DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

Ephesians 2:14-22          (11/22)           Epistle for the Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

 

Jews and Gentiles: Ephesians 2:14-22, especially vss. 17 & 18: “And [Christ Jesus] came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.  For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”  Orthodox Christianity teaches that reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles is achieved only in Christ Jesus, the chief cornerstone of the New Israel - the Orthodox Church (vs. 20).  Much earlier in Ephesians, the Apostle refers to the Jews as the Circumcision and all other ethnic groups as Gentiles in the flesh or the Uncircumcision (Eph. 2:11) - Gentiles being a Latin-based word equivalent to the Greek-based phrase ethnic groups.

Follow Saint Paul’s point as he writes to the Christians at Ephesus and realize that most Orthodox Christians, ethnically speaking, are Gentiles, yet we belong to the commonwealth of Israel (Eph. 2:12) through union with Christ, the true Messiah of Israel.  Therefore, we Gentiles are true citizens of the New Jerusalem and Zion of God.  As Saint Paul teaches elsewhere, all Orthodox Christians of Jewish heritage also are part of the true Israel of God, as will be the natural branches if one day they choose to “...be grafted into their own olive tree...” again (Rom. 11:24).

An article entitled, “An Orthodox Christian Priest of Jewish Heritage Serving in Jerusalem,” describes Father Alexander Winogradsky, a man who does “...not consider [himself] ethnically a Jew or Hebrew...”, but quotes Saint Paul from these verses in Ephesians to affirm the Apostle’s thought that Christ “...created in Himself one new man from the two...” (cf. Eph. 4:15).

Saint John Chrysostom understands these verses in this identical way.  On the one hand, he points out that Saint Paul does not “...disparage the Israelitish prerogative...,” but enhances it.  On the other hand, he notes how the Apostle warns that the problem for any Jew (or Gentile) is “...being without Christ...being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.”

Therefore, Saint John adds, let no one take comfort merely from his ethnicity because “...this circumcision is not the commonwealth...,” for “...the Israelites themselves were without this commonwealth, not however as aliens, but as indifferent to it, and they fell from the covenants, not however as strangers, but as unworthy.”  Likewise, those of Gentile heritage, until the coming of Christ Jesus, were people “...having no hope...and without God...” though they worshiped, yet what they worshiped were not gods - for an idol is not any thing (1 Cor 10:19).

Understand that Saint Paul speaks in these verses as a Jewish Christian to a community of Gentile Christians - the Ephesians.  The Apostle’s point is that our God, Christ the Lord “...Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation...” (Eph. 2:14).  Ethnic distinctions no longer obtain in Him, for we are all one in Christ.  As Saint John Chrysostom challenges: “Observe thou, that it is not that the Gentile is become a Jew, but that both the one and the other are entered into another condition....Laying hold on the one hand of the Jew, and on the other of the Gentile, and Himself being in the midst, He blended them together, make all the estrangement which existed between them to disappear, and fashioned them anew from above by fire and by water....”

Whatever separated us either as Jew or Gentiles from sharing in the True Israel of God - our enmity toward God that we created by sin and manifested in opposing the law or commandments - Christ Jesus has reconciled for both of us as “...God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity” (vs. 16).  And best of all, in Christ, the Cornerstone, we are now “...being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (vs. 22).

O Lord, King of ages and Creator of all, Who didst accept crucifixion and burial in the body to deliver us all from hades, Thou art our God, and beside Thee we know no other.

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