THE MIDDLE WALL OF PARTITION
The great Court of the Gentiles, which formed the
outermost enclosure of the
The
critical distinction dividing off all mankind by Gods own order, so sundering
the race in a cleavage that has become deadly, is a surgical operation in the
flesh. Wherefore
remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision
by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands (Eph. 2: 11). By this surgical mark it was known
which people were Gods: so vital was it that if an infant was not circumcised,
it was destroyed (Gen. 17: 14): it carried
the whole Law with it, and the only recognized worship of Jehovah: as the sole
seal of the Covenant (Rom.
4: 11), it erected an impassable barrier between the Jew and the un-covenanted
Gentile.
Now the
consequence of an absence of Circumcision was a fivefold deprivation, for all
Gentiles, which, summed up in Pauls first clause, deepens in horror to the
last. That ye were at that time (1) separate from Christ ‑ that is, the Messiah;
for Israel, and Israel alone, had the Messiah, embedded in the promises, to be
given on the strength of the Covenants, a Jew, all the rites, blessings,
commonwealth, covenants had a sole root in Messiah: (2) alienated from the commonwealth of Israel ‑ the
only God-governed country in the
world: (3) and strangers from the covenants of promise
- centring in an incarnate and triumphant Redeemer
The Apostle
now suddenly introduces, like a lightning-flash, one of his dynamic 'buts,' reversing the entire situation, and introducing
a glowing contrast. But now IN CHRIST JESUS - a complete reversal of without Christ: of old without the Messiah, but now
in Jesus, that Messiah recognized and found ye that
were once far off ‑ in the outer Court of the Gentiles are made nigh in the blood of Christ: for an awakened conscience and a terrified
soul overleaps all barriers of ritual pride or racial antipathy, to get at the
fountain opened for sin and uncleanness: the blood shed on Jewish altars was
shed for Jews only ‑ the blood of Calvary is a propitiation for the sins
of the whole world: for He is our peace, who made both
[Jew and Gentile] one. That is to say, the crowning sin of both ‑
the blood-shedding of Messiah ‑ one act of uttermost rebellion, the only
joint act of Gentile and Jew ever wrought, is made, by the mystery of redeeming
love, the welding for ever of the bitterly sundered sections of the human race,
meeting now, not in the Court of the Priests, nor in the Court of the Gentiles,
but in the Court of Heaven.
But now
the Apostle reveals the exact reason why the Wall crashed, and Gentiles; in
untold millions, are surging past into the Holiest of all. And BRAKE DOWN the middle wall of partition*
‑ the wall that hedged the enclosure, the spiritual ghetto, the
ecclesiastical preserve having abolished in his
flesh THE ENMITY ‑ the
mutual hatred that had sundered the human race for two thousand years, which
makes the Jew, in the eyes of a Gentile, a pariah race, and a Gentile, in the
eyes of a Jew, an uncircumcised dog EVEN THE LAW Of COMMANDMENTS contained in ordinances." The Law relegated the Gentile to the outer
court; the Law ostracized him by placing Circumcision on the Jew alone; the Law
built up social, political, ‑ religious prejudices which, cemented by
racial hate, hopelessly antagonized: therefore with the Law, the enmity
vanishes.** The exhaustion of the Laws
penalty was the exhaustion of the Law itself;*** and when our Lord died, not
only was the Vail rent between God and man, but also the Wall between man and
man collapsed.
[* So if
Paul really did introduce Gentiles into the Temple (Acts
21: 28), perhaps in the person of Trophimus the Ephesian, he had a
spiritual right to do so, and he nowhere denies the charge; but probably the
charge was false, for it would have been an act (we judge) as improper and
unwise as to introduce everyone into the Holy of Holies after the rending of
the Vail at Calvary. Through Titus God
Himself at last obliterated both Vail and Wall. That the wall itself was not actually
demolished until some eight years alter Paul wrote is highly symptomatic of the
transitional inter-blending of dispensations: during which Christian synagogues
are named (Jas. 2: 2); Paul circumcises Timothy (Acts 16: 3); the Sacrifices still cleanse the
flesh (Heb. 9: 13); and Hebrew Christians
are still numbered with the Diaspor'a (1 Pet. 1: 10).
All this passed finally with the fall of
the
** Says an old Puritan, The
foundation of the wall of separation was laid in Abrahams time when
circumcision was first given, for that began the quarrel; reared up higher by
Moses rites; further lengthened and stretched out in all times of the
prophets, throughout all ages, till Christ, who came to break it down.
*** The abolishing of which the Apostle
speaks does not consist in setting the Law aside, or suspending it by a
sovereign, executive act. It is a
causing it to cease, or rendering it no longer binding, by satisfying its
demands, so that we are judicially free from it; free, not by the act of a
sovereign, but by the sentence of a judge, - not by mere pardon, but by justification
(C. Hodge, D.D.).]
So now we reach the supreme purpose of all:‑ that ‑ as a magnificent climax He might create ‑ for the Church is
as truly a creation as ever the Universe was, and both are Christs personal
workmanship in Himself ‑ for the enmity is removed only for those Jews and
Gentiles that are in Him* ‑ of the twain
ONE NEW MAN ‑
not a Jew made into a Gentile, or a Gentile into a Jew, but a new creation;
made out of old materials, of diverse races and multitudinous peoples, yet
possessing a common spirit, and dead to all old partition walls and the
age-long feud of the human race so making peace; and
might reconcile them both in one body ‑ the Catholic Church, the
mystical Body of the Christ unto God through the
cross, HAVING SLAIN THE ENMITY THEREBY.
That is, the cross, which slew the Lord,
slew the hate: therefore the creation of two Churches, two bodies, two communities,
with two sets of rites, and under two laws, re-erects the dividing wall;
disrupts the New Man; rekindles the old racial antipathy by bringing it back
into view through the Law; and paralyzes the unifying work of the Cross. For each local assembly is to be a miniature
of the universal Church ‑ all
races, all nations, all classes, in all degrees of saying faith; and if these
are not in the Assembly, it is only because they are not in the City: all are
in the Church universal.** For the Church is not Jew and Gentile
made into one man, but into one new man: it is not that the Gentile is elevated
to the privileges of the Jew, or the Jew depressed to the bankruptcy of the
Gentile, or that the old privileges are shared between the two: but God removes
the separation by merging both into a new creation altogether new, and
incomparably superior, Let us imagine, says Chrysostom, that
there are two statues, one of silver and one of lead, and then, after both have
been melted down, lo, a new statue of gold! Thus made He the two, one. For there can be
neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male
and female: for ye all are ONE MAN
in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3: 28).
[* In
the world the hatred deepens all the time. The modern apostate Jew, entrenched in
Masonry, reveals by a Karl Marx, a Trotsky, a Zinoviefl what a world-peril the
Jew can become; while the Anti-Semite parties, a growing power in every State,
will ultimately plot to wipe the Jew off the face of the earth.
** So, as Circumcision sundered the race, Baptism
reunites it: for he who goes down into the water a Jew or a Gentile, comes up
neither; ye being in time past Gentiles: and
if this four-thousand-year-old and God-made cleavage is gone, much more all
lesser cleavages - racial, national, social: where
there cannot be Greek and
Jew, circumcision
and uncircumcision, barbarism,
Scythian, bondman, freeman (Col. 3: 11). So a racial prejudice which compels separate
negro or other assemblies in a community dominantly of another race must be
deeply offensive to God. For all the old has been buried in the baptismal
grave. If, says Luther, we give Moses leave to rule over
us in anything, we are bound to obey him in everything; in this respect,
therefore, let him be dead and buried, and let no man know where his grave is.]
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