Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made near by the blood of Christ. This chapter speaks of a double alienation and of a double reconciliation: on the one hand, a deep alienation of mankind from God, dating from birth, subsisting along with a moral separation between Jews and Gentiles; on the other hand, it points to the historic fact of Christ's atone-merit as the divinely instituted method by which both alienations were to be extinguished, and man united to God and to man in a higher unity, so that the two separated elements should henceforth become one new man, one city of God, one temple or habitation of God. I. THE GENTILES REMOTE FROM GOD. "You that were afar off." They were in a geographical sense far off from Palestine, the center of the true religion. This land was, with a truly providential design, selected as the home of God's chosen people, because it held a central place between Europe, Asia, and Africa. But the nations were still more apart from Palestine, so as to have no share in its theocratic life. In this case, the expression "far from God," or "far off," was a phrase in common use to designate the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:1; Acts 2:39). But there was a moral distance - an alienation of the Gentile heart from God - which was more serious than any geographical remoteness from the seat of theocratic institutions. It is both the sinfulness and the misery of sin that men are at a distance from God. Unbelief is a "departure from the living God." The Gentiles were far from Christ, from the Church, from the covenant, from hope, from God. There is no divider like sin. II. THE GENTILES MADE NIGH IN THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. Just as Israel at Sinai was by the sprinkling of blood made to be the people of God, brought near to him, kept year by year in covenant, so the blood of Christ was the element or sphere in which the new covenant took its shape with its all-inclusive relations both to Jew and to Gentile. It was the blood that obliterated the interval between the Gentiles and God. They have now communion with God, and are established in their nearness to him. It is not merely in Christ Jesus, but in the blood of Christ, that our nearness is established. It was not the incarnation but the death of the Son of God - the designed complement and issue of the incarnation - that has secured our privilege of access to God. It often happens in the history of grace that these very far from God in character and hope are made nigh by the blood of the cross. There is a marvelous power in the blood of the lifted-up Redeemer: "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:82), irrespective of national distinctions. - T.C. Parallel Verses KJV: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.WEB: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. |
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