Bite 40: Far Off and Near in Ephesians 2:11-22

In Our Study So Far

So far in the study of this passage, we have looked at the command to remember. That the recipients had been separated from Christ as pre-believers. Learning what it looked like to be separated, we saw that they were without a sense of belonging, they had no promises to which to cling, they had no hope, and they were without God. That is not where they are at the end of the passage, so what changed?

In Ephesians 2:13, there is a hinge. But now in Christ Jesus. Jesus intersected with their plight and moved. In this Bite we will look at the result of Jesus’ action.

How Should He Make it Clear?

When I was a little girl growing up, my parents owned a restaurant where I spent at least 12-14 hours of my day. Customers would come in to eat and my father would tell stories if he wasn’t busy cooking for them. Being that I was there a lot, I heard the stories a lot. One of the stories he would frequently tell was the one about my mother’s father when he went to Mexico.

Grandpa Joe would get into a taxi, inform the driver of the address where he wanted to go, and the driver invariably would not understand. The taxi driver would take off at a Mexico-cab-driver-pace all the while, Grandpa Joe would be in the back seat conveying the same information to the taxi driver, only louder.

The story went that since the cab driver couldn’t understand English at a normal decibel level, a higher decibel level was the solution to Grandpa Joe. I have the impression from how my father told the story, the cab driver wasn’t particularly thrilled with the situation.

What is a better way to explain information that is foreign to your audience?

Interestingly, Paul is doing something similar in our passage, although when he wrote it, I don’t think he had any idea that his words would be translated into language after language.

However, before we try to understand what Paul is talking about with his repeated opposites of near and far, we have some questions we want to ask the text so we are further along in our basic understanding. The basic question of “to whom?”

To Whom Did Jesus Preach?

First we will look at the use of these opposites in Ephesians 2:13. They are used differently than they are in Ephesians 2:17. Let’s see what Paul was talking about in both places.

¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 2:13 (ESV)

In this usage, Paul is identifying one group of people. In the past, they were in one position, far off; now they are in a new position, near. One group, two positions.

Looking at Ephesians 2:17, let’s determine what Paul meant in that verse.

¹⁷And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

Ephesians 2:17 (ESV)

In this case, Paul tells his audience that Jesus came and preached to one group of people, those who were far off. And he came and preached to another group of people, those who were near. Two groups, two positions.

So who’s who?

Unraveling Pronouns

I have my observation worksheet here below so we can look at it and use our colored pencils to help us determine what Paul is saying.

I know my observation worksheet is difficult to see. If you can squint up close, I colored everywhere Gentiles are mentioned in orange (oops, I missed the first you up in verse 11) and everywhere the circumcision is mentioned I colored in brown. Sometimes when there is an us or we, I colored it both orange and brown.

Let’s make a list using our coloring notes.

Gentiles–colored orange

• You (the recipients), Ephesians 2:11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 22
• Called uncircumcision by the other group, Ephesians 2:11

Circumcision–colored brown

• Those (the not-Gentiles), Ephesians 2:17

Both addressed–colored both orange and brown

• Our (Ephesians 2:14)
• Us (Ephesians 2:14, 16)
• We (Ephesians 2:18)
• Whom (I missed coloring this one on my sheet), (Ephesians 2:22)

You might be wondering why did we make these lists?

This exercise points out clearly that the Gentiles were excluded at the beginning of the passage, and then there is a switch. Instead of separation, there is unity between two diverse groups.

Another distinction I wanted defined is in verse 17. Which group does the you belong in and the which group does the those belong in?

Being painfully explicit about Paul’s meaning, the you who were far off are the Gentiles. The those who were near are the circumcision. Therefore all that we remembered with the recipients in Ephesians 2:11-12 about being separated from Christ is true of the those who were far off.

I cannot find implications

without first knowing

the pattern of meaning.

paraphrase from Robert Stein

In previous readings and study, I’ve made the mistake as a student of the Word of jumping to implications about who these groups are without verifying who Paul originally meant when he wrote it. I cannot find implications without first knowing the pattern of meaning.

The Question of Merism

Quick quiz: do you remember what a merism is? It’s fine if you don’t; I have to read or hear concepts so many times before they stick in my head. Short definition is that a merism is an expression that refers to something by its polar extremes. It’s an A TO Z as opposed to an A AND Z. Here is a link if you’d like to refer to the Basics I wrote about this.

Do you remember back in Bite 38 where we made our plan for study? I raised the question “Is Paul simply describing two distinct people groups or is he using a figure of speech to describe all the people?” To use the definition I just showed you above, is Paul describing A AND Z or is he describing A TO Z?

If you get right down to it, I suppose they ultimately mean the same thing, but I’d like to know which one is correct, if I can. The first means that the Gentiles had peace preached to them AND that the circumcision also had peace preached to them. The second means that everyone on the spectrum from Gentiles TO the circumcision has had peace preached to them.

Since Jews and not-Jews (or if you prefer, Gentiles and not-Gentiles) are opposites by definition, that seems like that incorporates everyone in the hearing of peace. And that both questions arrive at the same answer. There we go. Problem solved in my head. Looks like a merism to me.

Wasn’t that fun, going on a little walkabout in my head? I’ve warned you, this is real live study. What I do, step-by-step, is noted here in our meetings together. Whether we find something profound or not.

Jesus Came and Preached Peace

I keep asking Paul “Why did you use the words far and near in these two places?” Hanging laundry just now (no, actually I don’t use a dryer), I was musing over this question with God because it seems like there would be something Paul was trying to convey to his audience. Going over the progression: there were you who were once far off and they were brought near in Christ, and then Jesus came and preached to you who were far off and to those who were near.

Then it clicked: Paul and other Hebrew writers frequently use forms of parallelism. We see this often in the genre of poetry, but Paul also employs this literary device when he wants his audience to understand. Parallelism has different forms that I’m still learning about, but I think this one is called simply parallelism because in both explanations he conveys the same message, the same meaning, using different words.

Literary Device of Parallelism

Frequently I have conversations with people where I simply don’t understand the words they are speaking to me, often in conjunction with the nitty gritty of how computers or blogs work. “I understand the individual words you just said, but I don’t understand what they mean when you put them together.”

For example, someone told me that I should try to use certain words in my blog. Since my desire is to share with people like you who love Jesus and want to know him better, I need to incorporate words into my blog-vernacular so that Some Robot with a Name that Rhymes with Smoogle can tell that this is the blog you want. Otherwise someone Smoogling for recipes might end up here and they were not looking for these kinds of Bites but actually Bowl of Supers bites. And no one is satisfied.

Let me lay out for you in columns what I see Paul saying:

Because that may be an eyeball challenge to see the details, I will type it out here as well. Though I include stickies and my Bible study notes handwritten since I do like you to see what goes on behind the scenes of neatly typed out material.

Parallelism

Ephesians 2:13-16	Ephesians 2:17-22
In Christ Jesus	And he came (Jesus)
Were far off	Were far off
Have been brought near	Those who were near
He is our peace made 2 into 1	Through him access in one spirit to the Father
Broke hostility	No longer strangers/aliens
One new man	Fellow citizens
Reconciled both to God in one body through the cross killed hostility	All citizens, saints, members being built/joined together one dwelling place for God

As you look that over, can you see how Paul is giving his audience a couple of different ways to understand the same ideas?

It’s almost as if Paul got into the cab we are driving and instead of being like Grandpa Joe and shouting the same information he already spoke in conversational tones, he used different words to paint different pictures of his meaning.

We do this all the time without considering that is our tactic. Kyle did that for me when he explained that if I use words that a potential fellow student of the Word might use in a Smoogle search, they might end up here and we’d have a new study partner. Rephrasing or having synonymous parallelism is a powerful tool in our efforts to communicate.

Reflection

Since we don’t want to leave God’s Word without allowing it to marinate and flavor our hearts, let’s consider what we’ve seen so far. Pondering these comparisons, what draws your attention? What do you hear God saying to your heart? How will you process what you are learning?

Examining these relationships myself, one line in particular draws my mind and fires my imagination. Paul seems to relate one new man with fellow citizens. Permit me to share the process I used in my own reflection of what I’m learning.

What is My Process as I Reflect?

If we consider the new man, think about the two groups that comprise this new man. Both those that held themselves in high esteem (circumcision) and those they held in derision (uncircumcision) are part of one unit. They are no longer individual and separate but one. Together they make a man. Or as Bill Mounce defines the Greek word behind the English word “man, human being, mankind.” ¹

Mankind. Is it possible there is a new mankind?

Kristi, Avoid Neat-o-gesis

Do you remember this from Bite 7?

Eisegesis. You decide what the text means. You press your preconceived ideas into the text and apply it accordingly.

Exegesis. You pull out from the text the meaning that is already there. You let the text say what it says without coloring it at all.

Neat-o-gesis. This is the word Jeremy and I made up to describe this technique of looking in a dictionary or lexicon and deciding what the neat-o definition is and going with that. Because it sounds cool. Even though it isn’t what the author meant. There’s even a Greek dictionary out there that helps you do neat-o-gesis by giving you definitions that weren’t even used in the timeframe of the biblical authors. To quote my friend Red, “No. Bad. Stop that.”

Me in Bite 7

Do you see there is danger in what I did? I thought, “Ooh cool, what if the word man means mankind? That would mean even more neat-o things.” Thinking those thoughts aren’t bad all by themselves; thinking those thoughts, assigning meaning to the words without studying to see if there is merit to the meaning is bad.

Interpretation is not that we get to decide what the words mean. Interpretation is discovering what the meaning is that the author intended.

Interpretation is discovering

what the meaning is

that the author intended.

How do we safeguard against assigning our own meaning to the text? By asking questions of the experts. Which experts do we have in our back pocket for such occasions?

• Multiple scholarly translations (click here if you’d like more information about that)
• Cross references within our scholarly translations
• Dictionaries/lexicons for original language studies

Safeguarding Against Neat-o-gesis

My first effort to better understand Paul’s meaning was to compare the ESV with the NET Bible. In the NET I noticed a superscripted 30 next to the word man.

Oh looky! “A new corporate entity united in Christ” sounds akin to a “new mankind.” There is also a reference to BDAG in the note, but not in relation to the Greek behind man but the Greek behind new. I hadn’t considered that word as one to investigate, so off I went looking in my BDAG that I have in my Logos library.

Probably from the context, you can tell the κ. ἄνθρωπος means new man. The κ. represents the Greek entry word new and ἄνθρωπος is anthropos, transliterated.

Have Safeguarded Against Neat-o-gesis

Now we can confidently return to interpreting the comparison between one new man with fellow citizens, knowing that the new man isn’t an individual but instead is a corporate entity. A new mankind.

Returning to the Reflection

Having taken a side adventure to safeguard against neat-o-gesis, we now get to flesh out the comparison. Before our text comparison and subsequent word study, we were discussing up above in our conversation:

If we consider the new man, think about the two groups that comprise this new man. Both those that held themselves in high esteem (circumcision) and those they held in derision (uncircumcision) are part of one unit. They are no longer individual and separate but one. Together they make a man. Or as Bill Mounce defines the Greek word behind the English word “man, human being, mankind.” ¹

If we continue to compare, fellow citizens are similar. When we look at the citizenry of a nation, there are diverse folks within the nation, yet there is a common thread between them. They all live under one flag.

See how these two phrases are trying to define this new idea that Gentiles and Jews, former enemies are now combined through the sacrifice of Jesus’ blood and the trauma of his cross to make one new entity? I can reflect on the work Christ has done: he has changed the boundary lines of people groups in the world because of his life, death, and resurrection.

This is where we pick up our study next time: Jesus is our peace. It is because of the peace of Christ that former enemies can cohere.

Wrap Up

Our Bible Study Bite for today is that within the objective of understanding the author’s meaning is the need to occasionally consider parallel concepts. Often when the author presents a single picture in multiple facets, he is potentially trying to convey to his audience a new-to-them concept.

In Paul’s case, he often needs to redefine words and ideas from not just one culture, but two. Or more. Helping worshippers at synagogue understand what Jesus did for them–completely revolutionary concept. How in the world should Paul explain this? Not shouting, like Grandpa Joe.

No, Paul continued to use different words, different orders, different imagery in order to bring his audience along. This is part of the reason it is helpful to observe the parallelism in passages. If we don’t notice it, we can miss the opportunity to gain fuller understanding of the author.

Interpreting the authorial intent is not finding the literal meaning of the individual words, but the meaning that the author intended when he used them. As someone trying to explain a previously unknown concept, how would a person use the norms of language to describe this new idea? He is going to have to explain unknowns with knowns. Therefore, our job as students of the Word is to meld the comparisons and derive the meaning.

1. Mounce, W. D. (2006). Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (p. 438). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
2. Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 497). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.