One New Man

By Terry Virgo

‘Very good!’ was God’s earliest appraisal. He had made man in His likeness and put him in a perfect creation and was delighted with the result (Gen. 1:31). Sadly, by the sixth chapter of Genesis we are told, ‘The Lord was sorry that He had made man’ (Gen. 6:6). Thankfully for us, instead of abandoning the human race, God stuck with His plan but with the ultimate intention of creating a new man (Eph. 2:15).

He started the ball rolling when He began to develop a relationship with a pagan called Abram. ‘In you,’ God promised, ‘all the families of the earth will be blessed’ (Gen. 12:3). By chapter 17 his name had been changed to Abraham and he was promised that he would be ‘a father of a multitude of nations’ (Gen. 17:5). International history and the future hope of humanity were bound up in this one man. His son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob, were given similar promises. They were so favoured that ultimately the Israelites could boast, ‘the adoption as sons, and the glory, and the covenants and the giving of the law and the temple service and the promises – whose are the fathers and from whom is the Christ’ (Rom. 9:4-5).

To the Jew first
Sadly, these unique blessings were squandered by generations of Israelites who withstood the repeated warnings of their prophets and as a result, when the Messiah arrived, He regarded their leaders as ‘blind guides of the blind’. Not only were they blind to His claims as their Messiah, but sadly they had also drifted far from their forefather Abraham’s international perspective.

Initially Jesus gave himself exclusively to the Jews and forbad His commissioned twelve and subsequently His commissioned 70 to go anywhere other than to the Jewish people. Clearly the gospel was to the Jew first. On the day of Pentecost, thousands of Jewish people responded to the Good News and in subsequent days thousands more were added. By the time we reach Acts 21 the disciples were celebrating ‘how many thousands (NASB margin “tens of thousands”) there are among the Jews of those who have believed’ adding ‘and they are all zealous for the law’ (Acts 21:20). Thousands were putting their trust in Jesus as their Messiah and celebrating the outbreak of God’s kingdom but they included a mixture of Jews and Gentiles who inevitably brought their former Jewish or Gentile attitudes with them. Many of the former Jews were still ‘zealous for the law’ in spite of trusting in Jesus.

The Apostle Paul had to bring clear teaching to demonstrate the revolutionary breakthrough that God had accomplished through the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension and enthronement of the Messiah.

Fings ain’t wot they used to be
He had to teach them that from now on there would be no distinctions ‘for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who are baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek…for you are all one in Christ Jesus and if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise’ (Gal. 3:26-29). It is in his epistle to the Ephesians that Paul introduces the radical teaching of the ‘new man’.

He first spells out the terrible alienation that the Gentiles had formerly experienced in being totally separate from Christ. They knew nothing about the Messiah that had been promised to the Jews. Gentiles shared none of these privileges. They were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, a nation under God that was divinely chosen and had received covenant promises and staggering blessings. Gentiles, in contrast, were without God and without hope in the world. As William Hendriksen says, ‘they here Christless, stateless, friendless, hopeless and Godless’ (William Hendriksen, Ephesians, Banner of Truth, 1972).

The fact was that we Gentiles had many gods and idols but we were without the true and authentic God, Israel’s God.

But Paul paints a far brighter picture when he says, ‘But now in Christ Jesus you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ’ (Eph. 2:13).

The concepts of being ‘far off’ and ‘near’ were not unusual to the Jewish mind. The heathen were regarded as ‘far off’ while the Israelites were manifestly ‘near’. They were near to the promises; the temple itself stood as a testimony to God’s nearness to them, in stark contrast to the obvious disqualification of the ‘far off’ Gentiles.

In 1871, during excavations taking place in Jerusalem, an ancient plaque was discovered with the inscription stating, ‘No man of another race is to enter within the fence and the enclosure around the Temple. Whoever is caught will have only himself to thank for the death which follows.’ The division between Jews and Gentiles was deeply entrenched but now ‘in Christ’ God had transformed everything.

Paul speaks of the Gentiles being ‘brought near by the blood of Christ’. Formerly, proselytes from pagan nations who chose to abandon their idols and be joined to the Jewish nation could go through a process whereby, as proselytes, they were permitted to draw near to Israel and be included within the privileged nation. As, for instance, Zechariah had prophesied, ‘Many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become My people’ (Zech. 2:11).

Paul, however, introduced something totally new when he said that the far off ‘had been brought near by the blood of Christ’. It was no longer through the established processes of incorporation into Israel; instead the blood of Christ had opened the way for something far more radical.

The Messiah broke down the dividing wall
The Messiah had broken down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances (see Eph. 2:14-15). It was the law that divided Jew from Gentile. Through His death, the Lord Jesus ‘abolished’ the enmity. He fulfilled the law and removed the barrier so that ‘in Himself He might make the two into one new man’ (Eph. 2:15).

As Andrew Lincoln says, ‘The divisiveness was produced by the law as such, by the very fact that Israel possessed the law (Torah), and so in order to remove the divisiveness Christ has to deal with the cause – the law itself. He does this “in his flesh”. Jesus, in His flesh, abolished this law’ (Andrew T Lincoln, Ephesians Biblical Commentary, Word, 1990).

So the abolition of the law of commandments has made it possible for us to relate, Jew and Gentile together in Christ. The law no longer divides us. Of course, this represented a huge transition for people who had formerly been expressing their godliness by observing certain days, foods, travel arrangements on the Sabbath, and the place of the temple. Their godliness was expressed in this outward manner, which not only gave them the inside track (as they thought) to God, but also cut out all the other nations. When God abolished all that and opened the way, the Gentiles could come flooding in.

Removing the enmity has cleared the ground for something completely new. Christ’s purpose was nothing less than a new creation. ‘His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two’ (Eph. 2:15 NIV). In raising us with Christ, God has established a new humanity. Together we have been brought into one new man, a new humanity on the earth, co-raised with Christ.

To quote Andrew Lincoln again, ‘The separation of the Gentiles from Israel was so deep that it took the creative act to fill it. Yet Christ has done more than simply to bring Gentiles into Israel. The “new person” He has created transcends those categories.’

Something entirely new
Or as Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, ‘It is comparable to what happened at the very beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. There was nothing there before God created it. Creation means bringing into being something that was previously not there, non-existent; it is making something out of nothing. How does God make peace between Jew and Gentile? It’s not by modification of what was there before; it is not even by an improvement of what was there before. God does not take a Jew and do something to him, and take a Gentile and do something to him, and thereby bring them together. Not at all! It is something entirely new…it is the abolition of the old and the creation of something entirely new’ (Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Way of Reconciliation, Evangelical Press, 1972).

God has created one new humanity in the earth, a new nation that didn’t exist before. When someone gets saved they are added to this dynamic international people that reflect His glory.

To quote Dr Lloyd-Jones again, ‘The old is entirely done away with. The Jew has been done away with as such, even as the Gentile has been done away with, in Christ. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15). Jew has gone, Gentile has gone; all that belonged to the Jew, all that belonged to the Gentile, is irrelevant henceforward. It is the new creature that matters…the unity of this new body is an absolute unity. There is no such thing as a Jewish section of the Christian church. There is no such thing as a Gentile section of the Christian church. And there never will be. The old has been done away with.’

When we go on world mission, we are not promoting a Western culture, the American way, the British lifestyle (or indeed the ‘church of England’). We all bow to Israel’s God. As former Gentiles we have abandoned our idols in order to serve the true and only God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

‘Abba Father!’
Our privileges do not end here. We are not only reconciled in one new man. Paul introduces another amazing fact, ‘for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father’ (Eph. 2:18). We former strangers and aliens who were so far off from God are not only included within the nation of Israel but in the very household of God (Eph. 2:19). The blood of Christ provides our legal standing and forgiveness, but the Holy Spirit witnesses profoundly with our spirit that we are actually included in God’s family as we cry ‘Abba Father’. It is the coming of the Holy Spirit into our experience that makes these truths manifest and experiential.

The apostle Peter was very reluctant to go to the home of a Roman centurion called Cornelius, a Gentile alien (Acts 10:28). All of Peter’s Jewish vulnerabilities surfaced. Could he possibly go into the home of a Gentile?

As he obeyed God and preached the gospel to the Roman centurion and his friends ‘the Holy Spirit fell on them as He did on us at the beginning’ (Acts 11:15). Peter must have been utterly shocked to find that these pagans were now flooded with the same Spirit that flooded him on the day of Pentecost. These far off Gentiles were now ‘crying Abba Father’ to Israel’s God and experiencing the intimacy of adoption which the Holy Spirit confirms (Gal. 4:6). To Peter’s amazement he is now in one new humanity with a Roman soldier who had formerly represented not only an alien nation but an oppressive, occupying army that had humbled the nation of Israel and was hated by its people. The ‘one new man’ crossed every boundary and barrier and the Holy Spirit was present to prove it!

The blood of the cross of Jesus made it possible; the presence of the Holy Spirit made it visible.

Former enemies are now not simply friends, they are a new creation, manifestly indwelt by the one Holy Spirit. Their unity is deeply rooted in their common experience of God. Together they are part of the one new man, the body of Christ (the Messiah), the temple of the Holy Spirit.

A new temple
In John 4 we find an unusual conversation taking place between Jesus and a woman drawing water from a well. ‘I know that Messiah is coming,’ she said to Jesus (John 4:25). Jesus replied, ‘I who speak to you am He’ (John 4:26). She asked Him a question regarding the appropriate place for worship to be offered to God – whether in Samaria or in Jerusalem. His answer must have amazed her, as indeed it would have amazed any Old Testament prophet who knew perfectly well that there was only one centre for worship, namely at the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus replied, ‘Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father…an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers’ (John 4:21-23).

He made even more radical remarks about the significance of Jerusalem’s temple.

One day, when the apostles were expressing their amazement at its majesty, ‘Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!’ (Mark 13:1), Jesus replied, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down’ (Mark 13:2). This, of course, took place forty years later when the Roman soldiers sacked Jerusalem and razed the temple to the ground.

Jesus made it very clear that the time of the physical temple in Jerusalem was over.

Paul had the privilege of enlarging on these themes and telling former Jews and former Gentiles that they were now ‘fellow citizens with the saints and of God’s household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit’ (Eph. 2:19-22).

Former Jews and former Gentiles were not only one new man in the Messiah they were also God’s new dwelling place in the Spirit, a holy temple in the Lord. The Jerusalem temple, made of inanimate stones, was now extinct. The Messiah had conquered death, ascended through the heavens, sat down on David’s royal throne, received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and poured out His fullness on the waiting believers. The new temple was formed with Jesus, the Messianic stone which the builders rejected, as the chief cornerstone.

The new many-membered man was being formed from Jews and Gentiles from all the nations of the earth.

The promised international, everlasting reign of the Messiah had been inaugurated. Now He must reign until all His enemies become His footstool. His kingdom will increase as the one new man created in the Messiah, consisting of former Jews and former Gentiles, together honour Him and go into all the world and preach the gospel as He commanded.

One New Man

By Terry Virgo

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