Ephesians 2:11-22 unveils that Christ is the Creator of the new man.
Ephesians 2:11-13 shows that according to our status, we, the Gentiles, were far off from God, Christ, God’s kingdom, God’s blessings, God’s promise, and everything related to God. In particular, we, the alienated Gentiles, were separated from Israel, God’s chosen people, but Christ’s redemption brought us into God and Israel, making us one with God’s chosen people.
In Ephesians 2:11 Paul says, “Remember that once you, the Gentiles in the flesh, those who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh made by hands.” This verse indicates that we were once the Gentiles in the flesh. The man whom God created to fulfill His purpose was pure, without sin or any kind of negative mixture. However, sin, the evil nature of Satan, entered into man through the fall. First, it caused man’s body to become the flesh, full of lusts, and eventually, it made the whole being of man the flesh. Hence, man was damaged and was thus prevented from fulfilling God’s purpose. Then God came in to call a race—Abraham and his descendants—out of fallen mankind. For the accomplishing of His purpose, God commanded them to be circumcised, that is, to put away their flesh. This meant that they were separated from fallen mankind and delivered out of the fallen condition. Circumcision made a tremendous distinction between them and the rest of mankind. The circumcised people were called “the circumcision,” those who were separated from the fallen situation. The rest of mankind was called “the uncircumcision,” those who remained in the fallen state. These were the Gentiles in the flesh. We were in this category before we were in Christ.
Verse 12 says “That you were at that time apart from Christ.” Christ, in whom all God’s blessings to His chosen people are embodied, came out of Israel, the circumcised people. Since we, the uncircumcised Gentiles, were separated from Israel, we were apart from Christ, having nothing to do with Christ.
Verse 12 also says that we were “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.” Commonwealth here refers to the citizenship, the civil rights, of God’s chosen people, such as God’s ruling, blessing, and presence. Through the fall, mankind lost all the rights that God intended for man in His creation. God called Abraham and through circumcision brought His chosen people back to all these rights. We, as uncircumcised Gentiles, remained alienated from such rights.
Furthermore, verse 12 tells us that as Gentiles in the flesh, we were strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. God is in Christ, He rules and moves in the commonwealth of Israel, and He bestows His blessings according to His covenants. When we were apart from Christ, the commonwealth of Israel, and the covenants of God’s promise, we were without God; we did not have God as our enjoyment.
Ephesians 2:13 goes on to say, “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have become near in the blood of Christ.” Here but now is a precious phrase, indicating that now in Christ we have hope and that we also have God. Once we were far off from Christ, from the commonwealth of Israel, and from the covenants of God’s promise. This equals being far off from God and all His blessings. But now in Christ, we who were once far off have been brought near to the things from which we were once far off. We were far off because we were fallen, but the redeeming blood of Christ brought us back (1:7; Col. 1:20). Hence, in His blood we have become near both to Israel and to God.
Ephesians 2:14-15 indicates that Christ’s death has abolished the law of commandments in ordinances, broken down the middle wall of partition, and slain the enmity to create the two in Himself into one new man. The problems between Israel, God’s chosen people, and us, the alienated Gentiles, are attributed to three main ordinances of Judaism: the practice of circumcision, the observance of dietary regulations, and the keeping of the Sabbath. These ordinances were obstacles that kept the Gentiles from God’s chosen people. Yet Christ annulled all these obstacles on the cross. When He was crucified, He brought all the ordinances to the cross; on the cross all these ordinances were crucified (Col. 2:14). In this way Christ broke down the middle wall of partition that consisted of the ordinances and thereby slew the enmity, which was created between the Jews and the Gentiles by the ordinances, in order to create the Jews and the Gentiles in Himself into one new man.
Christ broke down the middle wall of partition between the Jews and the Gentiles by abolishing the law of the commandments in ordinances. The middle wall of partition is the law of the commandments in ordinances, which was instituted because of man’s flesh. This middle wall of partition, which is the distinction (made mainly by circumcision) between the circumcision and the uncircumcision, became the enmity between the Jews and the Gentiles. Christ’s slaying the enmity was the breaking down of the middle wall of partition and the abolishing of the ordinances that brought in discord between the Jews and the Gentiles.
The law of commandments in ordinances is not the law of the moral commandments but the law of the ritual commandments, composed principally of the practice of circumcision, the observance of dietary regulations, and the keeping of the Sabbath. These ordinances were the main “columns” of Judaism. The moral commandments will never be abolished, but the ritual commandments were in force only during a particular time dispensationally and are therefore not permanent.
Ordinances are rituals, the forms or ways of living and worship, which create enmity and division. Every person has his own way of living. We need to be careful not to make our way of living or worship an ordinance. To practice the proper church life, all ordinances should be repudiated and dropped.
Concerning our way of life, we must all learn not to have any ordinances. We must learn to hate the differences that divide people. The worldly people regard cultural differences as a mark of prestige, but in Christ we have all lost this prestige. Now our only prestige is Christ and the genuine oneness. If we are willing to let go of our cultural pride, it will be possible for the Lord to have the proper church life.
The breaking down of the middle wall of partition is for the new man. If we keep our differences, it will be impossible to have the church life as the new man. The basic ordinances—those regarding circumcision, dietary regulations, and the Sabbath—had been ordained by God but were abolished by Christ on the cross. If the basic ordinances have been abolished, how much more should minor ones be abolished also? We should not keep any ordinances, and we should not create new ones. By the Lord’s grace, we must learn to drop all differences in order to enjoy the church life as the new man.
We need to pay careful attention to two phrases in verse 15: in His flesh and in Himself. In His flesh, Christ terminated all the negative things in the universe: Satan, sin, the flesh of fallen man, the world, the old creation represented by the old man, and the separating ordinances of the law (Heb. 2:14; Rom. 8:3; John 1:29; Gal. 5:24; John 12:31; Rom. 6:6; Eph. 2:15). In Himself as the sphere, element, and essence, Christ created the Jews and the Gentiles into one new man. We should declare, “First I was in Christ’s flesh; now I am in Christ Himself. In His flesh I was terminated on the cross, but in Christ Himself I was created as part of the new man.”
Christ did not stop with the termination of the negative things. Death is the threshold of resurrection; it ushers us into resurrection. Although Christ in the flesh was crucified, this death brought Him into resurrection. In resurrection He is no longer in the flesh; rather, He is the wonderful Spirit. It was in His flesh that we, the old man, were terminated, but it is in the wonderful Spirit that we have been created into the one new man. When our old man and our old nature were crucified, the ordinances related to our fallen nature were slain. Then in Christ’s resurrection and in His wonderful Spirit, we were created into one new man.
Christ is not only the Creator of the one new man, the church, but also the sphere in which and the means by which the one new man was created. He is the very element of the new man, making God’s divine nature one entity with humanity. The Greek word rendered “in” can also have an elemental significance, meaning also “with,” implying that the new man was created with Christ as its divine essence.
Christ created the one new man, the church, by working God’s nature into humanity. The working of the divine nature into humanity was something new. Hence, it was a creating. In the old creation God did not work His nature into any of His creatures, not even into man. In the creating of the one new man, however, God’s nature was wrought into man to make His divine nature one entity with humanity.
In the creating of the new man, first our natural man was crucified by Christ, and then through the crossing out of the old man, Christ imparted the divine element into us, causing us to become a new entity, a new invention of God (Rom. 6:6; 2 Cor. 5:17). The Jews and the Gentiles were separated to the uttermost by the separating ordinances, but both were created in Christ with the divine essence into one new entity, which is a corporate man, the church.
The church is not only the church of God, the Body of Christ (the fullness, the expression, of the all-filling One—Eph. 1:23), and the household or family, the house, the temple, and the dwelling place of God (2:19, 21-22). It is also the one new man, which is corporate and universal, created of two peoples, the Jews and the Gentiles, and composed of all the believers, who, though they are many, are one new man in the universe.
God created man as a collective entity (Gen. 1:26), but the corporate man created by God was damaged through man’s fall. Hence, there was the need for God to produce a new man. This was accomplished through Christ’s abolishing in His flesh the ordinances and through His creating of the new man in Himself.