2:19-22
These final verses of Ephesians 2 serve as the final element of the Divine Warfare pattern we have noticed and bring to a climax the double victory of God Paul wants us to remember. Paul announces the reversal of status the Gentiles (“you,” v.19) have received through Christ – “no longer strangers and aliens” but rather now “citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” A new people and a new family – the climax and fulfillment of God’s ancient promise to Abraham and through him the whole world. Jews and Gentiles together under God’s rule and fatherhood; this is the world God dreamed forth in the first place. Now in Christ, through his cross and resurrection, that dream has been achieved. It now remains for this people, this family, to implement that victory as they move through the world as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.
This new people, this new family, has a foundation and a cornerstone (v.20). In this construction imagery the “apostles and prophets”[1] of the church constitute its foundation. Their witness, teaching, and life are unique and fundamental to the church’s identity and character. Yet even more basic and structurally necessary is the “cornerstone”. Snodgrass explains the significance of this image:
“Cornerstones in ancient buildings were the primary load-bearing stones that determined the lines of the building . . . But the cornerstone image gained an importance far beyond its architectural connotations. Isaiah 28:16[2] was significant because it promised security in a time of destruction. Even if a flood came and washed everything away the cornerstone provided a place of refuge.[3]
Paul leaves us, then, with this schematic:
Cornerstone: Jesus Christ
Foundation: Apostles and Prophets
Superstructure: Church members
Perhaps under the influence of this construction imagery, Paul moves on to another image to describe his people: the temple. In light of Paul’s consistent use of the “temple” to describe God’s people (1 Cor. 3:9b-11, 16, 17; 6:19-20; 2 Cor.6:16), and in light of Jesus’ clear affirmation that he was now God’s “temple” (John 2:19-22), this usage is rather more than an image – it is a description of reality. Jesus and his people are now the temple – the place of God’s presence and glory, the place where earth and heaven come together, where humanity meets God and where God enters into his creation.[4]
As earlier in this chapter (2:5-6), Paul uses another series of three words with the preposition sun (“together with”). Here we find “fellow citizen” (v.19), “joined together” (v.21), “build together” (v.22). Whereas the first set of these three sun-words stressed our unity with Christ in his resurrection and victory, this present set of three sun-words stresses our unity with each other as God’s people.
The temple was always meant to be, as Jesus put it, “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Mk.11:17). Yet this purpose was continually frustrated by Israel’s disobedience. The temple became a bastion of Israelite nationalism and exclusivism which ultimately brought down God’s judgment upon it. The new temple which is and is in Jesus is everything that God intended the temple to be: a multicultural community of praise and practice of the presence of God built on Jesus Christ. The radicality of this claim and Paul’s making it is evident when we remember that it is just around the time of this letter that Jews and Syrians in Caesarea were slaughtering each other and that no one else held a view of such a multicultural temple.[5]
The last two verses both began with “in him,” that is, Christ. In v.21 “the whole structure” of this new temple is “built together” (Jews and Gentiles united). In a characteristic switch of metaphors Paul tells us that this building “grows” into the new temple of God. Likely this switch of metaphors is occasioned by Paul’s desire to assert that this temple both is as an act of God in Christ (“built together” by God) and at the same time is becoming (“grows”) as a living organism what it already is.[6] This is consistent with Paul’s overall approach with is framed by just this “already – not yet”/”become what you already are” view of Christian existence.
“In him,” Paul assures the Gentiles “you” are being joined to the Jews into a “dwelling place for God.” This is the work of God the Holy Spirit. The phrase here could mean “in spirit” or “spiritually” (as in the NRSV). However, the parallelism of this phrase with “in the Lord” (v.21) and the two “in him” (Christ) phrases (vv.21-22) along with Paul’s evident Trinitarian view of the person and work of God that we have already noticed makes me think he is speaking here of the work of the Holy Spirit in building the new temple.[7]
In the beginning God placed Adam and Eve in a garden where he “walked and talked” with them. What does the Bible call the place where God speaks and meets with his people? The temple!
God appointed our first parents protectors and nurturers of this garden which he intended them to spread to all the rest of the then uninhabited creation. That means the entire earth was to become a “temple” filled with presence of God and communion of his people with him. After humanity fell into sin and God called Abraham and Sarah, a new Adam and Eve, to carry out his plan to reclaim and restore his creatures and creation. From their family came the people God rescued out of Egypt in the Exodus. God was present to this people in their journeying in the wilderness and their settling in the land of promise in, first, the Tabernacle (a mobile tent of worship) and, then, the temple in Jerusalem.
The failure of Israel and its temple to prove faithful mediators or God’s presence and blessing to the world brought divine judgment on both. That judgment, however, in the person of Jesus Christ, the one faithful Israelite, brought not only the end and destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, but, as Paul says here in Ephesians 2, laid the “cornerstone” of the new temple of God by his death and resurrection. This new temple, however, is and is in a person, the risen and triumphant Christ. He is now the “place” where God and humanity meet and commune. And his people, who are “in him,” are part of this new temple as well.
As this Christ-Temple movement spread throughout the world of the 1st century and the wider world throughout the centuries since, the temple of God has extended its boundaries and extent. In the end, according to John the Seer in Revelation, this complete and perfect people of God will come down from heaven as a city, the New Jerusalem. This is a peculiar city however. Its shape as a cube matches only one other space in the Bible – the Holy of Holies, the innermost and most sacred part of the temple. John is telling us that redeemed humanity will be a “Holy of Holies,” a place of intimate and unbroken communication, communion, and community with God. And since this city covers the whole of the new creation, God’s dream to have a world full of his glory and presence is realized. The whole earth has become the temple of the Lord.
There is no temple in the New Jerusalem (Rev.21:22). The city itself is the temple. And we – Jews and Gentiles together in Christ – are, and are growing into, this very temple in which God will dwell with his people in his new creation.
Thus Paul displays the grounds on which we who have come to faith – white-hot passion for and conviction of the Lordship of Christ – ought to channel that conviction into a long-term commitment to the cause of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement.
Paul refers to Psalm 110:1 to indicate Jesus’ victory over all God’s enemies in his theme statement in 1:22. In the Divine Warfare pattern the final element is the victor’s celebration at the temple. Paul fills out this pattern by closing his narration of God’s decisive victories, or better, his one two-sided victory over sin and death in relation to God on the one hand, and over social division and destructiveness on the other by ending up at the temple. Only this time, the temple is, as we have seen, not a material structure to which people come but rather a human organism in which one lives.
And this human temple in which God now dwells in the Spirit is the evidence and offer of salvation to the world. Thus, Gombis is justified when he claims:
“All of this points to how important it is that the church truly embodies the life of God on earth. The church must be faithful to its call because it stands as the monument to the triumph of God over Satan and the powers of evil. If the church does not faithfully embody God’s love in Christ, then God’s victory is diminished. We must celebrate our new identifies, walking in good deeds rather than in patterns that formerly enslaved us. And we must cultivate communities of restoration and reconciliation where there has been alienation, bitterness, and division. These sorts of pursuits are not merely to be part of our doctrinal statements or our official documents but must be our urgent priorities.”[8]
[1] Paul’s placing of prophets after apostles suggests he has the prophets of the early church rather than Old Testament prophets in mind.
[2]A key Old Testament text that was surely in Paul’s mind in using this kind of imagery (see 1 Pet.2:6).
[3] Snodgrass, Ephesians, 138-39.
[4] See Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Temple (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010).
[5] Keener, Craig S. The IVP Bible Background Commentary New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 1994)
[6] This means growth in both the numbers and the character of this new temple.
[7] The lack of a definite article, that is no “the” in front of “spirit,” is no barrier to this view. Definite nouns frequently occur without the definite article.
[8] Gombis, The Drama of Ephesians, 106.
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