Ephesians 2
Big idea: The same reversal told twice — once about a person, once about a people. First the individual: dead, walking, by nature under wrath, and then two words that turn the sentence around. Then the corporate version, which for the letter's first readers was the more startling of the two: not that Gentiles could now be admitted to Israel, but that God abolished the distinction and made ONE NEW HUMANITY out of both.
Chapter 2 ends with a building being assembled. Chapter 3 explains why Paul is in prison for saying it.
2:1–10 — But God, being rich in mercy
The diagnosis is stated in the only terms that leave no room for self-improvement: not sick, dead. And then the sentence turns on two words. What follows uses the same three verbs chapter 1 used of Christ — made alive, raised, seated — and applies every one of them to the reader, in the past tense.
1 You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. 3 We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; 8 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, that no one would boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
2:11–22 — He is our peace
The corporate half, and it begins with an instruction to remember exactly how far outside they were — five phrases of exclusion, ending on 'WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD'. Then the wall. Readers in the first century would have thought of the barrier in the temple court that Gentiles could not pass on pain of death, with the warning inscribed on it.
11 Therefore remember that once you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “uncircumcision” by that which is called “circumcision” (in the flesh, made by hands), 12 that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in his flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far off and to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, 20 being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; 21 in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).