Ephesians 2:19-22

Being a citizen in a kingdom is one thing, but being a child in the household of God is another. It’s amazing that God, while Creator and sovereign LORD over all, looks down at a group of people and calls them His children. It’s easy to see in the first two chapters and last two chapters of the Bible that the theme of the Bible is God’s redemptive story to bring His children back into fellowship with Him for all of eternity. Yahweh God has a people who belong to Him exclusively. He is their God and they are His people.

We could spend days looking over the entirety of Scripture, but today we focus on Ephesians 2:19–22. The Apostle Paul is writing to believers in Ephesus who were composed of different ethnic backgrounds. You had Jewish and Gentile believers present, and Paul wrote to them laying out clear doctrine, doxology, and instruction to the church. In chapter 1, Paul beautifully describes the privilege it is to be chosen by God and adopted into His family. Then in chapters 2 and 3, he describes who these folks are and how they are/were adopted.

Paul begins Ephesians 2:19–22 with “So then” or “Now therefore.” This is not a rhetorical filler, but actually signals that everything Paul is about to say rests on what he has already established in the earlier chapter. There was a lot, and I encourage you to read Ephesians 1 and 2, but namely, Paul tells these Gentile believers that God has saved them by grace through faith (2:8), that Jesus Christ has torn down the dividing wall between God and man (2:14), that He has reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross (2:16), and created one new humanity where both groups, Jew and Gentile, can seek the Father by the Spirit (2:18). He begins verse 19 with the big “therefore” and begins by confirming the Gentile believer’s identity. He says you are “no longer strangers and foreigners” (19). This language assumes a real change of status, not a postponed one. A change in status and position before God in the here and now, and one to come for eternity. Not only are you no longer strangers, Paul says, but now you are fellow citizens “with the saints” and “members of the household of God.”

What group of saints are we joining, the Gentile might ask. Well, you cannot be a fellow citizen of a nation that does not exist yet. So which people and which saints are we now a part of? Romans 4 and Hebrews 11 describe these saints as Old Testament believers who were saved by faith in the one true God. The New Testament describes the Jewish believers who repented and placed faith in Christ in Acts 2 and 4 as these saints. The Gentiles who receive Christ in Acts 10, 13, 14, and 19 are described as making up this household of saints. The apostles themselves are described as being a part of this nation of saints, and Paul in Galatians argues explicitly that all who place their faith in Christ are true children of Abraham and belong in the family of God.

So what nation are Gentile believers in Ephesians now being brought into? The “nation” of the household of God, composed of Jewish and Gentile saints who have believed upon Jesus as both Lord and Messiah.

I find it amazing that Paul has just written in the previous verses of the new and privileged access to the Father which Jews and Gentiles enjoy through Christ (18). Yet, there is more that Paul will say about our access to God in the coming verses, but he stops here, and the emphasis seems to be less on God’s fatherhood and rather on the brotherhood into which the Father’s children are brought. Across languages, races, backgrounds, and personalities, there is a brotherhood and sisterhood established because God has taken strangers and made them His children.

Here in verses 20–22, Paul elaborates his vision of the new temple in greater detail than elsewhere. He refers to the foundation and cornerstone of the building, the structure as a whole and its individual stones, its cohesion and growth, its present function, and its future destiny. Now, with this new temple family, would there be a new physical temple with a dividing wall and a sacrificial system in a specific location? No. This born again group of people was not a new nation but a worldwide family. Like a building that is built with concrete, metal, and wood, so too does God build His family. The most crucial part of a building is the foundation, and Christ Himself said that He, the rock, is the firm foundation. Here in Ephesians 2, Paul describes how this household or temple has been built. Paul says it is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Foundations, by definition, are laid once. They are not poured in phases, revised decades later, or re-engineered after the fact. Paul does not isolate himself here, nor does he hint that this foundation was unknown to the other apostles. Instead, he presents the apostles and prophets together as a unified, once for all foundation. Not just themselves personally, but rather their teaching and authority they received from Christ. What they taught, they expected the church to believe. What they commanded, they expected the church to obey. The church is built upon the teachings of Christ, which were passed to the apostles, and with it came the New Testament. The church stands or falls by its loyal dependence on the truths which God revealed to His apostles and prophets and which are now in the New Testament Scriptures.
That’s not all, however. For Christ is the chief cornerstone that keeps the building steady, healthy, and in line. Practically, this means Christ is the unifier of His people so they can grow, mature, and love one another.

In verse 21, Paul echoes the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2. In that chapter, you’ll find Peter describing the people of God as new living stones being built into a new temple, quoting from Exodus 19. This new temple, unlike the old, is neither a material building nor does it sit on a hill. It is a spiritual building, God’s household, with citizens from every tribe and nation all across the globe, just like Paul is describing here. This temple is where God dwells. He is not tied to holy buildings, but rather now to holy people, whom He dwells in by the power of the Spirit. The church is both a holy temple in the Lord and a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (1 Cor 3:16–17). This church, the Bridge of Hope, and the churches in Southeast Asia, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, and all people who have professed Jesus as Lord and Savior are no longer strangers, but children of God. This echoes the apostle John when he writes in John 1:12–13, “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Your challenge this week is to think in light of these truths. One, how does this idea of being a part of God’s family made up of both Jew and Gentile, shift your perspective on gathering with other believers? Two, how does being given a new identity and being adopted into God’s family shift how you approach God in worship and prayer?

Hopefully it stirs your heart to radical worship and radical love for your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Also, radical love for the One who has gathered you into His family. There is one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one gospel message, and one people of God, built into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. Hallelujah!