This subject can be approached in many different ways and from a lot of perspectives. Way too many Americans pay lip service to the truth that we all are created equal. The reality is we see too many who do not always reflect that in our attitudes or relationships. Our fallen human nature seeks to make distinctions between races, but God makes no distinction. The fact is- there is only one way to bring all of us together. The answer is in the belief and surrender to Jesus as their Savior. Christ loves all equality, He died for all, and He works through all believers regardless of race. We are to follow the example of Christ and openly accept and embrace one other. The lesson in Ephesians focuses on the alienation that existed between Jews and Gentiles in the first century.
Read Ephesians 2:11-12
The animosity which existed between the Jews and Gentiles in the first century demonstrates that without Christ, our differences can divide us. Unfortunately, we see that animosity today between all factions: races, politics, uneducated, misinformed, religions and those who just want to not listen to try to understand people and opinions. While many of these issues were present in the first century, there were several differences. In order to see how much God has done for us, it is sometimes wise to remember what our condition was like before we were saved. The word remember is an active imperative in the Greek. In other words, it’s a command. We are commanded to remember our past, not to become guilty about it, but to remember how awful our former life was in comparison to what God has given us now.
Ephesians 2:11 is unique in the New Testament in that it is the only verse that tells us to remember our old way of life. In fact, in comparison with other passages like Philippians 3:13-14 which tells us to “forget what is behind” it seems to contradict. But when looked at carefully, both are really saying the same thing. We are not to remember so that we wallow in guilt and depression from past mistakes. Rather, we are to remember our past so that we can see what Christ has delivered us from. Memory is a wonderful gift from God. We need to remember sin, and its effects in our lives so that we can work hard to avoid it in the future. We also need to remember the biblical stories and the times in the past when God has worked on behalf of His people. Christ tells us to take the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of what he has done for us. Remembering our sinful past is also a way to deepen our humility. Sometimes, we start to think that the way we are now is because of our own effort and ability. When we remember, as Paul commands us to do here, the way we were without the grace of God in our lives, it reminds us that the way we are now is due to God, and not our own effort or ability.
In Ephesians 2:11-12, Paul commands them to remember six things in regard to their human relationships before they were saved. The first of these six, as found in Ephesians 2:11, is that they were Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— Paul is talking here about the differences between the Jew and the Gentile. Prior to Abraham, there was no difference. But God, in choosing Abraham, created a difference. Now God created this difference so that His people could be a blessing to everyone else. The problem, however, was that many Jews saw this difference as a reason to boast and be proud and think that they were superior to the others.
But God did not choose Abraham so that the Jews would think they were superior to the Gentiles, but so that they might be a blessing and a help to the Gentiles. While some ask why we are made with differences- here seems to be the answer. God seems to indicate that we are different- but equal- so we can be a blessing to all. And the aspect that Paul mentions here in Ephesians 2:11 about this difference between Jew and Gentile is circumcision. Since circumcision was the outward sign of the covenant with God, the Jews considered any uncircumcised male to be outside of God’s blessing and purpose. The Jews were proud of this outward sign of the covenant, and they despised anyone who was not circumcised.
In fact, “Jews said that the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell; that God loved only Israel of all the nations that he had made; that the best of the serpents crushed, the best of the Gentiles killed. “It was not lawful to render help to a Gentile woman in childbirth, for that would be to bring another Gentile into the world. The barrier between Jew and Gentile was absolute. If a Jew married a Gentile, the funeral for the Jew was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death; even to go into a Gentile house rendered a Jew unclean.”
In Ephesians 2:11, Paul, although he was a Jew himself, mocks their arrogance by saying that the Jewish circumcision which they took so much pride in was nothing more than something done in the flesh by the hands of men. In Philippians 3:2, Paul calls them “mutilators of the flesh” and in Romans 2:29, he shows us that the real circumcision that God desires is not of the flesh by the hands of men, but of the heart, by the Holy Spirit. It is those who believe in Jesus alone and not in their own works of the flesh that are circumcised of the heart and not of the flesh. So, the first thing Paul wants them to remember is that they were Gentiles—despised by the Jews. They were without respect.
Ephesians 2:12 gives the next five things to remember about the way they used to be. The second thing to remember is that at that time you were without Christ, What Paul means is pretty obvious. They did not have Christ. The Ephesians lived under the same problem that the rest of the world live under. They still, just like everyone else, lived under a system of rivalry, violence, scapegoating, blame, slander, accusation, and victimization. The Ephesians, for the most part, worshipped the goddess Diana, and before the coming of the Gospel, knew nothing of Jesus Christ. They were without Christ, and as such were under condemnation. Paul tells us here that without Christ, they are lost. So, the Ephesians, before they were saved, were without respect, they were despised by the Jews, were without Christ, and the third thing, they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.
The fourth item to remember is very similar. He says in Ephesians 2:12 that we need to remember how before we were saved, we were strangers from the covenants of promise. God never made any covenants with Gentile nations. Gentiles were included in the covenant with Abraham, and since Noah lived before Abraham, we could consider him as a Gentile, I suppose, but in broad terms, God did not make covenants with Gentile nations—only with the nation of Israel. Gentiles were considered strangers and aliens—and the Jews never let them forget it. Many of the Jewish Pharisees would pray daily, “O God, I give thanks that I am a Jew, not a Gentile.” Sounds like what we might hear today: “I am glad I am not like that person.’ Before they became Christians, then, they were without respect, without Christ, without citizenship, and without covenants.
Fifth, from Ephesians 2:12, they are to remember that before they became Christians, they were without hope. That describes the life of the unsaved person, doesn’t it? (cf. 1 Thess. 4:13). Today, depression is at an all-time high. People have no hope for the future. Hope is the profound blessing that gives meaning and security to life. “Living without hope of future joy and enrichment reduces man to a piece of meaningless protoplasm.” But Christians do have a hope for the future. And finally, we are to remember that we were without God in the world. And that final phrase, in the world, reminds us of Ephesians 2:2 showing us that it is not a good thing to be in the world.
So, the six things Paul lists here as descriptive of what the Ephesian Christians were like before they were saved are: without respect, without Christ, without citizenship, without covenants, without hope and without God. And all of these six things caused enmity and hatred and discord between Jews and Gentiles in those days.
Read Ephesians 2:13-18
We have already seen how the Jew hated and despised the Gentile. Now Paul uses two pictures, which would be specially vivid to a Jew, to show how that hatred is killed and a new unity has come. He says that those who were far off have been brought near. Isaiah had heard God say: “Peace, peace to the far, and to the near” (Isaiah 57:19). When the Rabbis spoke about accepting a convert into Judaism, they said that he had been brought near. For instance, the Jewish Rabbinic writers tell how a Gentile woman came to Rabbi Eliezer. She confessed that she was a sinner and asked to be admitted to the Jewish faith. “Rabbi,” she said, “bring me near.” The Rabbi refused. The door was shut in her face; but now the door was open. Those who had been far from God were brought near, and the door was shut to no one.
It is not to be thought that the Jews were the only people who put up the barriers and shut people out. The ancient world was full of barriers. There was a time, more than four hundred years before this, when Greece was threatened with invasion by the Persians. It was the golden age of the city state. Greece was made up of famous cities–Athens, Thebes, Corinth and the rest and it very nearly encountered disaster because the cities refused to cooperate to meet the common threat. Cicero could write much later: “As the Greeks say, all men are divided into two classes–Greeks and barbarians.” The Greek called any man a barbarian who could not speak Greek; and they despised him and put up the barriers against him.
Christ is our peace (v.14). It is in a common love of him that people come to love each other. That peace is won at the price of his blood, for the great awakener of love is the Cross. The sight of that Cross awakens in the hearts of men of all nations love for Christ, and only when they all love Christ will they love each other. It is not in treaties and leagues to produce peace. There can be peace only in Jesus Christ.
Verse 15 Paul deals with the commands. The only people who fully kept the Jewish law were the Pharisees and there were only six thousand of them, all of which could not be done on the Sabbath. A religion based on all kinds of rules and regulations, about sacred rituals and sacrifices and days, can never be a universal religion. But, as Paul said elsewhere, “Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). Jesus ended legalism as a principle of religion. In its place he put love to God and love to men. Jesus came to tell men that they cannot earn God’s approbation by a keeping of the ceremonial law but must accept the forgiveness and fellowship which God in mercy freely offers them. A religion based on love can at once be a universal religion.
Here is the answer!!!
Paul goes on to tell of the priceless gifts which come with the new unity in Christ. He made both Jew and Gentile into one new man. The unity which Jesus achieves is not achieved by blotting out all racial characteristics; it is achieved by making all men of all nations into Christians. It may well be that we have something to learn here. The tendency has always been when we send missionaries abroad to produce people who wear English clothes and speak the English language. There are indeed some missionary churches who would have all their congregation worship with the one liturgy used in the churches at home. It is not Jesus’ purpose, however, that we should turn all men into one nation, but that there should be Christian Indians and Christian Africans whose unity lies in their Christianity. The oneness in Christ is in Christ and not in any external change. Paul reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God. The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity transcends all their local and racial difference; it produces men who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces men who are one because they meet in the presence of God to whom they all have access.
Read Ephesians 2:19-22
Paul uses two illuminating pictures. He says that the Gentiles are no longer foreigners but full members of the family of God. So, Paul says to the Gentiles: “You are no longer among God’s people on sufferance. You are full members of the family of God.” We may put this very simply; it is through Jesus that we are at home with God. If a person would feel shut out, and lonely in the dark- that should never happen in a church. Through Jesus there is a place for all men in the family of God. Men may put up their barriers; churches may keep their Communion tables for their own members. God never does; it is the tragedy of the Church that it is so often more exclusive than God.
The second picture Paul uses is that of a building. He thinks of every church as the part of a great building and of every Christian as a stone built into the Church. Of the whole Church the corner stone is Christ; and the corner stone is what holds everything together. Paul thinks of this building going on and on, with each part of the building being fitted into Christ. There are all kinds of architecture; but the building is a unity because through it all it has been used for the worship of God and for meeting with Jesus Christ. That is what the Church should be like. Its unity comes not from organization, or ritual, or liturgy; it comes from Christ. Where Christ is, there is the Church. The Church will realize her unity only when she realizes that she does not exist to propagate the point of view of any body of men, but to provide a home where the Spirit of Christ can dwell and where all men who love Christ can meet in that Spirit and are equal to bless others. Although we come from many backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, and so forth, as believers in Jesus Christ we have equal standing before God and are brothers and sisters in Christ.