Ephesians Devotionals
Bob Morris
The Wall Came Down (Ephesians 2:14-15a)
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. 
Any peacemaking requires at least two elements: 1. an understanding of what the barriers to peace are, and 2. a means of overcoming or removing them. When the thing that keeps people apart is tied into their essential ethnic identity, the challenge is formidable.
At the University of Toronto I was registered in University College, where most of the Jewish Arts and Science students on campus also registered. I recall endless arguments in the Common Room of what it meant to be a Jew. Was it a political designation, a cultural one, a religious one, or a genetic one (everyone born of a Jewish mother)? Even within the religious category there were questions as to whether Reformed or “secular” Jews were worthy of the name.
What struck me in all those discussions was that whatever definition of Jew was accepted, it included observing kosher rules for food, at least nominally. That, if anything, was what made Jews Jews. It was part of their fundamental identity as defined by their “law”, the Torah. The law with its commands and regulations was part of the barrier between Jew and Gentile and was set aside when Jesus fulfilled the law’s intention completely.
That was especially hard to understand and accept by the early Jewish followers of Jesus. Paul, who was more of an intellectual Jew, in spite of being a Pharisee had less trouble with it than did Peter. Peter was a reflexive Jew, with few if any non-Jewish friends. Even after he had personally seen the resurrected Christ, been personally restored by him, and had experienced the power of the newly-sent Holy Spirit at Pentecost - even then he could not accept the fact that the kosher laws had been set aside. He needed angels and a three-times-repeated vision commanding him to eat “unclean” meat (Acts 10: 1-22) before he could bring himself to say to the Gentile Roman centurion Cornelius, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10: 34-35). Peter rightly connected his orthodox Jewish practices (“the law”) to the dividing wall between Jews and other ethnic groups.
When Jesus died he had fulfilled the law and all its requirements “in his flesh”, and thus was able to set it aside without denying its historic validity and eternal goodness. “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good, said Paul (Romans 7: 12), but it was and is enervated by sin. Jesus both fulfilled the law, which no one else had been able to do – and removed it as the dividing wall, the barrier. He identified the barrier to peace and “destroyed” it. Now Jew and Gentile can find their peace and unity in him; we have become the new humanity, which will populate his Kingdom for all eternity. When rabbis talked of accepting a convert into Judaism, they described them as having been “brought near”. What Moses once said of Israel we all can now say, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” (Deut. 4:7)
Father, how can something as good as your rule for life become a wall of hostility? I confess that is my sin and everyone else’s. I will be eternally grateful for your accepting me in Jesus apart from the impossibility of living up to the law.
Print
Email
