Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and brought back to God. "He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all."
[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: "He [the true Light] was _in the world_, and the world knew Him not."
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto. Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo, Casta, fave, Lucina.
[88] Observe the perfect participle =apêllotriômenoi=, which signifies an abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.
"For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_ the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father."--EPH. ii. 14-18.
_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God's promise to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had foreseen. Christ is "our peace"--not for the divided members of Israel alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal pacification.
There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ, in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and principle when Christ "in His flesh" (by His incarnate life and death) "abolished the law of commandments in decrees"--_i.e._, the law of Moses as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical principle "dissolved the middle wall of partition." The occasion of quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross (ver. 16).