In the second part of Ephesians 2, Paul covers another aspect of the church. He tells us that in the past we were "apart 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" (v. 12). As those who were apart and away from all these positive things, we were in a miserable condition. In verse 13 Paul continues with two big words—"but now": "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near in the blood of Christ." We were pitiful persons, "but now!" Now through God's redemption in Christ, we have been brought near to Christ, to Israel, and to God's promise. This equals being near to God and all His blessings. We have been put into Christ, we have become citizens of a divine commonwealth, we have a part in the covenants of the promise, and we all have hope. What a wonderful hope we have been called into! We have God in Christ as our hope.
In the past we were in a terrible realm, but now we are in a divine realm. How did we experience such a great transfer into the divine realm? We were transferred by being re-created. To be regenerated is to be re-created. We were born into an old realm of sin and death, but the Triune God came to do something for us. He came in His incarnation to die in the flesh. In that death He terminated us, and through that death He released His divine life. Then in resurrection He imparted that divine life into us as the very essence with which He created a new man. When God created the heavens and the earth with thousands of items including man, He never used His essence, His very Being, as the material to create any item. But in this new man, God used Himself as the creating essence.
Ephesians 2:15 says that through His death on the cross, Christ created us into a new man. In the old man, we were divided. There was a middle wall of partition between the Jews and the Gentiles (v. 14). But Christ abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances, breaking down the middle wall of partition, and created these two peoples into one new man with a new essence, a new element. This new element is the very divine Trinity dispensed into us. As the Body of Christ, the church needs Christ as its life; as the new man, the church needs Christ not only as its life but also as its person. The Body is for the expression of the Head, and the new man is for the accomplishment of God's eternal purpose. Both the Body and the new man are organic. They have nothing to do with organization.
We individual believers have been created into one new man. We must be impressed with such a vision so that we could never be independent. We cannot be independent because we all are part of this great, universal new man. God does not want millions of individual Christians. What God wants is a corporate man. All the local churches on this earth are not only the Body of Christ for His expression but also the one new man on this earth to carry out God's will. The local churches cannot be independent from one another. If they were independent from one another, the one new man would be cut into pieces and death would be the result. We must see the awful result of the wrong teaching that the local churches are autonomous.