Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
The Middle Wall Broken Down
Ephesians 2:14-18
14 For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation, · WEB
A word that occurs only once in Scripture names what was removed, and what is made is not a compromise between two parties but a third thing.
He is our peace. Not the one who makes it or announces it — the peace itself, stated as identity. And the two acts that follow are both his: made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation.
That phrase rests on a word occurring exactly once in Scripture, and its sense has to be taken from the scene: a wall standing between two parties, demolished. A temple court with a barrier past which gentiles could not go is the natural picture, and the letter's interest is not in identifying the wall but in reporting that it is down.
Verse 15 says what was abolished, and the phrase is careful: the law of commandments contained in ordinances. Not the law as God's standard — the letter will shortly quote a commandment as binding, with its promise attached Ephesians 6:2 — but the body of regulation that functioned as the barrier itself, the thing that made two categories of person.
What is created in its place is the letter's boldest phrase: one new man of the two. Not gentiles admitted to Israel, and not Israel loosened to accommodate them. A third thing, made, which neither party was before.
Verse 16 gives the instrument — the cross — and says the hostility was killed by it. The letter uses violent verbs for the removal of enmity.
And verse 17 draws on a prophet's promise of peace to him who is far off and to him who is near Isaiah 57:19. Verse 18 states the result in the plainest terms available: we both have access, in one Spirit, to the Father. One approach, for two peoples, to one person.
settled What this mark means