Gentile unbeliever. What is utterly impossible by human ability or effort, God has

wonderfully accomplished through the one offering of His beloved Son on our behalf.

Verse 14 continues: "For He is our peace, Who hath made both (Jew and Gentile

believers) one". No colour bar, or class distinction was ever so great as the separation

between Jew and Gentile previous to the epistle to the Ephesians. One of the great

features of the distinctive teaching of Ephesians relating to the Mystery or Secret

(Eph. 3:) is the cancellation by Christ of this great estrangement in the "New Man", the

joint-Body of Christ. This is further illustrated in the succeeding words of verse 14, "and

hath broken down the middle wall of partition (between us)". This is most evidently an

allusion to the literal wall of partition in the Temple area at Jerusalem which separated

the outer court of the Gentiles from the inner courts and the Temple itself, into which

only Jewish worshippers might enter.  Notices were displayed in Greek and Latin

warning Gentiles to keep out or suffer the death penalty. Paul himself had had a vivid

experience of this when, a few years earlier, it was rumoured that he had taken a Gentile

into the holy place and violated its sanctity, thereby narrowly escaping death himself

(Acts 21: 28).

This `middle wall of partition' was a symbol of the tremendous barrier between Jew

and Gentile represented by the law of God given through Moses to Israel, whether

considered in its moral, ceremonial or civil aspects. It also included the special decrees

instituted by the Hebrew church at Jerusalem in accordance with God's will, which

represented a minimum of the law that the Gentile believer was expected to observe

(Acts 15: 28, 29; 16: 4), in order to avoid giving offence to the Jewish believer. These

are the `ordinances' of Eph. 2: 15.  They have no reference to the Lord's Supper or

water baptism. These, together with the Mosaic law, caused the `enmity' which verse 15

tells us has been abolished by Christ in this new calling.

In a similar way Col. 2: 14 shows that the "handwriting of ordinances that was

against us, which was contrary to us" have been cancelled by being nailed to the Cross.

Having disposed of these insurmountable barriers, God can now in Christ `create' (not

just `make' as A.V.) in Himself of twain (literally the both, that is Jew and Gentile

believer) one new man, so making peace" (verse 15). Let us get this quite clear. The

calling of Ephesians revealed after  Acts 28:  is something new.  It is not a

continuation or merely an improvement of the position during the Acts, where the

Gentile believer was likened to a wild olive grafted into the true olive tree of Israel

(Rom. 11: 17-22), and sharing their spiritual things (Rom. 15: 27). Here Israel the nation

with its covenant blessings has no place, neither has the Gentile as such with his great

disability.  In this `new man' there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor

uncircumcision (Col. 3: 11).

The newness of this calling revealed in Ephesians is further stressed by the usage of

the word `create' rather than `make'. The essence of Divine creation is that old things

have passed away and new things have come into being (II Cor. 5: 17). The church or

out-calling revealed in this epistle is a new beginning, not an evolution of some existing

grouping, though doubtless many believers of the Acts period, came to learn from