NOTES for Eph 2:19-22

The apostle Paul writes these words to a church made up mostly of former Gentiles, that is, of those who, even in the religious moments of their lives, turned not to the one God, but to a multitude of different gods, trying to extract benefit for themselves, placing themselves and their interests above the divine will. All this inevitably alienated them from the God whom Israel honored, and in relation to Israel and its God they were strangers, aliens, ungodly people.

Their turning to Christ radically changes the situation: by being united through faith with the One who, as the Son of Man, belongs to the people of Israel, and, as the Son of God, fully shares in the life of the one God, they cease to be aliens estranged from Israel on the one hand, and on the other hand acquire the most important attribute of holiness: belonging to God.

Do we understand that the same changes enter our own lives when the Good News reaches us and we respond to it with our hearts?

Apostle Paul refers constantly in his messages to the subject of Christian universalism. The serious and profound division of men in those, to whom the inheritance of the faith of the chosen people belongs, and those who are foreign to it, is overcome by Christ's death for all people. The apostle says further that a particular revelation of the Christlike secret, given to the apostles and the prophets by the Holy Spirit came true, so that the possibility of entering the Church, of entering into an alliance with God be opened to heathen. Today, those of the "heathen", that is not Israeli coming to Church, form the absolute majority in it, and that is why the understanding of the greatness of this gift dulled.

The differences which appeared between people in history are surmounted in the Church, and everything is made, according to the word of the apostle, "no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God". Therefore, these differences have in themselves a very relative importance. However the relationships between people surrounding us in the world are arranged such a way that the divisions of people in historically formed groups exist eternally and have imperishable value.

We acknowledge and understand our personality in a large measure by identifying oneself with a defined typical group of people. It was always like that, from ancient primitive tribes to complex and many-sided modern societies. In fact, the apostle proposes another way of self-identification to Christians: to be fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.

For the apostle, Christ is the destroyer of all barriers. On the one hand, He destroys the wall that separated the fallen world from God; on the other, the wall that separated the Jews as the people of God from the pagans, and therefore from all the rest of humanity. The 'Torah of commandments,' the external Torah, Jesus removes by His own example, becoming the living Torah, no longer reducible to any system of religious prescriptions.

The text of the letter is most likely speaking precisely of an example or model, not of a 'teaching,' although the corresponding Greek word dogma could also be translated as 'teaching.' Yet when borrowed into Hebrew and Aramaic, this word came to mean not teaching, but precisely example or model, and Paul evidently understands it this way, although he writes his letters in Greek. Jesus overcomes the external Torah, the Torah in its legal, moral, and religious aspect, by becoming the living Torah and showing the living Torah to the world.

If the external Torah separates Jews and pagans, the inner Torah, on the contrary, can unite them, all the more if the issue is the living example of the living Torah, to whom one must become similar regardless of whether one is a Jew or a recent pagan. But the very possibility that the living Torah appears to the world as a path now opened to every seeker is connected with the Kingdom entering the world. The living Torah is possible only in the Kingdom, where there is no place for sin; in the fallen world, where sin rules, it is unrealizable. Before the coming of Christ, the Torah was a path that divided the world into the realm of the sacred and the rest of it, which was not sanctified and with which those walking the path of the Torah had better not come into contact.

Now the path of the Torah has become the path of the Kingdom, whose King has shown the world the example of the living Torah, so that the whole world has now become part of the process whose axis is the path of Christ, the path of a person's becoming in Christ a living Torah. This path unites Jews and recent pagans into one people, for now they have all become subjects of one King and inhabitants of one Kingdom. The barriers are gone; the world again becomes the Kingdom, as it was on the first day of creation, and the human being becomes the undistorted image of God, moving toward the fullness of his transfiguration.

The action of the Holy Spirit not only changes our inner state but also brings us into a special relationship with other people. In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes this new human community, the Church of Christ, as a temple founded upon the faith of the Apostles, the faith spoken of in the feast-day Gospel reading, while Christ Himself is the cornerstone upon which the whole building rests.

Continuing the discussion of salvation and of the new people of God, Paul pays special attention to its spiritual connection with the former people of God, the Jewish people. Strictly speaking, for the apostle there are not two different peoples: after all, God conceived and created only one people of his own, and the coming of Christ changed nothing in this intention. It only expanded the boundaries of the people of God, including in it those who without Christ would never have become part of it (vv. 11-13). But the expansion was not purely mechanical. It presupposed a new quality not only in the recent Gentile converts who were joining the people, but also in the Jews themselves. The issue is above all the complete cleansing from sin that is possible only by the blood of Christ. The blood of those cleansing sacrifices that had been offered among the people of God from ancient times could not completely free either an individual person or the whole people from the power of sin, cleansing them only partially. Now, with the Savior's coming into the world, the blood he shed on the cross, his death, and his resurrection make it possible for everyone to be cleansed completely, so that sin no longer has any power over the one who has been cleansed (v. 13).

But the matter is not only cleansing, though complete deliverance from sin is a necessary condition for abiding in the Kingdom. The matter is also a new quality of spiritual life, of those relationships that bind the faithful with God, with Christ, and with one another. Paul, of course, does not speak by chance about the cross that "kills hostility" between two formerly divided parts of humanity (v. 16). For it was precisely the Savior's death on the cross and his resurrection that opened the road into the Kingdom for everyone seeking it. Earlier, when speaking about the Torah, teachers and mentors spoke of commandments and of how, by observing them, one could attain righteousness and become a living Torah. The apostle calls this the "law of commandments" (v. 15), though no one ever dared say that he had achieved the goal set by it. Now there has appeared the One who himself became the example of the living Torah, fulfilling what earlier teachers could only speak of as a beautiful but unattainable ideal (v. 15; the corresponding Greek word can mean not only "teaching," but also "example" or "model").

The new quality of spiritual life revealed by the Savior abolishes the barrier that formerly stood as an insurmountable wall between the people of God and the rest of humanity. Now the life of the Kingdom, having entered the world through Christ and in Christ, has become available to everyone who seeks it. The breath of the Kingdom that comes from the Father is now equally available both to the Jews who have accepted the good news and to the Gentiles who have turned to Christ (vv. 17-18), so that now both groups can not only live one life of the Kingdom, but also build it together, taking part in the fulfillment of God's plans connected with it (vv. 19-22).