Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
A Habitation of God
Ephesians 2:19-22
19 So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, · WEB
Three images stack in four verses — city, household, temple — and the last one is still under construction.
So then draws the conclusion of everything since verse 11, and it is stated first by negation: no longer strangers and foreigners. The second word describes a resident alien, someone living lawfully in a place that is not his. Both terms are withdrawn.
What replaces them comes in two images at once. Fellow citizens with the saints — the political category the readers had been excluded from in verse 12 — and of the household of God, which is closer still, since a household is not something one qualifies for.
Then verse 20 changes to architecture and the metaphor holds for three verses. The foundation is the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus is the chief cornerstone — the stone that sets the angle every other course must follow.
Verse 21 is the detail that keeps the image from being static. The building grows, which is not something buildings do, and the letter mixes the metaphors on purpose: what is being described is a structure that is also alive. The same combination appears in another letter, where believers are living stones 1 Peter 2:5. It is fitted together, a joinery word, and it grows into a holy temple.
And verse 22 lands it on the readers: in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. The chapter that began with dead men walking under the prince of the air ends with the same people as the place where God lives — and the tense throughout is unfinished. The building is still going up.
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