One People of God: Christ Has Broken Down the Dividing Wall
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Like a lot of American evangelicals, the faith I was taught as a teenaged convert was a sort of Dispensationalism. There were no charts that I recall, but I did learn that Jews are God’s earthly people and that the church is God’s spiritual people. I also learned that we are in “the church age,” which is a sort of parenthesis, until after the secret rapture, after the tribulation, and the re-institution of the temple and the sacrificial system.
What about Israel?
When I encountered Reformed theology and the Reformed Church, one of the first questions I asked my first Reformed teacher, Warren Embree, was, “What about Israel?” To which he replied, “the dividing wall has been broken down.” Again I asked, “But what about Israel?” Again he replied, “The dividing wall has been broken down.” A third time I asked, “Yes, but what about Israel?” and a third time he replied, “The dividing wall has been broken down.” Quite rightly Warren refused to accept the premise of my question.
That premise was that there are two peoples of God, an earthly people (ethnic Jews) and a spiritual people (Christians). To be honest, it was never entirely clear to me whether a non-Messianic Jew really needed to believe in Jesus to be saved. It seemed that it might be possible that one is saved by virtue of being ethnically Jewish. I am not necessarily attributing that view to Dispensational theologians but rather reflecting on popular Dispensationalism as it was mediated to me in the 1970s.
There is essentially one people of God.
In 1944 the (Southern) Presbyterian Church in the US (PCUS) published a Report on Dispensationalism which said, in part:
It is the unanimous opinion of your Committee that Dispensationalism is out of accord with the system of the doctrines set forth in the Confession of Faith, not primarily or simply in the field of eschatology, but because it attacks the very heart of the theology of our Church. Dispensationalism rejects the doctrine that God has, since the Fall, but one plan of salvation for all mankind. and affirms that God has been through the ages administering various and diverse plans of salvation for various groups…
The point of being a Dispensationalist is to highlight the diversity in the administration of salvation prior to the New Covenant. The Reformed Churches and theologians, particularly the American Presbyterians, have always affirmed unambiguously that for all the variety in the history of salvation—what we call the multiple administrations of the covenant of grace—there is one covenant of grace, one Savior, one way of salvation. There is essentially one people of God.
Believers in the Old Testament were all trusting Jesus, who was revealed to them under types and shadows.
Believers under the Old Testament, i.e., meaning believers in every epoch of redemptive history prior to the New Covenant, were all looking forward to Jesus’ coming. They were all trusting Jesus, who was revealed to them under types and shadows (Col. 2:17; Heb. 8 [all]). Types and shadows were revelations of future realities that were veiled or obscured. Another way to put it is to say that Christ was received by grace alone, through faith alone, in, with, and under types and shadows in the time of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the exile.
Perhaps the central issue between the historic Christian Church, going back as far as the Epistle of Barnabas (c. AD 120), Justin Martyr (c. AD 150), and Irenaeus, the Pastor (Episkopos) of Lyon (c. AD 170) and most forms of Dispensationalism is the latter’s doctrine of two peoples—earthly and spiritual.
The lynchpin: The dividing wall has been broken down.
The key passage that helped me to see the error of the “two peoples” approach to Christianity was Ephesians 2:14 where Paul says,
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
It was to this passage that my friend Warren was referring when he said, “the dividing wall has been removed.” What “dividing wall”? Paul refers to a wall that separates two rooms. Who is separated from whom?
Go back to Ephesians 2:11. There Paul is addressing the problem of Jewish-Gentile relations in the church. The crisis facing the early church, which was predominantly Jewish, was this: Since the institution of circumcision, to begin with, and then with the imposition of the Old Covenant (the Mosaic covenant) at Sinai, the Gentiles (non-Jews) were made religiously and legally unclean.
Thus, by the time of the New Covenant there had been “enmity” (v. 15 KJV) between Jew and Gentile in some sense since the time of Abraham, before the institution of the Old Covenant and formally since the time of Moses. For 1500 years (since Moses) Jews had one stance toward Gentiles, and now with the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that, for Christians, had all changed.
The two have been made one.
It was confusing. Even the apostle Peter was briefly caught up in the controversy when he sided with the Judaizers by not eating with Gentile Christians (Gal. 2:11–14). He repented after Paul confronted him about it, but this was such a major problem that the church held its first ever Synod or Council in Jerusalem. There the church, including Peter, agreed that the ceremonial laws of Moses were no longer binding on Christians, and the council issued a few binding decisions: 1) that Christians abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols; 2) that Christians abstain from blood; and 3) that they abstain from sexual immorality (Acts 15:29). Of course, the moral law (love God with all your faculties and your neighbor as yourself, in force since creation, re-stated at Sinai, and affirmed by Jesus) was still in force.
These tensions are in the background of Ephesians 2:11–14. Paul reminds the Gentile Christians in the congregation (in Asia Minor) that under the Mosaic law they were the “uncircumcision” and therefore unclean. The Jews were “the circumcision.” One was formerly cut out, literally, and the other cut in to the visible people of God. The Gentiles were, Paul says, “separated from Christ” [Note well: the Gentiles were alienated from Christ because Christ was being received sola gratia, sola fide, under the types and shadows], “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).
The Bible teaches a theology of expansion of Israel, not replacement.
“But now,” Paul says in one of his glorious reversals, “in Christ Jesus you [Gentiles] who were once far off have been brought near” (Eph. 2:13). In Colossians 2:11–12 he says that Christians, Jewish and Gentile alike, have been “circumcised” with a circumcision “made without hands.” Gentile Christians have been included in the people of God. This is a theology of expansion, not replacement. How have the Gentile Christians been brought near and included into the “covenants of promise”? “By the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Christ is “our peace” (Eph. 2:14). He has made Jewish and Gentile Christians one by breaking down in his flesh the enmity—the wall of partition—between Jew and Gentile. How? By abolishing the temporary ceremonial and civil laws that God had imposed under Moses (Eph. 2:15). To what end? That he might “create in himself one new man, in place of the two,” thus “making peace” (v. 15). By his death, Christ reconciled the Jewish Christian and the Gentile Christian into one body, through the cross, “thereby killing the hostility” (Eph. 2:16).
Christ died “once for all” (Heb. 10:10).
The great sin of Dispensationalism is that it rebuilds what Christ tore down in his own body on the cross: the wall of enmity and division between Jewish Christian and Gentile. This is clearly seen in the notion of a future rebuilt temple and a reinstitution of memorial sacrifices. No, Christ died “once for all” (Heb. 10:10).
In truth there was always only one people. Abraham was a Gentile when he came to faith (Rom. 4 [all]). He continued to believe when he was circumcised and became a Jew. So, as Paul says in Romans 4:11, Abraham is the father of all Christians—both Jew and Gentile. The separation between Jew and Gentile was always intended to be temporary. Circumcision (Col. 2:11–12) pointed to Christ. The Mosaic system pointed to Christ, in whom all the promises are yes and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20).
Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are one people.
All who believe in Jesus are Abraham’s children. The Mosaic system, which was a “ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor. 3:9), was temporary, but the Abrahamic covenant, renewed in the New Covenant (Gal. 3 [all]), is “permanent” (2 Cor. 3:11).
Gentile Christians are not second-class Christians. No one for whom Christ died, who is thus united to Christ, is a second-class Christian. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are one people and shall remain so into eternity by grace and decree of our Savior, whose righteousness covers the sins of and makes legally righteous all his people from “every tribe, tongue, people, and nation” (Rev. 5:9).
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This article by R. Scott Clark is adapted from “Good News! The Dividing Wall Is Gone” at heidelblog.net.
