Ephesians
The Book of Ephesians: An Introduction
The short answer
Ephesians is a short letter with an enormous claim: God has done something in Jesus that changes not only individual lives but the whole shape of the human family. The engine of the letter is chapter 2, where Paul describes two problems being solved at once. The first is the distance between humanity and God — Paul says all of us, whatever our background, were "children of wrath," spiritually dead and unable to fix ourselves. The second is the distance between people, specifically the ancient wall between Jews and Gentiles, which in Paul's world was as deep a division as any that exists today.
The surprise of Ephesians is that these are not two problems but one, and they are solved by one act. At the cross, Paul says, Christ reconciled both groups "in one body to God," having killed the hostility. The enmity — between humanity and God, and between peoples — does its worst to Jesus, and it dies there. What emerges is not two reconciled groups standing politely apart, but "one new man": a single new family of believing Jews and believing Gentiles on completely equal terms. Those who were "far off" have been "made near."
This is why Ephesians reads less like abstract theology and more like an announcement. Paul is not describing a private religious experience; he is describing a new creation. People who were dead have been made alive; people who were outside the covenant altogether have been brought in from nowhere. And the community that results — the church — is meant to be living, visible evidence that the deepest divisions in human life have already been dealt with. The rest of the letter, with its instructions about unity, speech, forgiveness and love, simply spells out what it looks like to live as that family.
What scholars say
In these two passages, N.T. Wright shows how Ephesians 2 holds the letter together: Jews and Gentiles alike are brought from death and from outside the covenant into one new family on equal terms, and in 2:16 the hostility separating God and humanity does its worst to Jesus on the cross — and is ended there.
“God gives life to the dead, and calls things into existence when they did not exist before. Perhaps Paul thinks here of the way in which Jews like himself, in one sense covenant members already, were ‘children of wrath like the rest of humankind’ (Ephesians 2.3), and needed to be made alive in a new way (compare 11.15); and, on the other hand, of the way in which Gentiles were right outside the covenant altogether (Ephesians 2.12) and were brought in from nowhere. Jewish conversion means ‘ life from the dead’ (11.15); Gentile conversion means ‘fresh creation’. That is how God the creator, the life-giver, has called into being a new family for Abraham, formed of believing Jews and believing Gentiles on equal terms.”
“Well, it’s like that between humans and God, only more so. It is as though all the enmity, all the hostility, that was keeping humans and God shut off from each other did its worst to Jesus on the cross. That’s how Paul puts it in Ephesians 2.16, which is like this passage only a bit more fully spelt out. According to the poem of verses 15–20, Jesus was and is the place where true God and true humanity meet. Now we see the result; that in his death God and the human race were brought together, were reconciled. Now, astonishingly, we are free to approach the living and holy God without a stain on our character. That is the heart of Paul’s gospel .”
What it means for you
It is easy to treat peace with God and peace with other people as separate projects — one for private devotion, one for social effort. Ephesians refuses the split. If the cross is where hostility itself was exhausted, then holding on to contempt for people on the other side of a dividing line means living as though that work never happened. The letter invites two responses. First, receive the reconciliation: you can approach God freely, not because you cleaned yourself up but because Christ did what you could not. Second, practice it: treat the person across the ancient divide — cultural, racial, political — as family, because in God's new creation, that is what they are.
In context
Ephesians falls into two halves. Chapters 1–3 describe what God has done in Christ: choosing a people, raising Jesus from the dead, and — in chapter 2, the letter's centerpiece — making the dead alive and the divided one. Chapters 4–6 then draw out the consequences: unity in the church, honesty in speech, love in households, and strength to stand against evil. Chapter 2 is the hinge. Everything Paul asks of his readers in the second half flows from the reconciliation he announces in the first.