Peace With God and Each other Through the Son and By the Spirit
He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Ephesians 2:17,18 (NIV)
Paul has just touched on three achievements of Christ’s death. First, He abolished the law (its ceremonial regulations and moral condemnation) as a divisive instrument, separating men from God and Jews from Gentiles. Secondly, He created a single new humanity out of its former two divisions, making peace between them. Thirdly, He reconciled this new united humanity to God, having destroyed through the cross all the hostility between us. Christ crucified has brought into being a new, united, human race, united in itself and united to its Creator.
This does not mean that the whole human race is now united and reconciled. Observation, experience and the New Testament itself show that not to be true. There is a further stage in Christ’s work. ‘He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near’ (2:17). The language is borrowed from Isaiah 57:19 ‘“Peace, peace to those far and near,” says the Lord.”’ In the Isaiah passage it is God speaking. When Paul writes ‘He came and preached peace’ the ‘He’ might be Christ Himself or Christ acting by His Spirit in His messengers. If the first, Christ Himself, Paul would be thinking of Christ’s post resurrection appearances (the announcement of peace logically following its achievement at the cross). If the second, Christ acting by His Spirit in His messengers, Paul would be thinking of the proclamation of the gospel of peace to the world through the apostles and subsequent generations of Christians. He could well have had both in mind.
The preaching of peace was to those ‘far away … and to those who were near’ (2:17). In the Isaiah passage the message was to Jews in distant exile as well as those close at hand. Paul might have had another classic
distinction in mind. Those ‘far away’ was sometimes a designation for Gentiles making those ‘who were near’ the Jews. For both this was peace with God (which both equally needed) and its consequence was peace with each other.
‘For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit’ (2:18). Although reconciliation is an event, access is the continuing relationship to which it leads. ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access …’ (Romans 5:1,2). The Greek word translated ‘access’ had an almost exact equivalent that described the one who brought a person in Oriental courts into the presence of the king. Our access is not to a king but to God the Father, before whom we have ‘freedom and confidence’ (3:12).
Paul adds that this ‘access’ is for ‘both’ Jew and Gentile ‘by one Spirit’ (2:18). There is one way for all, ‘one Spirit’ by whose work in their hearts they have assurance that they can come to God as children to a Father (Romans 8:15,16; Galatians 4:6). It is the Holy Spirit who regenerates, seals and indwells His people, who witnesses with our spirits that we are God’s children, who helps us in our weaknesses and teaches us to pray and who unites us as we pray. Our access is ‘to the Father’ ‘through him’ (the Son who made peace and preached peace) ‘by one Spirit.’
So the highest and fullest achievement of the peacemaking Christ is this Trinitarian access of God’s people, as by Him, and by one Spirit, we come boldly to the Father.
For the Messiah has come to preach this sweet message of peace to you, the ones who were distant, and to those who are near. And now, because we are united to Christ and to each other, we both have equal and direct access in the realm of the Holy Spirit to come before the Father Ephesians 2:17,18 (The Passion Translation)