:19 (v12) All the wave offerings of the holy things which the children of Israel offer to Yahweh, I have given you and your sons and your daughters…
- Ezra 4:3 (v12) But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel, said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in…
- Esther 3:8 (v14) Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your…
- Psalms 73:27 (v13) For, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you.
- Isaiah 11:10 (v13) It will happen in that day that the nations will seek the root of Jesse, who stands as a banner of the peoples; and his resting place will…
- Isaiah 19:24-25 (v14) In that day, Israel will be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing within the earth; because Yahweh of Armies has blessed them,…
- Isaiah 44:6 (v12) This is what Yahweh, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Yahweh of Armies, says: “I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there…
- Isaiah 45:20 (v12) “Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations. Those have no knowledge who carry the wood of…
- Isaiah 49:12 (v13) Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.”
- Isaiah 60:4 (v13) “Lift up your eyes all around, and see: they all gather themselves together. They come to you. Your sons will come from far away, and your…
- Isaiah 60:9 (v13) Surely the islands will wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your sons from far, their silver and their gold with them,…
- Jeremiah 14:8 (v12) You hope of Israel, its Savior in the time of trouble, why should you be as a foreigner in the land, and as a wayfaring man who turns aside…
- Jeremiah 33:20-26 (v12) “Yahweh says: ‘If you can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, so that there will not be day and night in their time;…
- Ezekiel 13:9 (v12) “My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and who utter lying divinations. They will not be in the council of my people,…
- Ezekiel 37:19-20 (v14) tell them, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his…
- Hosea 3:4 (v12) For the children of Israel shall live many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without sacred stone, and…
- Zechariah 6:13 (v14) even he shall build Yahweh’s temple; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule on his throne; and he shall be a priest on his…
- Luke 1:72 (v12) to show mercy toward our fathers, to remember his holy covenant,
- John 4:22 (v12) You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
- John 11:52 (v14) and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
- Acts 14:15-16 (v12) “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and bring you good news, that you should turn from these…
- Acts 15:14 (v13) Simeon has reported how God first visited the nations to take out of them a people for his name.
- Acts 22:21 (v13) “He said to me, ‘Depart, for I will send you out far from here to the Gentiles.’”
- Romans 1:28-32 (v12) Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being…
- Romans 15:8-12 (v13) Now I say that Christ has been made a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises given to the…
- 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 (v12) Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other…
- Ephesians 3:15 (v14) from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
- Ephesians 4:16 (v14) from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each…
- Colossians 1:5 (v12) because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Good News
- Colossians 1:27 (v12) to whom God was pleased to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope…
- 2 Thessalonians 2:16 (v12) Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,
- 1 Timothy 1:1 (v12) Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope;
- Hebrews 7:2 (v14) to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first, by interpretation, “king of righteousness”, and then also “king of Salem”,…
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (106 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv12–14 12. That at that time ye were without Christ.…
12. That at that time ye were without Christ. He now declares that the Ephesians had been excluded, not only from the outward badge, but from everything necessary to the salvation and happiness of men. As Christ is the foundation of hope and of all the promises, he mentions, first of all, that they were without Christ. But for him that is without Christ, there remains nothing but destruction. On Him the commonwealth of Israel was founded; and in whom, but in Himself, could the people of God be collected into one holy society?
A similar observation might be made as to the tables of the promise On one great promise made to Abraham all the others hang, and without it they lose all their value:
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“In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 22:18.)
Hence our apostle says elsewhere,
“All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen.” (2 Corinthians 1:20.)
Take away the covenant of salvation, and there remains no hope. I have translated τῶν διαθηκῶν by the tables, or, in ordinary legal phrase, the instruments. By solemn ritual did God sanction His covenant with Abraham and his posterity, that he would be their God for ever and ever. (Genesis 15:9.) Tables of this covenant were ratified by the hand of Moses, and intrusted, as a peculiar treasure, to the people of Israel, to whom, and not to the Gentiles, “pertain the covenants.” (Romans 9:4.)
And without God in the world. But at no period were the Ephesians, or any other Gentiles, destitute of all religion. Why, then, are they styled (ἄθεοι) Atheists? for (ἄθεος) an Atheist, strictly speaking, is one who does not believe, and who absolutely ridicules, the being of a God. That appellation, certainly, is not usually given to superstitious persons, but to those who have no feeling of religion, and who desire to see it utterly destroyed. I answer, Paul was right in giving them this name, for he treated all the notions entertained respecting false gods as nothing; and with the utmost propriety do godly persons regard all idols as “nothing in the world.” (1 Corinthians 8:4.) Those who do not worship the true God, whatever may be the variety of their worship, or the multitude of laborious ceremonies which they perform, are without God: they adore what they know not. (Acts 17:23.) Let it be carefully observed, that the Ephesians are not charged with (ἀθεϊσμὸς) Atheism, in the same degree as Diagoras, and others of the same stamp, who were subjected to that reproach. Persons who imagined themselves to be very religious are charged with that crime; for an idol is a forgery, an imposition, not a Divinity.
From what has been said, the conclusion will be easily drawn, that out of Christ there are none but idols. Those who were formerly declared to be without Christ, are now declared to be without God; as John says,
“Whosoever hath not the Son, hath not the Father,” (1 John 2:23;)
and again,
“Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God.” (2 John 1:9.)
Let us know, therefore, that all who do not keep this way wander from the true God. We shall next be asked, Did God never reveal himself to any of the Gentiles? I answer, no manifestation of God without Christ was ever made among the Gentiles, any more than among the Jews. It is not to one age only, or to one nation, that the saying of our Lord applies,
“I am the way;” for he adds, “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6.)
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv12–14 He beginneth first with Christ, who was the end…
He beginneth first with Christ, who was the end of all the promises.
You had no right or title, to the common wealth of Israel.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv12–14 12 That at that time ye were without Christ,…
12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
Ver. 12. Strangers from the covenant] The saints only are heirs to the promises; but the devil sweeps all the wicked, as being out of the covenant. They stuff themselves with promises, till they have made them a pillow for sin, Deu 29:19. Sed praesumendo sperant, et sperando pereunt.
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Having no hope] But such as will one day hop headless; such as will serve them as Absalom’s mule served her master, when she left him hanging by the head between heaven and earth, as rejected of both.
Without God in the world] Because without a teaching priest, and without law, 2Ch 15:3. As it is said of the poor Brazilians at this day, that they are sine fide, sine rege, sine lege, without faith, without a king, without law. This was the case of our pagan predecessors.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv12–14 That at that time ye were without Christ; i.e.…
That at that time ye were without Christ; i.e. without knowledge of him, or interest in him. This is the foundation of all other miseries, as Christ is the foundation of all saving good, and therefore the apostle begins with this.
Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; the church of God, confined formerly to the Israelites: their church and state was the same body, and God the founder of and lawgiver to them in both respects.
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And strangers from the covenants of promise; those covenants in which the great promise of Christ and salvation by him was made. The covenants were several, as that with Abraham, and that by Moses, and differ in some accidents, but the promise in them was one and the same, which was the substance of each.
Having no hope; viz. beyond this life; as they could not but be who were without Christ, and without the promises.
And without God; not without some general knowledge of a God, but without any saving knowledge of him, as not knowing him in Christ: or they lived as without God, neglecting him, and being neglected by him, and suffered to walk in their own ways.
In the world; which is the congregation of the wicked, and is here opposed to the church.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv13–14 The apostle having set before the Ephesians the black…
The apostle having set before the Ephesians the black and dark part of their lives, before their conversion to Christianity, in the foregoing verse; comes here in this to acquaint them with the blessed change which was made in their state, and by whom. Now, says he, in or by Christ Jesus, ye, who were before afar off, namely, from Christ, his church, his covenant, from saving hope, and from God himself, are made as nigh as the Jews, and have as much right to expect the aforesaid benefits as they, the blood of Christ having purchased them for you, and sealed them to you; Ye that were before afar off, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ.
Where note, That persons who are most remote, and at the farthest distance from God, are sometimes unexpectedly brought home unto him: Ye who were afar off, are now made nigh.
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Note, 2. That it is owing to the blood of Christ, to his death and sufferings, that any soul is brought into a state of nearness unto God, and finds acceptance with him: Ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v14 We have now come to the last part of…
We have now come to the last part of the chapter, which contains an account of the great and mighty privileges that converted Jews and Gentiles both receive from Christ. The apostle here shows that those who were in a state of enmity are reconciled. Between the Jews and the Gentiles there had been a great enmity; so there is between God and every unregenerate man. Now Jesus Christ is our peace, Eph 2:14. He made peace by the sacrifice of himself; and came to reconcile, 1. Jews and Gentiles to each other. He made both one, by reconciling these two divisions of men, who were wont to malign, to hate, and to reproach each other before. He broke down the middle wall of partition, the ceremonial law, that made the great feud, and was the badge of the Jews' peculiarity, called the partition-wall by way of allusion to the partition in the temple, which separated the court of the Gentiles from that into which the Jews only had liberty to enter. Thus he abolished in his flesh the enmity, Eph 2:15. By his sufferings in the flesh, to took away the binding power of the ceremonial law (so removing that cause of enmity and distance between them), which is here called the law of commandments contained in ordinances, because it enjoined a multitude of external rites and ceremonies, and consisted of many institutions and appointments about the outward parts of divine worship. The legal ceremonies were abrogated by Christ, having their accomplishment in him. By taking these out of the way, he formed one church of believers, whether they had been Jews or Gentiles. Thus he made in himself of twain one new man. He framed both these parties into one new society, or body of God's people, uniting them to himself as their common head, they being renewed by the Holy Ghost, and now concurring in a new way of gospel worship, so making peace between these two parties, who were so much at variance before. 2. There is an enmity between God and sinners, whether Jews and Gentiles; and Christ came to slay that enmity, and to reconcile them both to God, Eph 2:16. Sin breeds a quarrel between God and men. Christ came to take up the quarrel, and to bring it to an end, by reconciling both Jew and Gentile, now collected and gathered into one body, to a provoked and an offended God: and this by the cross, or by the sacrifice of himself upon the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. He, being slain or sacrificed, slew the enmity that there was between God and poor sinners. The apostle proceeds to illustrate the great advantages which both parties gain by the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Eph 2:17. Christ, who purchased peace on the cross, came, partly in his own person, as to the Jews, who are here said to have been nigh, and partly in his apostles, whom he commissioned to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, who are said to have been afar off, in the sense that has been given before. And preached peace, or published the terms of reconciliation with God and of eternal life. Note here, When the messengers of Christ deliver his truths, it is in effect the same as if he did it immediately himself. He is said to preach by them, insomuch that he who receiveth them receiveth him, and he who despiseth them (acting by virtue of his commission, and delivering his message) despiseth and rejecteth Christ himself. Now the effect of this peace is the free access which both Jews and Gentiles have unto God (Eph 2:18): For through him, in his name and by virtue of his mediation, we both have access or admission into the presence of God, who has become the common reconciled Father of both: the throne of grace is erected for us to come to, and liberty of approach to that throne is allowed us. Our access is by the Holy Spirit. Christ purchased for us leave to come to God, and the Spirit gives us a heart to come and strength to come, even grace to serve God acceptably. Observe, We draw nigh to God, through Jesus Christ, by the help of the Spirit. The Ephesians, upon their conversion, having such an access to God, as well as the Jews, and by the same Spirit, the apostle tells them, Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, Eph 2:19. This he mentions by way of opposition to what he had observed of them in their heathenism: they were now no longer aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and no longer what the Jews were wont to account all the nations of the earth besides themselves (namely, strangers to God), but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, that is, members of the church of Christ, and having a right to all the privileges of it. Observe here, The church is compared to a city, and every converted sinner is free of it. It is also compared to a house, and every converted sinner is one of the domestics, one of the family, a servant and a child in God's house. In Eph 2:20 the church is compared to a building. The apostles and prophets are the foundation of that building. They may be so called in a secondary sense, Christ himself being the primary foundation; but we are rather to understand it of the doctrine delivered by the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New. It follows, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. In him both Jews and Gentiles meet, and constitute one church; and Christ supports the building by his strength: In whom all the building, fitly framed together, etc., Eph 2:21. All believers, of whom it consists, being united to Christ by faith, and among themselves by Christian charity, grow unto a holy temple, become a sacred society, in which there is much communion between God and his people, as in the temple, they worshipping and serving him, he manifesting himself unto them, they offering up spiritual sacrifices to God and he dispensing his blessings and favours to them. Thus the building, for the nature of it, is a temple, a holy temple; for the church is the place which God hath chosen to put his name there, and it becomes such a temple by grace and strength derived from himself - in the Lord. The universal church being built upon Christ as the foundation-stone, and united in Christ as the corner-stone, comes at length to be glorified in him as the top-stone: In whom you also are built together, etc., Eph 2:22. Observe, Not only the universal church is called the temple of God, but particular churches; and even every true believer is a living temple, is a habitation of God through the Spirit. God dwells in all believers now, they having become the temple of God through the operations of the blessed Spirit, and his dwelling with them now is an earnest of their dwelling together with him to eternity.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–14 That at that time ye were without Christ,.... Or…
That at that time ye were without Christ,.... Or separate from him: they were chosen in him and were preserved in him, and were redeemed by him before; but they were without any knowledge of him, faith in him, love to him, communion with him, or subjection to him, his Gospel, government, laws, and ordinances; and particularly they were without any promises of him, or prophecies concerning him, which were peculiar to the Jews; hence the Messiah is called , "the Christ of Israel" (w), and who as he was promised, so he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house, of Israel: hence it follows,
being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; both from their civil and church state; the Gentiles might not dwell among them, nor have any dealings with them in things civil, unless they conformed to certain laws; nor might the Jews go into any, nor eat or converse with any, that were uncircumcised; so great an alienation and distance were there between these two people; and much less might they eat the passover and join with them in religious worship; the word for "commonwealth" here used, Harpocratian says (x), is commonly used by Greek writers for a "democracy" though the original constitution of the Israelites was properly a "theocracy":
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strangers to the covenants of promise; to the covenant of circumcision given to Abraham; and to the covenant at Mount Sinai, made with Israel; and to the dispensation of the covenant of grace to that people, sometimes called the first covenant and the old covenant, and which peculiarly belonged to them, Rom 9:4 one copy reads, "strangers to the promises of the covenant"; which is natural enough; the Vulgate Latin version joins the word "promise" to the next clause, and reads,
having no hope of the promise of the promised Messiah: "having no hope"; of the Messiah and salvation by him, of the resurrection of the dead, of a future state, and of eternal life; none that is sure and steadfast, that is purifying, and makes not ashamed; or which is a good hope through grace, is the gift of God, the fruit of his love, and the effect of his power; and this is to be in a miserable condition: Philo, the Jew (y), observes, that
"the Chaldeans call a man Enos, as if he only was truly a man that expects good things, and supports himself with good hopes; and adds, hence it is manifest that one without hope is not reckoned a man, but a beast in an human form; since he is destitute of hope, which is the property of the human soul;''
and without God in the world; without the knowledge of God in Christ; without the image of God, which was defaced by sin; without the grace and fear of God; and without communion with him, and the worship of him; and while they were so they were in the world, among the men of it, and were a part of it, not being yet called out of it: the word signifies "atheists": so some of the Gentiles were in "theory", as they all were in practice; and they were by the Jews reckoned no other than "atheists"; it is a common saying with them (z) that
"he that dwells without the land (of Israel) is like one , "who has no God":''
(w) Targum in Isa. xvi. 1. 5. (x) Lex. Decem Orator. p. 246. (y) De Abrahamo, p. 350, 351. (z) T. Bab. Cetubot, fol. 110. 2. Zohar in Exod. fol. 33. 1. Cosri, par. 2. sect. 22. fol. 85. 2. Tzeror Hammor, fol. 129. 4. & 135. 2. & 153. 3. & 168. 3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv12–14 Were at that time without Christ - Having no…
Were at that time without Christ - Having no faith in, or knowledge of, him. Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel - Both as to their temporal privileges and spiritual blessings. And strangers to the covenants of promise - The great promise in both the Jewish and Christian covenant was the Messiah. Having no hope - Because they had no promise whereon to ground their hope. And being without God - Wholly ignorant of the true God, and so in effect atheists. Such in truth are, more or less, all men, in all ages, till they know God by the teaching of his own Spirit. In the world - The wide, vain world, wherein ye wandered up and down, unholy and unhappy.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv12–14 Verse 12. That at that time ye were without…
Verse 12. That at that time ye were without Christ] Not only were not Christians, but had no knowledge of the Christ or Messiah, and no title to the blessings which were to proceed from him.
Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel] Ye were by your birth, idolatry, c., alienated from the commonwealth of Israel-from the civil and religious privileges of the Jewish people.
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Strangers from the covenants of promise] Having no part in the promise of the covenant made with Abraham, whether considered as relating to his natural or spiritual seed and no part in that of the covenant made at Horeb with the Israelites, when a holy law was given them, and God condescended to dwell among them, and to lead them to the promised land.
Having no hope] Either of the pardon of sin or of the resurrection of the body, nor indeed of the immortality of the soul. Of all these things the Gentiles had no rational or well-grounded hope.
Without God in the world] They had gods many, and lords many; but in no Gentile nation was the true God known: nor indeed had they any correct notion of the Divine nature. Their idols were by nature no gods-they could neither do evil nor good, and therefore they were properly without God, having no true object of worship, and no source of comfort. He who has neither God nor Christ is in a most deplorable state; he has neither a God to worship, nor a Christ to justify him. And this is the state of every man who is living without the grace and Spirit of Christ. All such, whatever they may profess, are no better than practical atheists.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v13 Eph 2:13-14. But now in Christ Jesus — In…
Eph 2:13-14. But now in Christ Jesus — In consequence of your union with him, and your interest in him by faith, ye, who formerly were far off — From God and his people, (as in Eph 2:12,) are made nigh to both, by the blood of Christ — Whereby he hath atoned for your sins, and opened a free and honourable way for your approaching God, and becoming entitled to all the privileges of his people. For he is our peace — Not only as he purchased it, and confers it on such as truly believe in him, but as he is the very bond and centre of the union of believers with God and each other; who hath made both — Believing Jews and Gentiles, one church, one flock of Christ. This union of the Jews and the Gentiles, so as to make them one people, was foretold by our Lord, when he said, (Joh 10:16,) Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: are not Jews; and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold: Greek, μια ποιμνη, one flock, though in different folds, and one shepherd. The apostle here describes, 1st, The conjunction of the Gentiles with Israel, Eph 2:14-15; and, 2d, The conjunction of both with God, Eph 2:16-18. And hath broken down the middle wall of partition — The ceremonial law, which the apostle here compares to that wall in the Jewish temple, which separated the court of Israel from the court of the Gentiles. For many of the rites of that law could be performed nowhere but in the temple of Jerusalem. But Christ, having now taken away that law, and prescribed, under the gospel, a spiritual form of worship, which may be performed everywhere, he hath thereby provided for joining Jews and Gentiles in one church, and making them all one people in God: a union which could not have taken place if the Mosaic law had been continued. For the worship of God, as to various branches of it, being confined by that law to the temple at Jerusalem, the greatest part of the Gentiles could certainly not have come thither to worship with the Jews.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv12–14 Ye were without Christ - You were without the…
Ye were without Christ - You were without the knowledge of the Messiah. You had not heard of him; of course you had not embraced him. You were living without any of the hopes and consolations which you now have, from having embraced him. The object of the apostle is to remind them of the deplorable condition in which they were by nature; and nothing would better express it than to say they were “without Christ,” or that they had no knowledge of a Saviour. They knew of no atonement for sin. They had no assurance of pardon. They had no well-founded hope of eternal life. They were in a state of darkness and condemnation, from which nothing but a knowledge of Christ could deliver them. All Christians may in like manner be reminded of the fact that, before their conversion, they were “without Christ.” Though they had heard of him, and were constantly under the instruction which reminded them of him, yet they were without any true knowledge of him, and without any of the hopes which result from having embraced him. Many were infidels. Many were scoffers. Many were profane, sensual, corrupt. Many rejected Christ with scorn; many, by simple neglect. All were without any true knowledge of him; all were destitute of the peace and hope which result from a saving acquaintance with him. We may add, that there is no more affecting description of the state of man by nature than to say, he is without a Saviour. Sad would be the condition of the world without a Redeemer - sad is the state of that portion of mankind who reject him. Reader, are you without Christ?
Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel - This is the second characteristic of their state before their conversion to Christianity. This means more than that they were not Jews. It means that they were strangers to that “polity” - πολιτεία politeia - or arrangement by which the worship of the true God had been kept up in the world, and of course were strangers to the true religion The arrangements for the public worship of Yahweh were made among the Jews. They had his law, his temple, his sabbaths, and the ordinances of his religion; see the notes at Rom 3:2. To all these the pagans had been strangers, and of course they were deprived of all the privileges which resulted from having the true religion. The word rendered here as “commonwealth” - πολιτεία politeia - means properly citizenship, or the right of citizenship, and then a community, or state. It means here that arrangement or organization by which the worship of the true God was maintained. The word “aliens” - ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι apēllotriōmenoi - here means merely that they were strangers to. It does not denote, of necessity, that they were hostile to it; but that they were ignorant of it, and were, therefore, deprived of the benefits which they might have derived from it, if they had been acquainted with it.
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And strangers - This word - ξένος xenos - means properly a guest, or a stranger, who is hospitably entertained; then a foreigner, or one from a distant country; and here means that they did not belong to the community where the covenants of promise were enjoyed; that is, they were strangers to the privileges of the people of God.
The covenants of promise - see the notes at Rom 9:4. The covenants of promise were those various arrangements which God made with his people, by which he promised them future blessings, and especially by which he promised that the Messiah should come. To be in possession of them was regarded as a high honor and privilege; and Paul refers to it here to show that, though the Ephesians had been by nature without these, yet they had now been brought to enjoy all the benefits of them. On the word covenant, see the notes on Gal 3:15. It may be remarked, that Walton (Polyglott) and Rosenmuller unite the word “promise” here with the word “hope” - “having no hope of the promise.” But the more obvious and usual interpretation is that in our common version, meaning that they were not by nature favored with the covenants made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., by which there was a promise of future blessings under the Messiah.
Having no hope - The apostle does not mean to affirm that they did not cherish any hope, for this is scarcely true of any man; but that they were without any proper ground of hope. It is true of perhaps nearly all people that they cherish some hope of future happiness. But the ground on which they do this is not well understood by themselves, nor do they in general regard it as a matter worth particular inquiry. Some rely on morality; some on forms of religion; some on the doctrine of universal salvation; all who are impenitent believe that they do not “deserve” eternal death, and expect to be saved by “justice.” Such hopes, however, must be unfounded. No hope of life in a future world can be founded on a proper basis which does not rest on some promise of God, or some assurance that he will save us; and these hopes, therefore, which people take up they know not why, are delusive and vain.
And without God in the world - Greek ἄθεοι atheoi - “atheists;” that is, those who had no knowledge of the true God. This is the last specification of their miserable condition before they were converted; and it is an appropriate crowning of the climax. What an expression! To be without God - without God in his own world, and where he is all around us! To have no evidence of his favor, no assurance of his love, no hope of dwelling with him! The meaning, as applied to the pagan Ephesians, was, that they had no knowledge of the true God. This was true of the pagan, and in an important sense also it is true of all impenitent sinners, and was once true of all who are now Christians. They had no God. They did not worship him, or love him, or serve him, or seek his favors, or act with reference to him and his glory. Nothing can be a more appropriate and striking description of a sinner now than to say that he is “without God in the world.”
He lives, and feels, and acts, as if there were no God. He neither worships him in secret, nor in his family, nor in public. He acts with no reference to his will. He puts no confidence in his promises, and fears not when he threatens; and were it announced to him that there “is no God,” it would produce no change in his plan of life, or in his emotions. The announcement that the emperor of China, or the king of Siam, or the sultan of Constantinople, was dead, would produce some emotion, and might change some of his commercial arrangements; but the announcement that there is no God would interfere with none of his plans, and demand no change of life. And, if so, what is man in this beautiful world without a God? A traveler to eternity without a God! Standing over the grave without a God! An immortal being without a God! A man - fallen, sunk, ruined, with no God to praise, to love, to confide in; with no altar, no sacrifice, no worship, no hope; with no Father in trial, no counselor in perplexity, no support in death! Such is the state of man by nature. Such are the effects of sin.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v14 Christ destroyed the enmity which, like a wall of…
Christ destroyed the enmity which, like a wall of separation, stood between Jew and Gentile, and united them into one people. He did this in his flesh, by his own blood, or the sacrifice he made of his flesh on the cross. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12–14 without Christ--Greek, "separate from Christ"; having no part in…
without Christ--Greek, "separate from Christ"; having no part in Him; far from Him. A different Greek word (aneu) would be required to express, "Christ was not present with you" [TITTMANN].
aliens--Greek, "alienated from," not merely "separated from." The Israelites were cut off from the commonwealth of God, but it was as being self-righteous, indolent, and unworthy, not as aliens and strangers [CHRYSOSTOM]. The expression, "alienated from," takes it for granted that the Gentiles, before they had apostatized from the primitive truth, had been sharers in light and life (compare Eph 4:18, Eph 4:23). The hope of redemption through the Messiah, on their subsequent apostasy, was embodied into a definite "commonwealth" or polity, namely, that "of Israel," from which the Gentiles were alienated. Contrast Eph 2:13; Eph 3:6; Eph 4:4-5, with Psa 147:20.
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covenants of promise--rather, ". . . of the promise," namely, "to thee and thy seed will I give this land" (Rom 9:4; Gal 3:16). The plural implies the several renewals of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the whole people at Sinai [ALFORD]. "The promise" is singular, to signify that the covenant, in reality, and substantially, is one and the same at all times, but only different in its accidents and external circumstances (compare Heb 1:1, "at sundry times and in divers manners").
having no . . . hope--beyond this life (Co1 15:19). The CONJECTURES of heathen philosophers as to a future life were at best vague and utterly unsatisfactory. They had no divine "promise," and therefore no sure ground of "hope." Epicurus and Aristotle did not believe in it at all. The Platonists believed the soul passed through perpetual changes, now happy, and then again miserable; the Stoics, that it existed no longer than till the time of the general burning up of all things.
without God--Greek, "atheists," that is, they had not "God" in the sense we use the word, the Eternal Being who made and governs all things (compare Act 14:15, "Turn from these vanities unto the living God who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things therein"), whereas the Jews had distinct ideas of God and immortality. Compare also Gal 4:8, "Ye knew not God . . . ye did service unto them which are no gods" (Th1 4:5). So also pantheists are atheists, for an impersonal God is NO GOD, and an ideal immortality no immortality [THOLUCK].
in the world--in contrast to belonging to "the commonwealth of Israel." Having their portion and their all in this godless vain world (Psa 17:14), from which Christ delivers His people (Joh 15:19; Joh 17:14; Gal 1:4).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv12–14 12. Without Christ—This description of their heathen condition differs…
12. Without Christ—This description of their heathen condition differs from that in Eph_2:1-3, in that the latter details dark, active wickedness, exciting abhorrence; whilst this presents details of destitution and unhappiness, touching the heart with pity. Without Christ, they were without every other blessedness; without holy citizenship, without the covenants, without hope, and without God—only in the world.
Aliens… Israel—Literally, Foreigners from the polity of Israel. They had no rights in the spiritual realm; no citizenship in the city of God, in the Jerusalem below, or the Jerusalem above.
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Strangers… promise—In those blessed covenants in the archives of the holy city they, as unnaturalized foreigners, had no share and no knowledge. The Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, and including both, Christ’s covenant of promise, conditioned on faith, had no promise for them.
No hope—There was in those covenants a blessed hope of pardon of sin, of immortality, and eternal life; but no hope therefrom for them. Dim hopes from nature there were, but nothing that Christianity could call a hope.
Without God—There was a God in Israel, revealed in the covenants, incarnate in Christ; but no God for them. They had a great fancy goddess. Artemis, (Diana;) but she was nothing but a many-breasted pantheistic conception. Notes, Act_19:22-28. They were without God in all the world. They were solitaires, orphans, godless, and wanderers in the world, that was full of a father God. But the precise meaning of the clause in the world, (which has been something of a puzzle to commentators,) may be best seen by reversing the order of the clauses: In the world, without God, without hope. Its emphasis may thus appear; without hope, without God, yet—in the world! In an existence rendered by sin worse than non-existence!
Such is the picture, drawn with deep pathos by a tender yet true hand, of unregenerate heathendom! Well may Meyer query whether such a picture makes any allowance for the salvable heathen. It supposes no Socrates, Plato, or Aristides. But doubtless, in fact, there were among the pagan converts from Artemis too few such relieving exceptions to suggest any brightening of the picture. See notes, Act_18:19. Perhaps he would have drawn a milder portraiture of the barbarians of Melita. Act_28:1-6. Notes, Rom_2:14-15.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv12–14 12. at that time] Strictly, at that occasion. The…
12. at that time] Strictly, at that occasion. The Gr. word habitually marks limited periods; though this must not always be pressed. Here possibly there is a suggestion of the transient period of exclusion, opposed to the long eternity of acceptance.
without Christ] Apart from Christ; out of connexion with the Messiah. Here no Pharisaic prejudice is in view, but the mysterious fact that only through the great prophesied Redeemer is there life and acceptance for man, and that in order to contact with Him there needs “preaching,” “hearing,” “believing” (Rom_10:13; Rom_10:15). Scripture does not present this fact without any relief; but all relief leaves it a phenomenon of Revelation as mysterious as it is solid.
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being aliens] Lit., having been alienated (the same word as Eph_4:18; Col_1:21); as if they had once been otherwise. So, in idea, they had been. Every human soul is (occasionally) viewed in Scripture as having been originally unfallen, and, if unfallen, then in a covenant of peace with God of which the covenant of Israel was but a type. Such a view is wholly ideal, referring not to the actual history of the individual soul, but to the Nature of which the individual is a specimen. Such popular phrases as, “we are fallen creatures,” have this truth below them. Historically, we begin prostrate; ideally, we began upright, and have fallen.
the commonwealth of Israel] Perhaps, “the citizenship.” The Gr. word occurs elsewhere, in N. T., Act_22:28 only (A. V., “this freedom;” the Roman citizenship). But the A. V. here (and so R. V.) is favoured by the word “alienated.” It is rather more natural to say “made aliens from a state,” than “made aliens from state-rights.” The two interpretations, however, perfectly coincide practically. “Israel,” (the Covenant-People with its special name of sacred dignity; see Trench, N. T. Synonyms, § 39;) is viewed as an ordered commonwealth or empire under its Divine King; and to be free of its rights is the one way to have connexion with Him.—By “Israel” the Apostle here doubtless means the inner Israel, of which the outer was as it were the husk; see Rom_9:6. But he does not emphasize a distinction. Under the Old Covenant, it was generally necessary to belong, in some sense, to the outer Israel in order to be one of the inner.
strangers] The Gr. is a word familiar in civic connexions; non-members of a state or city.
the covenants of promise] Lit., and better, of the Promise, the great Promise of Messiah, according to which those who “are of the Messiah, are Abraham’s seed, and heirs by promise” (Gal_3:29). In the light of Gal_3:18, we may say that the Promise is more specially of Justification, Acceptance, (as in Abraham’s case,) through faith, securing vital connexion with the Messiah.
“Covenants:”—for the plural cp. Rom_9:4. The reference is to the many Compacts, as with Abraham, Moses, Levi, David, Joshua; and perhaps to the New Covenant itself, as of course “connected with” the Promise.—The Promise indicated, from the first, blessings for the world, “all the families of the earth”; but these blessings were to be found only “in Abraham and his seed” (Gen_12:3; Gen_22:18); and thus to those not yet connected with Abraham and the Messiah there was no actual portion yet in the “covenants.”
having no hope] The Gr. just indicates (by its special negative particle) that this was not only so, but felt by the Gentiles to be so; “having, as you knew, no hope.” (So, precisely, 1Th_4:13.) The deep truth of this is fully attested by classical and other heathen literature, old or modern. Aspiration and conjecture there often was, but no hope, in the Scripture sense; no expectation on a firm basis. A profound uncertainty about the unseen and eternal underlies many of the strongest expressions of the classical poets and philosophers. And in the special reference of “hope” here, hope of a Redeemer and a redeemed inheritance, there was (and is) a total blank, apart from revelation.—“In Hellas, at the epoch of Alexander the Great, it was a current saying, and one profoundly felt by all the best men, that the best thing of all was not to be born, and the next best to die.” (Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, Eng. transl. Vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 586). See the thought still earlier, Sophocles, Œd. Col. 1224 (Dindorf).
without God] Lit., Godless; without true knowledge of the true God. “Gods many” were indeed, in some sense, popularly believed in; and large schools of thought recognized a One Supreme, though often with the very faintest views of personality. But this recognition, at its best and highest, lacked some essentials in the Idea of the True God, above all, the union in Him of supreme Love and awful Purity. And for the average mind of ancient heathenism He “was not, in all the thoughts,” as truly as the impersonal Brahm “is not” in the average Hindoo mind. See further, Appendix D.
in the world] Words which complete the dark picture. “In the world” of fallen humanity, with its dreadful realities of evil, they did not “know the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom He had sent” (Joh_17:3), and so lacked the one possible preservative and spiritual life-power.
D. “WITHOUT GOD.” (Ch. Eph_2:12.)
“The vulgar believed in many Gods, the philosopher believed in a Universal Cause; but neither believed in God. The philosopher only regarded the Universal Cause as the spring of the Universal machine, which was necessary to the working of all the parts, but was not thereby raised to a separate order of being from them. Theism was discussed as a philosophical not as a religious question, … as no more affecting practice than any great scientific hypothesis does now … Nothing would have astonished [the philosopher] more than, when he had proved in his lecture hall the existence of a God, to have been told to worship Him. ‘Worship whom?’ he would have exclaimed, ‘worship what? worship how?’ ”
Mozley, Lectures on Miracles, Lect. iv.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv12–14 (12) This verse gives a dark and terrible picture…
(12) This verse gives a dark and terrible picture of the former heathen condition of the Ephesians, intentionally contrasted in every point with the description of Christian privilege in Eph_2:19-20. That condition is first summed up in one expression. They were “separate from Christ.” Then from this are drawn two gloomy consequences: first (1), that they had no part in God’s special covenant, “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” and so “strangers to the (often repeated) covenants of the promise” of the Messiah; next (2), that, thus left in “the world,” they had “no hope” of spiritual life and immortality, and were “godless” in thought and act. For Christ is at once the end and substance of the covenant of Israel, and the Revealer of God, and therefore of spiritual life in man, to all mankind. To be without Him is to lose both covenant and light. On (1) it is to be noted that the word used is not “aliens,” but “alienated.” implying—what is again and again declared to us—that the covenant with Israel, as it was held in trust for the blessing of “all families of the earth,” so also was simply the true birthright of humanity, from which mankind had fallen. The first “covenant” in scripture (Gen_9:8-17) is with the whole of the post-diluvian race, and is expressly connected with the reality of “the image of God” in man (Gen_9:6). The succeeding covenants (as with Abraham, Moses, and David) all contain a promise concerning the whole race of man. Hence the Gentiles (as the utterances of prophecy showed more and more clearly while the ages rolled on) were exiles from what should have been their home; and their call into the Church of Christ was a restoration of God’s wandering children. In relation to (2) it is impossible not to observe, even in the highest forms of heathen philosophy, how their comparative “godlessness”—the absence of any clear notion of a real spiritual tie of nature between God and man—made their “hope” of life and immortality, though still cherished, shadowy and uncertain, always stronger in itself than in its grounds. But St. Paul’s description ought to be applied strictly, not to heathen life in its nobler and purer forms, but to the heathen life of Asia Minor in his days. What that was in moral degradation and in loss of all spiritual religion, ill compensated by the inevitable proneness to various superstitions, all contemporary literature testifies. From it came, as the Romans declared, the corruption which overspread the whole empire, and which St. Paul describes so terribly in Rom_1:18-32.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv12–14 That at that time ye were without Christ. Very…
That at that time ye were without Christ. Very comprehensive description, having no knowledge of Christ, no interest in him, no life or blessing from him. Being aliens (or, alienated) from the commonwealth of Israel; the politeia, or citizenship condition, including a country, a constitution, a divinely appointed and divinely administered economy, rich in blessing. And strangers to the covenants of the promise. The promise of Christ, of which circumcision was the seal. The "covenants" (plural) substantially the same, but renewed to various persons and at various times in which God promised, "I will bless him that blesseth thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." In respect of these they were strangers, not embraced in their provisions, not, therefore, in a state of encouragement to expect a great blessing. Having no hope; no ground for looking forward to better times, no reasonable expectation of improvement in your religious condition. And without God in the world; aqeoi, atheists; but not in the active sense of denying God, rather in the passive sense of unconnected with God; without any friendly and beneficial relation to him, without any vital nexus that would bring into their soul the fullness of God. The words "in the world" intensify without God." It were bad enough to be without God (without his holy fellowship and blessed influence) anywhere, but it is worse to be without him in the world, in "this present evil world", (Gal_1:4) in a world dominated by so subtle and evil a god. (ver. 2 and 2Co_4:4) The fivefold negative description of this verse has a cumulative effect; the situation becomes graver and more terrible, and the last clause is the climax.
The religious position of the heathen.
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The apostle does not speak of the distinguished place of the heathen as to art and science, culture, and worldly civilization in which they far surpassed Israel but he describes the utter destitution of their religious life by contrast mainly with the privileged superiority of Judaism. The points of contrast are six in number.
I THEY WERE UNCIRCUMCISED were "Gentiles in the flesh." Circumcision, according to the apostle, might mean very little or very much. It might mean very much, in so far as it was a "seal of the righteousness of faith" (Rom_4:11) and was a spiritual thing circumcision of the heart", (Rom_2:29) involving the worship of God in the Spirit, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and having no confidence in the flesh". (Php_3:3) But it might mean "the circumcision in the letter," after the habit of those Jews who ascribed objective power to the mere external rite, regarding it as a channel of grace, irrespective of the subjective condition of the recipient. It was only in the spiritual sense of the rite that the Gentiles were disadvantaged by their want of it, not only because it meant the obligation of withdrawing all the relations of life from the dominion of nature, but because it implied a covenant union with God, involving the blessings of redemption itself.
II THEY WERE WITHOUT CHRIST. The Jews were not without him; for "salvation was of the Jews;" Abraham, the first Jew, saw the day of Christ afar off, "and was glad"; (Joh_8:56) the Jews drank, in the wilderness, of the "Rock which was Christ". (1Co_10:4) But the Gentiles were without him, because
(1) they had no knowledge of him;
(2) they had no faith in him;
(3) they had no union with him;
(4) they were therefore
Without pardon, life, grace, hope, and comfort. How dark and cheerless was heathenism even under its reign of culture! It had no experience of the threefold blessing of the gospel for us, Christ in us, Christ with us the grand totality of Christianity.
III THEY WERE ALIENS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF ISRAEL. They were so civilly as well as spiritually, for the Jews had no dealings with Gentiles.
1. The word aliens" points in the original to a lapse from a former unity or fellowship. Universalism characterized the first dispensation of the race of man: deliverance was to come through the Seed of the woman; but when the race took a direction contrary to the will of God and fundamentally wrong, the circle was narrowed into particularism, which in its turn tended toward a universalistic goal, for all nations of the earth are to be blessed in Abraham"s seed. Jew and Gentile thus stood apart for ages, till, in the fullness of times," they met at last round the cross of Christ in an act of supreme rebellion, only to be united in Christ forever in the future development of the kingdom of God.
2. Their estrangement from the Israelitish commonwealth was an immense spiritual loss; for to it belonged the oracles of God, (Rom_3:2) and the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises". (Rom_9:4) It was a privilege to belong to a people expecting nothing from their own power or wisdom, but everything from the interposition of their God. It is a great blessing to be born within the pale of the visible Church, so as to partake of her privileges. The Gentiles were outside the whole apparatus of religious instruction provided for the special guidance of the Jews.
IV THEY WERE STRANGERS TO THE COVENANTS OF PROMISE.
1. The plural reference is to the successive renewals of the covenant with the patriarchs. It was but the one covenant of promise promise made to the fathers" which God fulfilled in "raising up Jesus". (Act_13:32) The word covenant" occurs two hundred and thirty-six times in our English Bible, and in more than two hundred instances it is a Divine covenant. The covenant with Abraham was the Magna Charta of Israel; the covenant with David rests upon this earlier covenant, marking out mere clearly the line in which the Divine purpose of blessing would be fulfilled to Jews and eventually to all nations. The new covenant of the New Testament, which has in Christ a Mediator greater than Moses and is "established upon better promises," is no other than the ancient covenant made with Abraham. (Gal_3:14)
2. Thus we can see how the Gentiles were strangers to the covenant in all its historic developments. They had no national covenant with God, and no land of promise in the present world. As Gentiles, the covenant had never been revealed to them, and, except so far as they may have been included in the Israelitish commonwealth, it could bring them no blessing.
V THEY WERE WITHOUT HOPE. They had no covenanted hope no hope of the Messiah and of salvation by him, of a future state of eternal life. Such as are Christless must be hopeless; such as are without faith must needs be without hope; and such as are without the promise must necessarily be without faith; for the promise is the ground of faith, and faith is the ground of hope." It is a miserable state to be without hope. "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable." The future to the heathen was a night without a star. In the Roman catacombs hope is the commonest inscription. There is no such word on the tombs of the heathen dead.
VI THEY WERE WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD. This marks the climax of their misery. They were without God, though they were not atheists, for they had a thousand gods that were no gods. And they were not bold deniers of God, for many of them were "feeling after the Lord." But
(1) they were without the knowledge of the true God;
(2) they had no faith in him;
(3) they lived without relation to him; and
(4) they had no consciousness of his presence to bless and guide and comfort them.
They were without God "in the world in contrast with the position of the Jews entrenched within their commonwealth privileges and were thus homeless and forsaken in that world which had Satan for its prince. This is the picture of the heathen world given by the apostle without Christ, without Church, without covenant, without hope, without God. At the period to which he refers, religion had outlived itself, unbelief mocked at the superstitions of the vulgar, and skepticism gradually became the sole wisdom of the cultured classes. Along with the power of truth the power of morality was irrecoverably lost; and yet there was a deep yearning at the heart of paganism for the God unknown whom it was the high destiny of Christianity to make known to the Gentiles. They were without God, yet were not outcast from his favor, for those Ephesian Gentiles were in due time called by his grace. T.C.
Dark depths.
Step by step descending into darker and darker depths, St. Paul describes the awful condition out of which heathens had been rescued when they became Christians. Regarded from a Jewish point of view, this condition is seen to consist in the loss of all the high privileges of Israel, and the salvation of the Gentiles appears as an adoption into the circle of those privileges. But larger things of more general import are covered by the description, so that it applies virtually to all who are outside the pale of the gospel. Let us go through the descending and darkening series and observe the several woeful characteristics.
I CHRISTLESS. The Gentile world had no Messiah. Worldly interests business, pleasure, culture have their advantages; but they bring no Savior, no Physician of sick souls. As Christ is the Foundation-stone of the new temple, to be without Christ is to have nothing on which to erect subsequent Christian blessings. If we have the doctrine and discipline of the New Testament without the Christ, we have nothing of real profit. The dumb, pathetic helplessness of spiritual hunger in the finer inquiring and doubting minds of our day is a proof that to be without the light and life and love of Christ is as great a loss to us as it was to any in old times.
II CHURCHLESS. "Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel." The Church is now what Israel was in pro-Christian times the home and family of the people of God. Only it is not marked by the visible boundaries of any "Holy Land." The true Church, the fellowship of kindred followers of Christ, contains many a choice soul that has been accounted a schismatic and cut off from the organized communities of Christendom. Real excommunication comes not by the fulmination of an anathema, but by the breach of spiritual sympathy. Without the union that comes through our relation to Christ we voyage in solitude over lonely seas of thought.
III UNEVANGELIZED. "Strangers from the covenants of the promise." The Jew had a gospel in Messianic prophecy. The Christian has his in New Testament history. What covenant is there in science? What promise in art? What gospel in commerce? We may discover laws and hers of the universe, and create works of skill and beauty, and accumulate treasures of wealth. But still stricken souls cry, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" for all this brings no peace to the weary and the brokenhearted.
IV PESSIMIST. "Having no hope." Pagan Rome and Greece were verging towards pessimism in the days of St. Paul, when philosophers advised suicide and historians taught contempt of mankind. Pagan Europe now manifests the same tendency. Culture fails to convert the Philistine. Science dwarfs humanity before nature, and discovers no soul and no heaven. Business, politics, and society drive man to a weariness that sees no rest.
V ATHEISTIC. Speculative atheism is rare, if it ever exists. Practical atheism is more common and more disastrous. It is worse to believe in God and to live as if there were no God, than to doubt his existence. To be without God is not to look for his help nor to obey his will. This is death, since in God we live and move and have our being. Glorious must be the gospel that redeems us from such a depth of ruin. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv12–14 Without Christ.
Eph_2:12
Without Christ.
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Spiritual misery
1. The head of all spiritual misery is to be without Christ.
(1) Numbers are still in this miserable condition.
(2) If you would have Him, you must take Him as Gods free gift.
2. A second degree of misery, is to be barred from communion and fellowship with the Church of God.
3. Naturally, we hate the means of salvation.
4. It is a great misery to be without the doctrine of the covenant of God.
5. The Lord left the Gentiles without the means of calling them to salvation.
6. It is a great misery to be without hope. (Paul Bayne.)
Life without Christ
The greatest event by far in the history of our world was the visit of Christ. From that moment, everything upon this earth measures itself by its relation to the Cross. Could it be otherwise? For he was the Son of God. What must that man be to God the Father, who treats that death of His dear Son as he would treat a mere matter of business? We may say of the man who is without Christ, that that man stands before God just as he is in himself, and nothing else. There is nothing to better him; there is nothing to excuse him. There is nothing to palliate or extenuate a fault. There is nothing to add any righteousness to amend. There can be no heaven for him except there be fitness; and there can be no pardon except there be a claim. Now, how would the best of us like to be dealt with on that principle? To stand before God in your own real individual character! No Intercessor to plead for you! No refuge to fly to! And consider this. A man without Christ has no motive, no motive sufficient to rule his life. The motive, the only secure and effective motive of life, is love. But you cannot love God unless you believe that God has pardoned you. You cannot love an angry God. But there is no pardon out of Christ. But, out of Christ, there can be no love because there is no forgiveness. So Christ makes the motive of life; and a man without Christ must be motiveless. Let me add another thing. All nature looks out for sympathy. Sympathy, in a degree, God has given to every man; but perfect sympathy belongs to Christ. It is His unapproachable prerogative. Therefore, if you do not know Christ, really know Him, as a believer knows Him, you do not yet know what sympathy can mean; for the rest is all very well, but it will stand you in very little stead in some dark hour. But that sympathy is perfect. You cannot find anyone else who has been, and who can be, touched with the feeling of your infirmity: always tender; always capable; always wise; true to every fibre of your being; matching all its cravings. That is not given to any creature upon earth. That is Jesus. And if you are without Jesus, you are without sympathy. And when that lonely passage comes, which is to take you out into the unknown, we must all die alone. What, if there be no arm--no companionship--no sweet voice to say, I am with you! No finished work! No Jesus in the valley! What will it be to die without Christ? An awful thing! And the more awful, the less you feel it! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The Christless state
I. The misery of our past estate.
1. The man who is without Christ is without any of those spiritual blessings which only Christ can bestow. Christ is the life of the believer, but the man who is without Christ is dead in trespasses and sins. So, too, Christ is the light of the world. Without Christ there is no light of true spiritual knowledge, no light of true spiritual enjoyment, no light in which the brightness of truth can be seen, or the warmth of fellowship proved. Without Christ there is no peace, no rest, no safety, no hope.
2. Without Christ, beloved, remember that all the religious acts of men are vanity. What are they but mere air bags, having nothing in them whatever that God can accept? There is the semblance of worship--the altar, the victim, the wood laid in order--and the votaries bow the knee or prostrate their bodies, but Christ alone can send the fire of heavens acceptance.
3. Without Christ implies, of course, that you are without the benefit of all those gracious offices of Christ, which are so necessary to the sons of men, you have no true prophet. Without Christ truth itself will prove a terror to you. Like Balaam, your eyes may be open while your life is alienated. Without Christ you have no priest to atone or to intercede on your behalf. Without Christ you are without a Saviour; how will you do? and without a friend in heaven you must needs be if you are without Christ. Without Christ, though you be rich as Croesus, and famous as Alexander, and wise as Socrates, yet are you naked and poor and miserable, for you lack Him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, and who is Himself all in all.
II. The great deliverance which God has wrought for us. We are not without Christ now, but let me ask you, who are believers, where you would have been now without Christ. I think the Indians picture is a very fair one of where we should have been without Christ. When asked what Christ had done for him, he picked up a worm, put it on the ground, and made a ring of straw and wood round it, which he set alight. As the wood began to glow the poor worm began to twist and wriggle in agony, whereupon he stooped down, took it gently up with his finger, and said, That is what Jesus did for me; I was surrounded, without power to help myself, by a ring of dreadful fire that must have been my ruin, but His pierced hand lifted me out of the burning. Think of that, Christians, and as your hearts melt, come to His table, and praise Him that you are not now without Christ.
1. Then think what His blood has done for you. Take only one thing out of a thousand. It has put away your many, many sins.
2. Bethink you, too, now that you have Christ, of the way in which He came and made you partaker of Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Without Christ
I. When it can be said of a man, that he is without Christ.
1. When he has no head knowledge of Him. The heathen, of course, who never yet heard the gospel, come first under this description. But unhappily they do not stand alone. There are thousands of people dying in England at this very day, who have hardly any clearer ideas about Christ than the very heathen.
2. When he has no heart faith in Him as his Saviour. Many know every article of the Belief, but make no practical use of their knowledge. They put their trust in something which is not Christ.
3. When the Holy Spirits work cannot be seen in his life. Who can avoid seeing, if he uses his eyes, that myriads of professing Christians know nothing of inward conversion of heart?
II. The actual condition of a man without Christ.
1. To be without Christ is to be without God. St. Paul told the Ephesians as much as this in plain words. He ends the famous sentence which begins, Ye were without Christ, by saying, Ye were without God in the world. And who that thinks can wonder? That man can have very low ideas of God who does not conceive Him a most pure, and holy, and glorious, and spiritual Being. How then can such a worm as man draw near to God with comfort?
2. To be without Christ is to be without peace. Every man has a conscience within him, which must be satisfied before he can be truly happy. There is only one thing can give peace to the conscience, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ sprinkled on it.
3. To be without Christ is to be without hope. Hope of some sort or other almost every one thinks he possesses. There is but one hope that has roots, life, strength, and solidity, and that is the hope which is built on the great rock of Christs work and office as Redeemer.
4. To be without Christ is to be without heaven. In saying this I do not merely mean that there is no entrance into heaven, but that without Christ there could be no happiness in being there. A man without a Saviour and Redeemer could never feel at home in heaven. He would feel that he had no lawful fight or title to be there; boldness and confidence and ease of heart would be impossible. (Bishop Ryle.)
Without Christ
It is not long since that a prominent business man, when closely pressed by his pastor, who had lately come to the church, replied with a calm force which was meant to put an end to further pertinacity, I am interested in all religious matters; I am always glad to see the ministers when they call; but I have in the years past thought the subject over long and carefully, and I have come to the decision deliberately that I have no need of Jesus Christ as a Saviour in the sense you preach. Only two weeks from this interview the same man was suddenly prostrated with disease; the illness was of such a character as to forbid his conversing with anyone, and the interdict from speaking was continued until he was within an hour of death, A solemn moment was that in which a question was put to him, intimating that he might talk now if he could--nothing would harm him. The last thing, the only thing, he said, was in a melancholy and frightened whisper, Who will carry me over the fiver?
Having no hope.--
Hope abandoned
Over the huge hideous iron gates of the Prison de la Roquette, in Paris, which is set apart for criminals that are condemned to death, there is an inscription, which sends a thrill of horror through those who read it--Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!
Hopes for eternity, what they rest on
When John Wesley lay on an expected death bed (though God spared him some years longer to the world and the Church) his attendants asked him what were his hopes for eternity? And something like this was his reply--For fifty years, amid scorn and hardship, I have been wandering up and down this world, to preach Jesus Christ; and I have done what in me lay to serve my blessed Master! What he had done his life and works attest. They are recorded in his Churchs history, and shine in the crown he wears so bright with a blaze of jewels--sinners saved through his agency. Yet thus he spake,
My hope for eternity--my hopes rest only on Christ--
I the chief of sinners am But Jesus died for me.
(T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Mournful ignorance
I have seen a child in ignorance of its great loss totter across the floor to its mothers coffin, and, caught by their glitter, seize the handles, to look round and smile as it rattled them on the hollow sides. I have seen a boy, forgetting his sorrow in his dress, survey himself with evident satisfaction as he followed the bier that bore his father to the grave. And however painful such spectacles, as jarring our feelings, and out of all harmony with such sad and sombre scenes, they excite no surprise nor indignation. We only pity those who, through ignorance of their loss or inability to appreciate it, find pleasure in what should move their grief. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Having no hope
I have read of a tribe of savages that bury their dead in secret, by the hands of unconcerned officials. No grassy mound, no memorial stone guides the poor mothers steps to the quiet corner where her infant lies. The grave is levelled with the soil; and afterwards a herd of cattle is driven over and over the ground, till every trace of the burial has been obliterated by their hoofs. Anxious to forget death and its inconsolable griefs, these heathen resent any allusion to the dead. You may not speak of them. In a mothers hearing, name, however tenderly, her lost one, recall a dead father to the memory of his son, and there is no injury which they feel more deeply. From the thought of the dead their hearts recoil. How strange! How unnatural! No, not unnatural. Benighted heathen, their grief has none of the alleviations which are balm to our wounds, none of the hopes that bear us up beneath a weight of sorrows. Their dead are sweet flowers withered, never to revive; joys gone, never to return. To remember them is to keep open a rankling wound, and preserve the memory of a loss which was bitter to feel and still is bitter to think of: a loss which brought only grief to the living, and no gain to the dead. To me, says Paul, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They know nothing of this; nothing of the hopes that associate our dead in Christ with sinless souls, and sunny skies, and shining angels, and songs seraphic, and crowns of glory, and harps of gold. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Hopefulness and steadfastness
A good Methodist in a prayer meeting said that when, many years since, he crossed old ocean he was much in the habit of looking over the ships side, particularly near the prow, and watching the vessel as she steadily ploughed her way through the waves. Just under the bowsprit was the image of a human face. This face to him came to be invested with a wondrous interest. Whatever the hour, whether by night or by day; whatever the weather, whether in sunshine or in storm, that face seemed ever steadfastly looking forward to port. Sometimes tempests would prevail. Great surges would rise, and for a time completely submerge the face of his friend. But as soon as the vessel recovered from its lurch, on looking again over the ships side, there the placid face of his friend was to be seen, still faithfully, steadfastly looking out for port. And so, he exclaimed, his countenance radiant with the light of the Christians hope, I humbly trust it is in my own case. Yea, whatever the trials of the past, notwithstanding all the toils and disappointments of the present, by the grace of God I am still looking out for port, and not long hence I am anticipating a joyful, triumphant, abundant entrance therein. Without God.
I am told to believe that there is no God; but, before doing so, I want to look on the world in the light of this solemn denial In giving up this idea, several sacrifices are involved. Let us see what they are.
1. I shall have to part with the most inspiring and ennobling books in my library.
2. I shall have to banish the earliest and tenderest memories which have gladdened my days.
3. I shall have to give up the hope that in the long run right will be vindicated and wrong be put to eternal shame.
4. I shall have to sacrifice my reason, my conscience--in a word, myself. My whole life is built upon the holy doctrine of Gods existence. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Practical atheism
It is not speculative atheism that I lay to your charge; I am far from asserting or supposing that you are intellectually without God. But of practical atheism, of being virtually without God, I must and do accuse mankind and some of you. By practical atheism I mean the believing that there is a God, and yet thinking and feeling and acting just as if there were none.
1. I adduce forgetfulness of God as a proof, or rather as one form of practical atheism.
2. As an evidence of practical atheism, a neglect to worship Him and to maintain friendly and filial intercourse with Him.
3. I state as another evidence of practical atheism, the general conduct of mankind under the various dispensations of Divine providence. Does not the rich man say in his heart, My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth? Or, if he cannot ascribe it altogether to his own industry and prudence, he divides the credit of it with fortune, and speaks of the lucky throw, the fortunate speculation, or the prosperous voyage, to the success of which many things conspired, but He whom the winds and waves obey is not supposed to have contributed anything.
4. As another proof of practical atheism, that men are in the habit of forming their plans and purposes, without respect to their dependence on God for the accomplishment of them, and without consulting Him. They resolve with themselves where they will go, what they will do, how much they will accomplish, just as if they had life in themselves, and were independent in wisdom and power.
5. The conduct of many, in seasons of affliction, evinces that they are without God in the world.
6. Finally, mankind, in their pursuit of happiness, evince their practical atheism. Whither should a creature in quest of joy go to obtain it, but straight to Him, who made, and who sustains both that which enjoys and that which is enjoyed, his Maker and Preserver, and the worlds? Yet men fly from God for happiness. Whence have you your joys and comforts now?--from your family?--it shall be broken up; from your business?--it shall be discontinued, and you shall leave the world, and the world itself shall be consumed, and nothing will be left but the soul and God. You cannot be happy in anything else; and, if you love Him not, you cannot be happy in Him. (W. Nevins, D. D.)
Without God
Three ways a man may be said to be without God.
1. By profane atheism.
2. By false worship.
3. By want of spiritual worship.
Great is the misery of those who are without God. God is a fountain of life; whoso is far from Him must perish. (Paul Bayne.)
The misery of being without God
The misery of such as have not God for their God, in how sad a condition are they, when an hour of distress comes! This was Sauls case: I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and the Lord has departed from me. A wicked man, in time of trouble, is like a vessel tossed on the sea without an anchor, it falls on rocks or sands; a sinner not having God to be his God, though he makes a shift while health and estate last, yet, when these crutches, which he leaned upon, are broken, his heart sinks. It is with a wicked man as with the old world, when the flood came; the waters at first came to the valleys, but then the people would get to the hills and mountains, but when the waters came to the mountains, then there might be some trees on the high hills, and they would climb up to them; ay, but then the waters did rise up to the tops of the trees; now all hopes of being saved were gone, their hearts failed them. So it is with a man that hath not God to be his God; if one comfort be taken away, he hath another; if he lose a child, he hath an estate; ay, but when the waters rise higher, death comes and takes away all; now he hath nothing to help himself with, no God to go to, he must needs die despairing. (T. Watson.)
Without God in the world
Without God in the world. Think!--what a description!--and applicable to individuals without number! If it had been without friends, shelter, or food, that would have been a gloomy sound. But without God! without Him (that is, in no happy relation to Him), who is the very origin, support, and life of all things; without Him who can make good flow to His creatures from an infinity of sources; without Him whose favour possessed is the best, the sublimest, of all delights, all triumphs, all glories. What do those under so sad a destitution value and seek instead of Him? What will anything, or all things, be worth in His absence? It may be instructive to consider a little to what states of mind this description is applicable; and what a wrong and, calamitous thing the condition is in all of them. We need not dwell on that condition of humanity in which there is no notion of Deity at all--some outcast, savage tribes--souls destitute of the very ideal Not one idea exalted anti resplendent above the rest casting a glory sometimes across the little intellectual field! It is as if, in the outward world of nature, they had no visible heaven--the spirit nothing to go out to, beyond its clay tenement, but the immediately surrounding elements and other creatures of the same order. The adorers of false gods may just be named as coming under the description. There is, almost throughout the race, a feeling in mens minds that belongs to the Divinity; but think how all manner of objects, real and imaginary, have been supplicated to accept and absorb this feeling, that the true God might not take it! It is too obvious almost to be worth noting, how plainly the description applies itself to those who persuade themselves that there is no God. The Divine Spirit and all spirit abolished, he is left amidst masses and systems of matter without a first cause--ruled by chance, or by a blind mechanical impulse of what he calls fate; and, as a little composition of atoms, he is himself to take his chance for a few moments of conscious being, and then be no more forever! And yet, in this infinite prostration of all things, he feels an elation of intellectual pride! But we have to consider the text in an application much more important to us, and to men in general; for, with a most settled belief of the Divine existence, they may be without God in the world. This is too truly and sadly the applicable description when this belief and its object do not maintain habitually the ascendant influence over us--over the whole system of our thoughts, feelings, purposes, and actions. Can we glance over the earth, and into the wilderness of worlds in infinite space, without the solemn thought that all this is but the sign and proof of something infinitely more glorious than itself? Are we not reminded--This is a production of His almighty power--that is an adjustment of His all-comprehending intelligence and foresight--there is a glimmer, a ray of His beauty, His glory--there an emanation of His benignity--but for Him all this would never have been; and if, for a moment, His pervading energy were by His will restrained or suspended, what would it all be then? Not to have some such perceptions and thoughts, accompanied by devout sentiments, is, so far, to be without God in the world. Again, the text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of Gods all-disposing government and providence--who have no thought of the course of things but as just going on--going on some way or other, just as it canto whom it appears abandoned to a strife and competition of various mortal powers; or surrendered to something they call general laws, and then blended with chance; who have, perhaps, a crude Epicurean notion of exempting the Divine Being from the infinite toil and care of such a charge. The text is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority who have not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him, and testifying for Him; who proceed as if this world were a, province absolved from the strictness of His dominion and His laws; who will not apprehend that there is His will and warning affixed to everything; who will not submissively ask, What dost Thou pronounce on this? To be insensible to the Divine character as Lawgiver, rightful Authority, and Judge, is truly to be without God in the world, for thus every emotion of the soul and action of the life assumes that He is absent or does not exist. This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire (a stupefaction of conscience) in very many minds. But in many others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling; and might not some of these be disposed to say, We are not without God in the world, as an awful Authority and Judge; for we are followed, and harassed, and persecuted, sometimes quite to misery, by the thought of Him in this character. We cannot go on peacefully in the way our inclinations lead; a portentous sound alarms us, a formidable spectre encounters us, though we still persist. The cause here is that men wish to be without God in the world--would, in preference to any other prayer, implore Him to Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of His ways. They would be willing to resume the enterprise of the rebellious angels, if there were any hope. Oh, that He, with His judgment and laws, were far away! To be thus with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him--without Him as a friend, approver, and patron; each thought of Him tells the soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very fearful sense it never can be without. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with God maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration--no devout, ennobling converse held with Him--no conscious reception of delightful impressions, sacred influences, suggested sentiments--no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires for His illuminations, His compassion, His forgiveness, His transforming operations--no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the gracious Intercessor--no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being--no animation and vigour obtained for the labours and warfare of a Christian life. But how lamentable to be without God! Consider it in one single view only--that of the loneliness of a human soul in this destitution. All other beings are necessarily (shall we express it so?) extraneous to the soul; they may communicate with it, but they are still separate and without it; an intermediate vacancy keeps them forever asunder, so that the soul must be, in a sense, in an inseparable and eternal solitude--that is, as to all creatures. But God, on the contrary, has an all-pervading power--can interfuse, as it were, His very essence through the being of His creatures--can cause Himself to be apprehended and felt as absolutely in the soul--such an inter-communion as is, by the nature of things, impossible between created beings; and thus the interior central loneliness--the solitude of the soul--is banished by a perfectly intimate presence, which imparts the most affecting sense of society--a society, a communion, which imparts life and joy, and may continue in perpetuity. To men completely immersed in the world this might appear a very abstracted and enthusiastic notion of felicity; but to those who have in any measure attained it, the idea of its loss would give the most emphatic sense of the expression, Without God in the world. The terms are a true description also of the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God--absence of the thought of being with Him in another world--of being with Him in judgment, and whither to be with Him forever; not considering that He awaits us somewhere, that the whole movement of life is absolutely towards Him, that the course of life is deciding in what manner we shall appear in His presence; not thinking what manner of fact that will be, what experience, what consciousness, what emotion; not regarding it as the grand purpose of our present state of existence that we may attain a final dwelling in His presence. One more, and the last application we would make of the description is to those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with a religious regard, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy. Thus many rejecters of Divine revelation have professed, nevertheless, a reverential homage to the Deity; but the God of their faith was to be such as their sovereign reason chose to feign, and therefore the mode of their religion entirely arbitrary. But, if revelation be true, the simple question is, Will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned God for Himself?--and admit your religion to be equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should not, you are without God in the world. (John Foster.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v14 Chapter 10
Chapter 10
THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION
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Eph_2:14-18
"PEACE, peace-to the far off, and to the near!" Such was Gods promise to His scattered people in the times of the exile. {Isa_57:19} St. Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had foreseen. Christ is "our peace"-not for the divided members of Israel alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal pacification.
There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ, in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (Eph_2:17). There was the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and principle when Christ "in His flesh" (by His incarnate life and death) "abolished the law of commandments in decrees"-i.e., the law of Moses as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical principle "dissolved the middle wall of partition." The occasion of quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the sons of Abraham (Eph_2:14-15). But behind this human enmity, underneath the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the law: both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross (Eph_2:16).
The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity. Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilisation with the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his spite against his fellowmen, the adversus omnes alios hostile odium stigmatised by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height-the most inveterate and desperate one can conceive-that the apostle proposes to reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish breast.
In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes exposed on the part of the Gentile majority. But now that this has been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St. Paul advances a step further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the Church, and to "make of the twain one new man, so making peace." This, he declares, was the end of Christs mission; this a chief purpose of His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its completeness. St. Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their independence in the oneness of the allembracing and all-perfecting Church of. Jesus Christ, Gods habitation in the Spirit. Instead of saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind like St. Pauls, under the conditions of his time, could riot fail to arrive at this conception.
It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and sin that sustained St. Paul through these years of captivity. As he looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Neros palace, the future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human society is assured. The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, taste and culture, moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life; the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it can and will conquer all enmities. St. Pauls view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternisation of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down the foundation of the Church, "wise master-builder" that he was. It was destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis. "There is no Jew and Greek," he says in another place; yes, and "no barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed souls in Christ. That which He "creates in Himself of the twain" is one new man- one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply man, and Christian.
At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the whole visible world, lying around the Mediterranean shores, was brought under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to realise their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome. The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our English race are carrying forward the worlds unification with enormous strides, -towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ? and are the nations preparing to be "reconciled in one body unto God"?
If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this answer would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able, if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord. The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every shore, and the praises of the Crucified be sung in every human language.
But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed. Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and civilised with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast population. Under our Christian flags firearms are imported, and alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their evils. Is this "preaching peace to those far off"? It is likely that the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe about these things. "When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will remember."
And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this great principle of the apostle? The old "middle wall of partition," the temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is "broken down,"-visibly levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of Christ? The rich mans purse, and the poor mans penury; aristocratic pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other-how thick the veil of estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls which they build in our various Church communions!
It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her Master, she declines to be "judge or divider" of our secular inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around her.
Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lords table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. "He is our peace"; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace. "Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us, nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves coming to Christ" that peace is made (Monod). Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance, with Christ ever for its preacher (Eph_2:17). He speaks through the words and the lives of His ten thousand messengers, men of every order, in every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christs peace will spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the earth.
But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Pauls undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of Jesus Christ.
God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to stand must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile "both in one body to God." There is the meeting point, the true focus of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice, in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of things; they leave out the All in all.
"Be ye reconciled to God, " cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each other is rooted in the "carnal mind which is enmity against God." The "law of commandments contained in ordinances," in whose possession the Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded both as culprits. The secret disquiet and dread lurking in mans conscience, the pangs endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow, between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realised, if we do not, the grave and tremendous import of the Lords controversy with all flesh. He is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. "God is love"-oh, yes! but then He is also "a consuming fire"! There is no anger so crushing as the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like "the wrath of the Lamb." God is not a man, weak and passionate whom a spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and compassion. "In His wrath He remembers mercy." Within that infinite nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its offence to cease. "The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth." The Holy One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own consent a sinners death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne from the anguish of Calvary a "savour of sweet smell." The moral glory of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its horror and disgrace; and it redeemed mans lost condition, and clothed human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God Himself. "Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not satisfy God, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds suffering to wrongdoing and death to sin.
Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the penalty.-Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family together in an inextricable web. We are communists in sin and death. It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking fortunes. He became copartner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the power, -"One died for all." He took upon His Divine heart the sin and curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and He bore it away from Caiaphas hall and Pilates judgment-seat, away from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it kindled. He slew the enmity thereby.
Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the worlds solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act, that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood. Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment, before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ crucified is yours-if you will have Him, if you will identify your sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on the cross you will let your heart cry out, "Oh my God, He dies for me!"
Coming "in one Spirit to the Father," the reconciled children join hands again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds, personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue of the blood of Jesus.
"Neither passion nor pride
His cross can abide,
But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!"
"Beloved," you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you most, -"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal peace, the hope of the fraternisation of mankind. Nations will have to say this one day, as well as men.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv12–14 12. Without Christ. The past state of the Gentile…
12. Without Christ. The past state of the Gentile Christians is described when they had no knowledge of Christ. Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. Not being of the race of Abraham, who were in covenant relation with God. Strangers from the covenants. The various covenants made with the patriarchs which contained the promise of Christ, of which they were ignorant, and hence not partakers of the hope.
Having no hope. No hope in the promise or in Christ. Without God. Walking without the knowledge of the true God.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v13 Eph_2:13. Ye who sometimes were far off are made…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Eph_2:13. Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh.—The Gentile may sing his hymn in Jewish words: “Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; from everlasting is Thy name.” “Lo-ammi” (“not My people”) is no longer their name (Hos_2:23; Rom_9:24-25).
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Eph_2:14. For He is our peace, who hath made both one.—“Not the Peacemaker merely, for indeed at His own great cost He procured peace, and is Himself the bond of union of both” (Jew and Gentile). The middle wall of partition.—M. Ganneau, the discoverer of the Moabite Stone, found built into the wall of a ruined Moslem convent a stone, believed to be from the Temple, with this inscription: “No stranger-born (non-Jew) may enter within the circuit of the barrier and enclosure that is around the sacred court; and whoever shall be caught [intruding] there, upon himself be the blame of the death that will consequently follow.” Josephus describes this fence and its warning inscription (Wars of the Jews, Bk. V., ch. v., § 2). It is rather the spirit of exclusiveness which Christ threw down. The stone wall Titus threw down and made all a common field, afterwards.
Eph_2:15. Having abolished in His flesh the enmity.—The enmity of Jew and Gentile; the abolition of their enmity to God is mentioned later. “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift,” for reconciliation to God. The law of commandments contained in ordinances.—The slave whose duty it was to take the child to his teacher might say, “Don’t do that.” St. Paul does not regard the function of the law as more than that (Gal_3:23-25). One new man.—Trench, in an admirable section, distinguishes between the new in time (recens) and the new in quality (novum). The word here means new in quality, “as set over against that which has seen service, the outworn.” “It is not an amalgam of Jew and Gentile” (Meyer).
Eph_2:16. That He might reconcile both unto God.—The word “reconcile” implies “a restitution to a state from which they had fallen, or which was potentially theirs, or for which they were destined” (Lightfoot, Col_1:20). The cross having slain the enmity.—Gentile authority and Jewish malevolence met in the sentence to that painful death; and both Gentile and Jew, acknowledging the Son of God, shall cease their strife, and love as brethren.
Eph_2:17. Came and preached peace.—By means of His messengers, as St. Paul tells the Galatians that Christ was “evidently set forth crucified amongst them.” To you afar off, and to them that were nigh.—Isaiah’s phrase (Isa_57:19). The Christ uplifted “out of the earth” draws all men to Him.
Eph_2:18. For through Him we both have access.—St. Paul’s way of proclaiming His Master’s saying, “I am the door: by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved”; including the other equally precious, “I am the way: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” “Access” here means “introduction.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_2:13-18
Christ the Great Peacemaker.
I. His mission on earth was one of peace.—“And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (Eph_2:17). His advent was heralded by the angelic song, “Peace on earth, and goodwill toward men.” The world is racked with moral discord; He is constantly striving to introduce the music of a heavenly harmony. It is distracted with war; He is propagating principles that will by-and-by make war impossible. The work of the peacemaker is Christ-like. Shenkyn, one of whose anomalies was that with all his burning passions he was a notorious peacemaker, and had means of pouring oil upon troubled waters, once upon a time was deputed to try his well-known skill upon a Church whose strife of tongues had become quite notorious. He reluctantly complied, and attended a meeting which soon proved to his satisfaction that the people were possessed by a demon that could not easily be expelled. The peacemaker got up, staff in hand, paced the little chapel, and with his spirit deeply moved, cried out, “Lord, is this Thy spouse?” Faster and faster he walked, thumping his huge stick on the floor, and still crying out, “Lord, is this Thy spouse? Slay her!” Then there came, as it were from another, a response, “No, I will not.” “Sell her, then!” “No, I will not.” “Deny her, then!” Still the answer came, “I will not.” Then he lifted up his voice, saying, “I have bought her with My precious blood; how can I give her up? How can I forsake her?” The strife had now ceased, and the people looked on with amazement, crying out for pardon.
II. He made peace between man and man.—“For He is our peace, who hath made both one; … to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace” (Eph_2:14-15). The hostility of Jew and Gentile was conquered; the new spritual nature created in both formed a bond of brotherhood and harmony. The Jew no longer despised the Gentile; the Gentile no longer hated and persecuted the Jew. Where the Christian spirit predominates personal quarrels are speedily adjusted.
III. He made peace between man and God.—“That He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross” (Eph_2:16). The enmity of man against God is disarmed and conquered by the voluntary suffering of Jesus in man’s stead, and by His thus opening up the way of reconciliation of man with God. God can now be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. The violated law is now atoned for, and the violater may obtain forgiveness and regain the forfeited favour of the offended God. There is peace only through forgiveness.
IV. His death removed the great barrier to peace.—This paragraph is very rich and suggestive in the phrases used to explain this blessed result: “Ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph_2:13). “By the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Eph_2:16). “Hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity” (Eph_2:14-15). It is not the calm, silent, featureless, helpless, forceless peace of death, but a living, active, aggressive, ever-conquering peace. The death was the result of agonising struggle and intense suffering, and the peace purchased is a powerfully operating influence in the believing soul.
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For there both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party losers.”
Shakespeare.
V. True peace is realised only in Christ.—“But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph_2:13). “For He is our peace” (Eph_2:14). “For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph_2:18). “Christ takes us by the hand, and eads us to the Father.” Men seek peace in the excitements of worldly pleasures, or in the pursuit of ambitious aims, but in vain. They only stimulate the malady they seek to cure. Christ is the restful centre of the universe, and the sin-tossed soul gains peace only as it converges towards Him. The efforts of men to find rest independent of Christ only reveal their need of Him, and it is a mercy when this revelation and consciousness of need does not come too late.
Lessons.—
1. Sin is the instigator of quarrels and strife.
2. Only as sin is conquered does peace become possible.
3. Christ introduces peace by abolishing sin.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eph_2:13-18. Nearness to God.
I. They were brought into the Church of God, and admitted to equal privileges with His ancient people the Jews.
II. They were brought near to God as they were admitted to enjoy the gospel, which is a dispensation of grace and peace.
III. They were brought near to God by the renovation of their souls after His image.
IV. This nearness to God implies a state of peace with Him.
V. Another circumstance of the nearness is access to God in prayer.
VI. Another is the presence of His Holy Spirit.—Let us be afraid of everything that tends to draw us away from God, and love everything which brings us nearer to Him. Let us seek Him with our whole heart, preserve daily communion with Him, choose His favour as our happiness, His service as our employment, His word as our guide, His ordinances as our refreshment, His house as the gate of heaven, and heaven as our eternal home.—Lathrop.
Eph_2:13. Our State by Nature and by Grace.
I. Our state by nature.—The distance from God here spoken of is not a local distance, neither is it that which separates us from Him as an infinite Being.
1. It is legal. Banished by a righteous sentence and by a sense of guilt and unworthiness.
2. It is moral. Estrangement. Absence of sympathy. Want of harmony.
3. In both these respects it is ever-widening.
4. It is miserable and dangerous.
II. Our state by grace.—
1. The legal barriers are removed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross.
2. The moral alienation is removed by the blood of Christ as applied to the believer by the Holy Spirit.
3. The nearness to God thus effected is a valuable privilege. It includes reconciliation, friendship, communion. Sinner, apply now to be made nigh. Believer, remember thy obligations.—G. Brooks.
Eph_2:14-15. Death a Peacemaker.—The struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America closed for ever at the funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion surrendered twenty years before; but the solemn and memorable pageant at the tomb of the great Union soldier, where the leading generals of the living Union and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder and mingled their tears in a common grief—this historical event marked the absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America.
Eph_2:16. The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the Human Heart against God.—
1. The goodness of God destroys the enmity of the human mind. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. There is not one of you skilled in the management of human nature who does not perceive that, though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution—of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest—this is not the way of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonises with their every performance, and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight in God and the love they bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a peculiar way; and no such way is to be found but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the heart of man with the irresistible argument of kindness. There alone do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting Himself forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of His children—putting forth His own hand to the work of healing the breach which sin had made between them—telling them that His word could not be mocked, and His justice could not be defied and trampled on, and that it was not possible for His perfections to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the creation He had thrown around them; but that all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the compass of the universe He had formed could now say that forgiveness to man was degrading to the authority of God, and that by the very act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes of His character, His mercy might now burst forth without limit and without control upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in the sight of all its families.
2. Let the sinner, then, look to God through the medium of such a revelation, and the sight which meets him there may well tame the obstinacy of that heart which had wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness against the force of every other consideration. Now that the storm of the Almighty’s wrath has been discharged upon Him who bore the burden of the world’s atonement, He has turned His throne of glory into a throne of grace, and cleared away from the pavilion of His residence all the darkness which encompassed it. The God who dwelleth there is God in Christ; and the voice He sends from it to this dark and rebellious province of His mighty empire is a voice of the most beseeching tenderness. Goodwill to men is the announcement with which His messengers come fraught to a guilty world; and, since the moment in which it burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful canopy of heaven, may the ministers of salvation take it up, and go round with it among all the tribes and individuals of the species. Such is the real aspect of God towards you. He cannot bear that His alienated children should be finally and everlastingly away from Him. He feels for you all the longing of a parent bereaved of his offspring. To woo you back again unto Himself He scatters among you the largest and the most liberal assurances, and with a tone of imploring tenderness does He say to one and all of you, “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?” He has no pleasure in your death. He does not wish to glorify Himself by the destruction of any one of you. “Look to Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved,” is the wide and generous announcement by which He would recall, from the outermost limits of His sinful creation, the most worthless and polluted of those who have wandered away from Him.
3. Now give us a man who perceives, with the eye of his mind, the reality of all this, and you give us a man in possession of the principle of faith. Give us a man in possession of this faith; and his heart, shielded as it were against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is softened and subdued, and resigns its every affection at the moving spectacle of a beseeching Deity; and thus it is that faith manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it, of working by love. Give us a man in possession of this love; and, animated as he is with the living principle of that obedience, where the willing and delighted consent of the inner man goes along with the performance of the outer man, his love manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it when it says, “This is the love of God, that ye keep His commandments.” And thus it is, amid the fruitfulness of every other expedient, when power threatened to crush the heart which it could not soften—when authority lifted its voice, and laid on man an enactment of love which it could not carry—when terror shot its arrows, and they dropped ineffectual from that citadel of the human affections, which stood proof against the impression of every one of them—when wrath mustered up its appalling severities, and filled that bosom with despair which it could not fill with the warmth of a confiding attachment—then the kindness of an inviting God was brought to bear on the heart of man, and got an opening through all its mysterious avenues. Goodness did what the nakedness of power could not do. It found its way through all intricacies of the human constitution, and there, depositing the right principle of repentance, did it establish the alone effectual security for the right purposes and the right fruits of repentance.—Dr. T. Chalmers.
Eph_2:18. The Privilege of Access to the Father.—In the Temple service of the Jews all did not enjoy equal privileges. The court of the Gentiles was outside that of the Jews and separated from it by “a marble screen or enclosure three cubits in height, beautifully ornamented with carving, but bearing inscriptions, in Greek and Roman characters, forbidding any Gentile to pass within its boundary.” Such restricted access to God the new dispensation was designed to abolish. The middle wall of partition is now broken down, and through Christ we, both Jews and Gentiles—all mankind—have equal access by one Spirit unto the Father. Observe:—
I. The privilege of access unto the Father.—That God is the proper object of worship is implied in our text, and more explicitly declared in other portions of the sacred writings. According to the nature of the blessings desired, prayer may be addressed to any one of the three Persons in the God-head; but the Bible teaches that prayer generally is to be presented to the Father through Christ and by the Holy Spirit. And so appropriate are the offices of the Persons in the Trinity that we cannot speak otherwise. We cannot say that through the Spirit and by the Father we have access to Christ, or through the Father and by Christ we have access to the Spirit. We must observe the apostle’s order—through Christ and by the Spirit we have access to the Father. Access unto the Father implies:—
1. His sympathy with us.—God is our Creator and Sovereign, but His authority is not harsh or arbitrary. He does not even deal with us according to the stern dictates of untempered justice. On the contrary, in love and sympathy He has for our benefit made His throne accessible. He will listen to our penitential confessions, our vows of obedience, our statements of want. He has sympathy with us.
2. His ability to help us.—That access is permitted to us, taken in connection with God’s perfections, prove this. He raises no hope to disappoint, does not encourage that He may repel, but permits access that He may help and bless.
3. His permission to speak freely.—There is nothing contracted in God’s method of blessing. We are introduced to His presence not to stand dumb before Him, nor to speak under the influence of slavish fear. We have such liberty as those enjoy who are introduced to the presence of a prince by a distinguished favourite, or such freedom as children have in addressing a father. We are brought into the presence of our King by His own Son; to our heavenly Father by Christ, our elder Brother. The results of this access to ourselves:
1. It teaches dependence;
2. Excites gratitude;
3. Produces comfort;
4. Promotes growth in grace.
II. The medium of access.—Under the law the high priest was the mediator through whom the people drew near to God. He went into the “holiest of all, once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people” (Heb_9:7). Under the new covenant “boldness to enter into the holiest” is “by the blood of Jesus” (Heb_10:19). But as the mediation of the Jewish high priest, though “done away in Christ,” was typical, it may serve to teach us how we are to come to God. He sprinkled the blood of the sin-offering on the mercy-seat, and burnt incense within the veil (Leviticus 16), thus symbolising the sacrifice and intercession of Christ.
1. We, then, have access to God through Christ as a sacrifice.—“Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb_9:22). But, “that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” we could never, as suppliants, have found acceptance with God.
2. Through Christ as an intercessor.—“But this man,” etc. (Heb_10:12). A disciple in temptation cries for deliverance from evil, and Christ prays, “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me” (Joh_17:11). A dying saint asks for “an entrance into the heavenly kingdom,” and Christ pleads, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am” (Joh_17:24). None need deem himself too unworthy to call on God who comes to Him through Christ’s sacrifice and intercession.
III. The assistance afforded by the Holy Spirit.—As we have access unto the Father through Christ pleading for us, so we have access unto the Father by the Spirit pleading in us.
1. The Spirit kindles holy desire.—It is the work of the Spirit to draw off the hearts of men from the world and raise them to God in prayer. As in playing on a musical instrument no string sounds untouched, so without this influence of the Spirit man would never look heavenward, or his heart fill with desire toward God.
2. Prompts to immediate application.—Blessings are often desired but feebly. The Spirit rebukes this hesitancy, and urges on to immediate application.
3. Aids in that application.—“Without the Spirit we know not what we should pray for” (Rom_8:26). Our thoughts wander, our affections chill, the fervour of our importunity flags, unless the Spirit “helpeth our infirmities.”
Reflections.—
1. Those who do not enjoy this privilege are highly culpable.
2. Those who do enjoy this privilege are indeed happy.—The Lay Preacher.
Access to God, revealing the Trinity in Unity.
I. The end of human salvation is access to the Father.—That is the first truth of our religion—that the source of all is meant to be the end of all, that as we all came forth from a divine Creator, so it is into divinity that we are to return and to find our final rest and satisfaction, not in ourselves, not in one another, but in the omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfectness, and the love of God. Now we are very apt to take it for granted that, however we may differ in our definitions and our belief of the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are all at one, there can be and there is no hesitation, about the deity of the Father. God is divine. God is God. And no doubt we do all assent in words to such a belief; but when we think what we mean by that word “God”; when we remember what we mean by “Father,” namely, the first source and the final satisfaction of a dependent nature; and then when we look around and see such multitudes of people living as if there were no higher source for their being than accident and no higher satisfaction for their being than selfishness, do we not feel that there is need of a continual and most earnest preaching by word and act, from every pulpit of influence to which we can mount, of the divinity of the Father. The divinity of the Father needs assertion first of all. Let men once feel it, and then nature and their own hearts will come in with their sweet and solemn confirmations of it. But nature and the human heart do not teach it of themselves. The truest teaching of it must come from souls that are always going in and out before the divine Fatherhood themselves. By the sight of such souls others must come to seek the satisfaction that comes only from a divine end of life—must come to crave access to the Father. So we believe, and so we tempt other men to believe, in God the Father.
II. And now pass to the divinity of the method.—“Through Jesus Christ.” Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands written in the whole history of our race. And equally clear is it to him who reads the gospels, and enters into sympathy with their wonderful Person, that in Him, in Jesus of Nazareth, appeared the Mediator by whom was to be the Atonement. His was the life and nature which, standing between the Godhood and the manhood, was to bridge the gulf and make the firm bright road over which blessing and prayer might pass and repass with confident golden feet for ever. And then the question is—and when we ask it thus it becomes so much more than a dry problem of theology; it is a question for live, anxious men to ask with faces full of eagerness—Out of which nature came that Mediator? Out of which side of the chasm sprang the bridge leaping forth toward the other? Evidently on both sides that bridge is bedded deep and clings with a tenacity which shows how it belongs there. He is both human and divine. But from which side did the bridge spring? It is the most precious part of our belief that it was with God that the activity began. It is the very soul of the gospel, as I read it, that the Father’s heart, sitting above us in His holiness, yearned for us as we lay down here in our sin. And when there was no man to make an intercession, He sent His Son to tell us of His love, to live with us, to die for us, to lay His life like a strong bridge out from the divine side of existence, over which we might walk fearfully but safely, but into the divinity where we belonged. Through Him we have access to the Father. As the end was divine, so the method is divine. As it is to God that we come, so it is God who brings us there. I can think nothing else without dishonouring the tireless, quenchless love of God.
III. The power of the act of man’s salvation is the Holy Spirit.—“Through Christ Jesus we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” What do we mean by the Holy Spirit being the power of salvation? I think we are often deluded and misled by carrying out too far some of the figurative forms in which the Bible and the religious experience of men express the saving of the soul. For instance, salvation is described as the lifting of the soul out of a pit and putting it upon a pinnacle, or on a safe high platform of grace. The figure is strong and clear. Nothing can overstate the utter dependence of the soul on God for its deliverance; but if we let the figure leave in our minds an impression of the human soul as a dead, passive thing, to be lifted from one place to the other like a torpid log that makes no effort of its own either for co-operation or resistance, then the figure has misled us. The soul is a live thing. Everything that is done with it must be done in and through its own essential life. If a soul is saved, it must be by the salvation, the sanctification, of its essential life; if a soul is lost, it must be by perdition of its life, by the degradation of its affections and desires and hopes. Let there be nothing merely mechanical in the conception of the way God treats these souls of ours. He works upon them in the vitality of thought, passion, and will that He put into them. And so when a soul comes to the Father through the Saviour, its whole essential vitality moves in the act. When this experience is reached, then see what Godhood the soul has come to recognise in the world. First, there is the creative Deity from which it sprang, and to which it is struggling to return—“the divine End, God the Father.” Then there is the incarnate Deity, which makes that return possible by the exhibition of God’s love—the divine Power of salvation, God the Holy Spirit. To the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. This appears to be the truth of the Deity as it relates to us. I say again, “as it relates to us.” What it may be in itself; how Father, Son, and Spirit meet in the perfect Godhood; what infinite truth more there may, there must, be in that Godhood, no man can dare to guess. But, to us, God is the end, the method, and the power of salvation; so He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in the perfect harmony of these sacred personalities that the precious unity of the Deity consists. I look at the theologies, and so often it seems as if the harmony of Father, Son, and Spirit has been lost, both by those that own and by those that disown the Trinity. One theology makes the Father hard and cruel, longing as it were for man’s punishment, extorting from the Son the last drops of life-blood which man’s sin had incurred as penalty. Another theology makes the Son merely one of the multitude of sinning men, with somewhat bolder aspirations laying hold on a forgiveness which God might give but which no mortal might assume. Still another theology can find no God in the human heart at all; merely a fermentation of human naturo is this desire after goodness, this reaching out towards Divinity. The end is not worthy of the method. I do not want to come to such a Father as some of the theologians have painted. Or the method is not worthy of the end. No man could come to the perfect God through such a Jesus as some men have described. Or the power is too weak for both; and all that Christ has done lies useless, and all the Father’s welcome waits in vain for the soul that has in it no Holy Ghost. But let each be real and each be worthy of the others, and the salvation is complete. But each cannot be worthy of the others unless each is perfect. But each cannot be perfect unless each is divine; that is, our faith is in the Trinity—three Persons and one God.—Philips Brooks.
The Christian Law of Prayer—
I. To the Father.—
1. How honourable! Right of entry to an earthly sovereign.
2. How delightful! Our pleasures may be graduated according to the part of our nature in which they have their rise. The pleasures of devotion are the highest taste for devotion.
3. How profitable! God is able to bestow all temporal and spiritual blessings.
4. How solemn! The intercourse of our spirit with the Father of our spirits. Heart to heart.
II. Through the Son.—
1. Through His atonement. Legal barriers to our access must be removed. Have been removed by the death of Christ as a satisfaction to divine Justice. He has demolished the wall, He has constructed a bridge across the chasm, He has laid down His own body as the medium of approach. 2. Through His intercession. It perpetuates His sacrifice. The Jewish high priest entering the holy of holies on the Great Day of Atonement. Amyntas, mother of Coriolanus; Philippa after the siege of Calais.
III. By the Spirit.—
1. He teaches us what are our wants. For the most part we are likely to be aware of our temporal wants. In spiritual things the greater our need the less our sense of need.
2. He makes us willing to ask the supply of our wants. Aversion to beg. Aversion to lay bare the symptoms of humiliating disease.
3. He gives us power to spread our wants before God. One person employed to write a letter or a petition for another.
4. He inspires us with confidence to plead with importunity and faith. Confidence in the Father, in the Son, in the power of prayer.—G. Brooks.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v12 kosmos = mankind. (See Scofield "Mat 4:8").
world
kosmos = mankind. (See Scofield "Mat 4:8").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v14 The reconciliation effected by Christ:
The reconciliation effected by Christ:
v. 14. For he is our Peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us,
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v. 15. having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
v. 16. and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity there by;
v. 17. and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
v. 18. For through Him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father.
The thought of the passage is that God, by the redemption of Christ, has gathered His Church out of Jews and Gentiles. So far as the present relation between Jews and Gentiles in the congregation is concerned, Paul writes: For He Himself is our Peace, who made both one and broke own the dividing wall of separation, the enmity, in His flesh. Jesus Christ is our Peace, He established peace between the two parties that seemed irreconcilable, between Jews and Gentiles. This great object of His life he brought about by uniting the two contending parties in one perfect unit. This He did by removing completely the wall, or partition, which separated Jews and Gentiles and caused constant enmity. The Mosaic Law, with all its precepts, institutions, and ceremonies, was a fence, or wall, which shut off the people of Israel from the Gentiles, which shut out the heathen from the privileges of the Jews. Christ abolished the Ceremonial Law and fulfilled the Moral Law.
This the apostle explains: (He removed the wall) by abolishing the enmity in His flesh, the law of commandments in ordinances. In His flesh, by the sufferings of His body, by going into death for the sins of the world, Christ has put the Law out of commission, He Bas abrogated the divine Law as a master of men. The curse, the guilt, the punishment lay upon Him, and so the Law has expended its might and power in His case. See Rom 7:6. Incidentally, Christ removed the enmity between Jews and Gentiles. The separation between the two could not exist without hostility, especially since the Ceremonial Law was a law of precepts in ordinances, and as such challenged opposition and enmity. The Gentiles were deterred from joining the people of God by the prospect of being kept in bondage by the countless and detailed instructions of the Law which governed the minutest acts of daily life, even as today people are not brought into church by the preaching of the Law. So Christ’s purpose in abrogating the Law was: That He might create the two in Himself to one new man, making peace. By making peace between the two estranged parties in the manner described, Christ brought about a union of the Jews and Gentiles to a unit, a gathering of the Christian Church from the Israel according to the flesh as well as from the Gentile nations. The holy Christian Church thus formed is the one body of Christ, and Christ’s work in bringing about this union is an evidence of His creative power.
In the same way and with the same object Jesus effected still more: And (that He) reconcile both in one body to God, having through the Cross killed the enmity in Himself. The word "reconciliation" in this connection does not refer to the removal of the hostile relation between God and man as much as to the abrogation of man’s hostile position and conduct over against God. It was Christ’s intention to bring both Jews and Gentiles before God as a unit people, as a single body, thus establishing perfect communion with God. This plan seemed destined for success from the start because Christ in Himself, by giving Himself into death, killed and removed the enmity between Jews and Gentiles. By sacrificing Himself and becoming obedient even to the death on the cross, He removed the obstacle that stood in the way of peace, the Law, which engendered hostility, thus making way for the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body, thus bringing about the perfect harmony of an evenly balanced and developed organic whole.
How this intention of Christ was realized and is being realized, Paul states: And thus He came and preached peace to you that were afar off and peace to those that were near. Having obtained a perfect redemption for all men, having removed the cause of disharmony and hostility, Jesus now comes in and through the Spirit, Joh 14:18; Act 26:23, in the Gospel. Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is personally present in and with the message of grace as it is preached throughout the world, and through this Word speaks to the hearts of men. It is a good, a joyful news, and its content is peace with God, the salvation earned by Christ on the cross with His suffering and death. This peace is now freely proclaimed to those that formerly were strange and distant, far from the chosen people of God and unacquainted with the evangelical promises, but also to those to whom the preaching of the Kingdom was entrusted of old: to Gentiles and to Jews Christ has proclaimed one and the same peace and thus restored peace between them. All believers in Christ are now united by the bond of this common knowledge and faith. Of them all together it holds true: For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. To this the experience of both Jews and Gentiles will cause them to agree. Christ is the Way; through Him the way to the Father is opened, through Him all have become partakers of the one Spirit. This unity of the Spirit, the unity of the sonship of God, the same right as children toward the Father of Jesus Christ, that is the bond which unites Jews and Gentiles, all the members of the Church of Christ. They all address Him: Abba, Father, with the same certainty of being heard, for all hindrances have been removed.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v13 But now in Christ Jesus
But now in Christ Jesus
Paul is marking a contrast between the Ephesians before they believed in Christ and after they believed in Christ.
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you who once were far away from God have been brought near by the blood of Christ
Not belonging to God due to sin is spoken of as being far away from God. Belonging to God because of the blood of Christ is spoken of as being brought near to God. AT: "you who once did not belong to God now belong to God because of the blood of Christ" (See: Metaphor)
by the blood of Christ
The blood of Christ is a metonym for his death. AT: "by Christ's death" or "when Christ died for us" (See: Metonymy)
he is our peace
"Jesus gives us his peace"
our peace
The word "our" refers to Paul and his readers and so is inclusive. (See: Inclusive "We")
He made the two one
"He made the Jews and Gentiles one"
By his flesh
The words "his flesh," his physical body, are a metonym for his body dying. AT: "By the death of his body on the cross" (See: Metonymy)
the wall of hostility
"the wall of hatred" or "the wall of ill will"
that divided us
The word "us" refers to Paul and the Ephesians. The Ephesians, as Gentiles, were separated from Paul and the other Jews. AT: "that separated us Jews and Gentiles from one another" (See: Inclusive "We")
he abolished the law of commandments and regulations
Jesus' blood satisfied the law of Moses so that both the Jews and Gentiles can live at peace in God.
one new man
a single new people, the people of redeemed humanity (See: Metaphor)
in himself
It is union with Christ that makes reconciliation possible between Jews and Gentiles.
Christ reconciles both peoples
"Christ brings the Jews and the Gentiles together in peace"
through the cross
The cross here represents Christ's death on the cross. AT: "by means of Christ's death on the cross" (See: Metonymy)
putting to death the hostility
Stopping their hostility is spoken of as if he killed their hostility. By dying on the cross Jesus eliminated the reason for Jews and Gentiles to be hostile toward each other. Neither are now required to live according to the law of Moses. AT: "stopping them from hating one another" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
in Christ
God
blood
Christ
peace
flesh
law
command
reconcile
cross
die
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12–14 2:12 Before their conversion, Gentiles had no part in…
2:12 Before their conversion, Gentiles had no part in God’s people or the covenant promises God had made to them; they were without God and without hope (see 4:18; Col 1:21).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.