CHAPTER 2: 19 - 22
[p. 224] CHAPTER 2: 19 - 22
In the latter part of chapter 2 (i.e., from verse 11 onwards) we get the place into which the gospel brings us. Then in chapter 3 the mystery is unfolded. It is important to distinguish between the effect of the gospel and the effect of the mystery; we get here what they were brought into by the gospel. The Gentile was brought into it in connection with the Jew. My impression is that the thought of the ‘household’ is taken up from Israel; Israel was God’s household. Now these Gentiles, brought into the good of the gospel, are in this place. They were no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens of the saints and of the household of God. It is important to see what the church is as God’s house; it should be a place of warmth and comfort. Everyone having a house would like it to be a place of comfort and order; so the gospel brought people into a place of divine order and comfort — that is God’s house.
“The middle wall of partition” was the system of ordinances which parted off Israel from all the rest; circumcision to begin with, then all the sacrifices. A Jew would not care to eat with a Gentile. Some nations could never come in, even as proselytes; others could in the third generation.
In this chapter there is nothing about the mystery; it is the benefits of the gospel into which Jews and Gentiles are brought. There is no direct teaching here as to our being one new man and one body. We get the work of Christ in view of His making in Himself one new man and reconciling both in one body, but the conclusion arrived at is in verse 19 “Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God”. Notice the connection between verses 14 and 19.
“An holy temple” looks on to the future, but verse 22 gives the present status — Jew and Gentile “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit”.
Ques Why is it “an holy temple in the Lord”?
FER It refers to Christ in His place of supremacy. The whole epistle contemplates Christ thus in the place of glory and supremacy which He has taken as Lord. In chapter 1 the apostle prays for them, having heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus.
It is very difficult for us, brought up in Christendom, to understand what the house of God was at the beginning, marked off as it was from all around, both in heathendom and Judaism. “Of the rest, durst no man join himself to them”, Acts 5. All was light there, the rest was darkness, the darkness without being intensified by the light within. The character of God was reflected there — His righteousness and holiness, and even His love. Persons brought into it must have felt the immense deliverance that had been effected for them from the hardness and legality of Judaism and the awful degradation of heathenism, into the light of the house of God.
The temple is built upon the foundation — the testimony of the apostles and prophets — but Jesus Christ Himself is the conspicuous stone. The thought in ‘corner stone’ is that He is conspicuous, while the foundation is not seen.
The first impression that God intends to make on man in grace is that He will not tolerate sin; that impression of Him was produced in His house. Man must answer to the demand of His holiness. The righteousness of God does not suit man; man wants licence to please himself.
Citizenship is privilege, as with the Romans and Greeks; citizens were men of privilege. Peter had to learn in the case of Cornelius, that the Gentiles [p. 226] were to come into privilege direct, not by becoming Jewish proselytes. Had it not been so, it would have sanctioned the Jewish system; but the truth was that the man under judgment had to go in judgment! This is as true of the Jew as of the Gentile. Indeed, law had made the Jew’s case worse, for he was under the curse. They were guilty, too, of having killed the Holy One and the Just. The door by which we all come in is the righteousness of God, which is, that the man under judgment is gone in judgment. The cross is the true setting forth of man as he was in regard of God. There was in it a full demonstration of the state of man before God, and it was condemned, and that in order that God might be free to impart the Spirit. He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of God might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit; Romans 8: 3.
There are three great aspects of the death of Christ presented in type: the blood in Egypt, the Red Sea, and the brazen serpent. In the blood in Egypt, the point is the righteousness of God — He is a Judge. At the Red Sea it is the enemy, and God is a Conqueror, a Man of war. The brazen serpent is the state of man, and God condemned sin in the flesh. Israel was not common flesh, it was of the best type. The seed was wholly a right stock, the seed of Abraham, but they were as bad as any others. The state of man was irretrievable, and therefore was condemned; this is the brazen serpent. We get it in three parts in type, but what is presented to us is one testimony, because there is but one death of Christ. All was under the eye of God at the same moment in the death of Christ — the blood on the lintel and doorpost, the waters smitten, and the serpent transpierced to a pole; but they are set out in detail in the type that we may see the distinction. Jordan is realisation; there was no water there; they passed over in company [p. 227] with the ark of the covenant; there was no smiting there. It is a real delight to me to see all that is in the types summed up in that one Person, in His death and resurrection. The righteousness of God vindicated, God’s victory gained, and the state of man condemned, and all summed up in the work He accomplished!
Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (verse 20) — The men who laid the foundation were apostles — men sent; prophets were the mouthpiece of God. They did not take upon themselves to lay a foundation — they were sent. One thing is remarkable, the apostles are not conspicuous, they are not seen; it is Jesus Christ who is conspicuous. Of course, if you speak of what is wrought in people’s souls, it is Jesus Christ who is the foundation; but when you think of the church as a building, the apostles and prophets are the foundation stones. So we get in the heavenly city that the names of the twelve apostles are in the foundation. The last verse brings in what is special to this time. The heavenly city will not be a habitation of God through the Spirit; it is the special way in which God dwells today. The ‘building’ is God’s building by man’s agency; He uses men as the instruments. But man has no hand in the temple; it groweth unto a holy temple; you cannot facilitate growing at all. You may sleep and rise night and day, and it grows you know not how.
The thought of being ‘fellow-citizens’ is, you have privilege with the people of God. The thought of being of the household of God is more the honour of being associated with what God tended; that is what He did for Israel.
“In whom” (in verse 22) is the Lord; the habitation is really formed by people confessing Jesus as Lord. By baptism a man was dissociated from all with which he had been previously connected, so that through it he might come into the habitation of God.
[p. 228] Baptism is really washing from all the pollution with which we were previously associated.
God was dwelling there by the Spirit. His house was here. What a flood of light there must have been! Even in our day the result of the Spirit’s presence in Christendom being recognised is that you get, or begin to get, extraordinary illumination from Scripture. We have to go back to see what the church as the house of God was at first — what it originally was. When the church as the body goes, there will be no Spirit left here. The Spirit is here in virtue of His indwelling believers, therefore the church is the habitation of God by the Spirit. Air and water are mutually exclusive; so if the saints are the habitation of God by the Spirit, it excludes the flesh. The moment there is the least intrusion of the flesh there is trouble, as in Acts 6. It is an outrageous assumption for a man to think he is going to be great in God’s house. I may be great in my own house, but is man going to be conspicuous in God’s house! Think of a man parading himself in conspicuous vestments! The house of God is for an habitation of God through the Spirit. It is astounding how people in the sects and systems are content with a spurious Christianity. When the glory of God filled the house, no man could enter.
In 1 Corinthians 3 the point is that in spite of all, the temple will be vindicated as holy, and woe to the one who defiles it! If I make dirty footmarks in somebody’s house, it does not prove that the house is a dirty one; on the contrary, if the housewife is a good one, she will take very good care to remove all traces of me. God will take care to bring out His temple spotless and holy. It is all the divine work here — “groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord”.
It is a great thing to fall back upon the fact that the Spirit of God is here, and the proof of it is that we have light from Scripture. The Spirit is so sensitive that as man came in little by little, the Spirit retreated.