Members of God’s Kingdom and God’s Family
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household Ephesians 2:19 (NIV)
‘Consequently …’ Paul is beginning his conclusion of all he has just written. He has explained step by step what Christ has done to ‘bring near,’ to God and to His people, those in the Gentile world who were previously ‘far away.’ Christ has abolished the law of commandments, created a single new community in place of the two, reconciled both to God, and preached peace to those near and far. What has been the result of all this? ‘You are no longer’ what you used to be, ‘foreigners and aliens’, visitors without rights, ‘aliens in a foreign land’ (NEB). Your status has dramatically changed. You now ‘belong’ in a way you never did before.
To illustrate and explain the richness of their changed position and their new privileges in Christ, Paul uses three familiar models of the church. He pictures the new Jew-Gentile community as God’s kingdom (2:19a), God’s family (2:19b) and God’s temple (2:20-22).
The first description sees the church as members of God’s kingdom.
Gentiles used to be stateless and disenfranchised outsiders, ‘excluded from citizenship in Israel’ (2:12). But now Paul says to them, ‘you are … fellow citizens with God’s people’ (2:19a). Only a few years earlier Paul has used the word translated ‘fellow citizens’ of Roman citizenship in his conversation with the tribune in Jerusalem (Acts 22:25-29). Now he writes of another citizenship. Although he doesn’t develop the metaphor, he seems to be alluding to citizenship in God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a territorial jurisdiction. God’s kingdom is the sphere of His rule. He rules His people and bestows on them the privileges and responsibilities that His rule implies. To this new international, God-ruled community which had replaced the Old Testament national theocracy, Jews and Gentiles belonged on equal terms. Paul is writing while the Roman Empire was at its peak yet he sees another kingdom, neither Jewish nor Roman but international and inter-racial, as something more spectacular and more enduring than any national empire. ‘No longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens’ (2:19) emphasises the contrast between the rootlessness of a life outside Christ and the stability of being part of God’s new society.
The second description sees the church as members of God’s family.
‘You are … members of God’s household’ (2:19b). In Christ Jews and Gentiles find themselves not just fellow citizens under His rule but now also children in His family. Paul wrote in the preceding verse to our passage (2:18) of the new and privileged access ‘to the Father’ which Jews and Gentiles enjoy through Christ, and earlier in the letter he enlarged on the blessings of ‘adoption’ into His family (2:5). But here the emphasis is less on God’s fatherhood and more on our brotherhood and sisterhood across racial barriers into which the Father’s children have been brought.
So, you are not foreigners or guests, even though you are non-Jewish, but rather you are the children of the city of the holy ones, with all the rights as family members of the household of God Ephesians 2:19 (the Passion Translation)