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... to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things' (Acts
15:25 -28). While there were four items of conduct prescribed for the
Gentiles, the added comment `for Moses of old time hath in every city them
that preach him' (Acts 15:21) suggests that the Jewish believer would
continue to observe the full ceremonial law. This difference between the two
companies of believers set up in effect a middle wall of partition making
membership of `one body' during the Acts impossible. It is this `decree'
which is the ordinance referred to in Ephesians 2:15. This has now been
abolished.
This word, `abolished', translates the Greek katargeo which means
rather `to render inoperative', as can be seen in such passages as Romans 7:2
`loosed from the law'; `done away' (2 Cor. 3:7,11,13,14) and `to make of none
effect' (Gal. 3:17; 5:4). The temporary measures introduced by the Council
at Jerusalem were abrogated when the truth for the present dispensation was
revealed and this abrogation was seen to have been accomplished, even as
access into the true tabernacle had been accomplished by the death of Christ.
Instead of this divided company of believers where the Jew was first, where
the Gentile was but a wild olive graft contrary to nature, we have the
creation of the two, in Himself, of one new man. In this new company neither
Jew nor Gentile as such can be discovered; the Church of the One Body is not
something carried over from earlier days, remodelled and reconstituted in
order to give the Gentile a better place in it. It is a new creation, in
which all previous privileges and disadvantages vanish, in which there are
blessings hitherto unknown to any son of Adam. To teach that all that
Ephesians 2:15 reveals is that the Gentile had been promoted to an equality
with the Jew is such an understatement as to be virtually a contradiction of
truth. The calling into which these hitherto divided Jews and Gentiles now
found themselves is unrelated either to Abraham, the New Covenant, or the New
Jerusalem. Neither Jew nor Gentile had hitherto been associated with a
calling that went back to before the foundation of the world, or went up so
high as to be `far above all' where Christ sits. This calling is unique, and
to attempt to see allusions to Old Testament types is to prevent the
essential newness or uniqueness of this calling from being perceived.
There is a superficial likeness in the wording of Ephesians 2:15 to the
record of the creation of Adam and Eve, and some have been tempted to
elaborate that likeness into a definite doctrine. There are one or two
essential features that Scripturally characterize the relationship of Adam
and Eve that make it impossible that there should be any idea of `fulfilment'
here in Ephesians 2:15. We are distinctly told by inspired comment, that:
`Adam was first formed, then Eve' (1 Tim. 2:13).
`The head of the woman is the man' (1 Cor. 11:3).
`He is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the
man' (1 Cor. 11:7).
`Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man'
(1 Cor. 11:9).
The same Paul who wrote these inspired comments on Genesis 1 and 2,
wrote Ephesians 2, and his comments written After Ephesians (i.e. 1 Tim.
2:13) differ nothing from his comments written before (i.e. 1 Cor. 11). If
we import into Ephesians 2:15 the type of Genesis 1 and 2, then the Jew must
stand for Adam, and the Gentile must stand in the place of Eve. In this new
company the Jew will therefore of necessity be still `head' even as was Adam,
and the explicit teaching of the Mystery thereby nullified. The whole Church
of the One Body, the Church that includes within it both Jew and Gentile, is