Christ Abolishing the Enmity
A. Barry, D. D. Ephesians 2:15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances… In this difficult passage it will be well first to examine the particular expressions. 1. The word rendered "to abolish" is the word often used by St. Paul for "to supersede by something better than itself" — translated "to make void," in Romans 3:31; to "bring to nought," in 1 Corinthians 1:28, and (in the passive) "to fail, to vanish away," to be done away," in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. Now, of the relation of Christ to the Law, St. Paul says, in Romans 3:31, "Do we make void the Law? God forbid! Yea, we establish the Law." The Law, therefore, is abolished as a law "in ordinances" — that is, "in the letter" — and is established in the spirit. 2. "The law of commandments in ordinances." The word here rendered "ordinance" (dogma) properly means "a decree." It is used only in this sense in the New Testament (see Luke 2:1; Acts 16:4; Acts 17:7; Hebrews 11:23); and it signifies expressly a law imposed and accepted, not for its intrinsic righteousness, but on authority; or, as Butler expresses it (Anal., Part 2, chap. 1), not a "moral," but "a positive law." In Colossians 2:14 (the parallel passage) the word is connected with a "handwriting," that is, a legal "bond"; and the Colossians are reproved for subjecting themselves to "ordinances, which are but a shadow of things to come"; while "the body," the true substance, "is Christ" (see verses 16, 17, 20, 21). 3. Hence the whole expression describes explicitly what St. Paul always implies in his proper and distinctive use of the word "law." It signifies the will of God, as expressed in formal commandments, and enforced by penalties on disobedience. The general idea, therefore, of the passage is simply that which is so often brought out in the earlier Epistles (see Romans 3:21-31; Romans 7:1-4; Romans 8:1-4; Galatians 2:15-21, et al.), but which (as the Colossian Epistle more plainly shows) now needed to be enforced under a somewhat different form — viz., that Christ, "the end of the law," had superseded it by the free covenant of the Spirit; and that He has done this for us "in His flesh," especially by His death and resurrection. 4. But in what sense is thin Law called "the enmity," which (see ver. 16) was "slain" on the cross? Probably in the double sense, which runs through the passage: first, as "an enmity," a cause of separation and hostility, between the Gentiles and those Jews whom they called "the enemies of the human race"; next, as "an enmity," a cause of alienation and condemnation, between man and God — "the commandment which was ordained to life, being found to be unto death" through the rebellion and sin of man. The former sense seems to be the leading sense here, where the idea is of "making both one"; the latter in the next verse, which speaks of "reconciling both to God," all the partitions are broken down, that all alike may have "access to the Father." Compare Colossians 1:21, "You, who were enemies in your mind, He hath reconciled"; and Hebrews 10:19, "Having confidence to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated to us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh." (A. Barry, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; WEB: having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace;