The Mystery of the Church

Overview

• Testament: New
• Book: Ephesians
• Chapters: Ephesians 2:11-3:13
• Summary: Paul’s revelation of the “mystery” hidden for ages and now disclosed — that Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body in Christ — and the staggering claim that the multi-ethnic church displays the manifold wisdom of God to the powers of heaven.

Details

Ephesians 2:11-22 begins with a stark before-and-after portrait. The Gentiles were once “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (2:12). The list of exclusions is exhaustive: no Messiah, no citizenship in Israel, no share in the covenant promises, no hope, no God — “in the world” and yet profoundly outside of it. The distance was not merely social but covenantal and therefore spiritual. Yet the radical reversal is equally emphatic: “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (2:13). The “far” and “near” language echoes Isaiah 57:19, which Paul cites explicitly — both near (Israel) and far (Gentiles) are reached by the one gospel.

The abolition of the dividing wall is then stated in terms that are personal, structural, and cosmic. “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace” (2:14-15). The “middle wall of partition” (to mesotoichon tou phragmou) may allude to the balustrade in Herod’s temple that physically barred Gentiles from the inner courts under penalty of death — a wall that Christ has now shattered not politically but ontologically, through his flesh on the cross. The result is not the absorption of Gentiles into Judaism or of Jews into Gentile culture, but the creation of “one new man” — a third category, the church, that is neither the old Israel nor the Gentile nations but something genuinely new.

Chapter 3 introduces the technical term for what has been disclosed: the mystērion, the mystery. “That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (3:6). Paul is careful to enumerate the triple equality: fellow heirs, of the same body, partakers of the same promise. This was not merely hinted at in the Old Testament but was genuinely hidden — “which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (3:5). The hiddenness makes the disclosure all the more glorious. The nations had always been in view in the Abrahamic promise, but the particular form of their inclusion — equal membership in one body with Israel, not a subordinate or separate category — was the mystery kept secret until the cross.

The purpose of this revealed mystery then exceeds even the church’s own salvation: “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (3:10-11). The multi-ethnic church is not merely a social arrangement; it is a proclamation directed at the cosmic powers — the principalities and authorities that Paul elsewhere describes as enemies now being brought under Christ’s feet (1:21, 6:12). The very existence of a community where the ancient enmity between Jew and Gentile has been abolished declares something to the watchers of heaven that could not be declared any other way. The passage closes with Paul’s great intercessory prayer (3:14-21), asking that believers might comprehend with all the saints “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of Christ’s love — and “be filled with all the fulness of God” (3:19). The mystery, once hidden, becomes the inexhaustible content of apostolic prayer.

Important Verses

“For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” — Ephesians 2:14

“That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” — Ephesians 3:6

“To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” — Ephesians 3:10

Cross-References

• OT Background: Abrahamic Covenant — Genesis 12:3, “in thee shall all nations be blessed,” the concealed promise now made explicit
• Related: Cornelius’s Vision — Acts 10, the narrative moment when the mystery began to be enacted in history
• Related: Jerusalem Council — Acts 15, the ecclesial reckoning with the implications of Gentile inclusion
• Related: Justification by Faith (Theme) — the doctrinal basis for equal standing of Jew and Gentile before God
• Related: Ephesians — the broader letter and its vision of the church as the body and fullness of Christ