The Wall Torn Down

A low stone wall runs around the inner courts of the great temple in Jerusalem. On it, carved signs warn every foreigner: go no further. Cross this line, and you will pay with your life.

Paul knew that wall well. In fact, it is part of the reason he is in chains. Some years earlier, crowds in Jerusalem had accused him of bringing a Gentile friend, Trophimus from Ephesus, past that barrier into the temple. A riot broke out, and Paul was arrested. Now, as a prisoner, he writes a letter for believers in Ephesus and the churches around it. Many of them are Gentiles, people who were not Jewish. And Paul wants them to understand where they once stood, and where they stand now.

Remember, Paul writes, what you used to be. Gentiles by birth, called the uncircumcised by those who were circumcised. At that time you were, “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” Outsiders. Not part of the people God had chosen. Not included in the promises he had made to Abraham and to Israel. Without hope and without God. That is a lonely place to stand, on the far side of the wall, looking in.

“But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” You who were far away have been brought near, through Jesus' death on the cross. “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” Jesus has knocked down the wall that divided Jew and Gentile, the wall of hostility. He set aside the law with its commands and rules, so that he could create in himself one new people out of the two, making peace. He reconciled both groups to God in one body through the cross, and put the hostility to death. He came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near. And through him, both of us can come to the Father, by one Spirit.

Then Paul changes the picture from a wall to a house, and a family. “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Not visitors. Not guests at the edge. Citizens. Family. And this family is being built like a great building, resting on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone, the stone that holds every other stone in line. In him the whole building is joined together and grows into a holy temple for the Lord. And you too, Paul says, are being built together into a home where God lives by his Spirit. The wall is gone. Everyone is invited into the house.

That warning wall was real. The Jewish historian Josephus describes a stone barrier in the temple courts with notices in Greek and Latin forbidding foreigners to enter. In eighteen seventy-one, a French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, found one of those stone notices in Jerusalem. Its Greek inscription warns that any foreigner who passes the barrier will have himself to blame for the death that follows. It is now in a museum in Istanbul.

The wall torn down. You'll find it in Ephesians chapter two, verses eleven to twenty-two. A prisoner, arrested near a wall that kept people out, writing that Jesus has broken down every dividing wall and made strangers into family. So here is a question to carry with you. What walls do people build between each other today, and how could you help bring peace?