Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Ephesians 2:14

"For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition," — Ephesians 2:14 (ASV)

Christ and no one else has solved the problem of our relationship with God and with other people. He draws people to God and to each other in his own person. It is not simply the message he proclaimed or even the message proclaimed about him that effects this reconciliation. It is himself (cf. Micah 5:5). That is, Paul announces that Christ is “peace” as well as “life” (Colossians 3:4) and “hope” (Colossians 1:27). The “I am” sayings recorded in the Fourth Gospel provided a foundation for such assertions.

Christ is both peace and peacemaker. He actually brought about the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile when he died on the cross. There he made both into one (cf. vv.15–16). Paul thinks of two parts being united as one whole. Then he personalizes it and speaks of “two” men being recreated as “one new man.” Christ has thus removed “the hostility” that existed between these deeply divided groups. The battlement created by hatred has been broken down forever.

This hostility Paul describes as a “barrier” (GK 5850), a word that means simply a “fence” or “railing.” It recalls the common rabbinic idea of the law as a fence dividing the Jews by their observance of it from all other races and thus arousing hostility. There may be a further allusion to Ps 80:12, where the word also occurs. The breaking down of the protecting wall that surrounded Israel the vine prepares the way for God’s strong man (Psalms 80:17).

The second word describing hostility is “dividing wall” (GK 3546); it is a much rarer word and literally means a “middle wall.” Josephus used this term (as well as the previous one) to refer to the balustrade in the Jerusalem temple separating the court of the Gentiles from the temple proper. On it was an inscription that read: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.” When Jerusalem fell in A. D. 70, this partition was demolished along with the temple itself. But Paul saw it as already destroyed by Christ at the cross. Ironically enough, he himself had been wrongfully accused of taking an Asian Gentile, Trophimus, past this checkpoint (Acts 21:29).