Has the Biblical Law been Abolished? (Ephesians 2:15)

Ephesians 2:15 ESV by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,

Ephesians 2:15 is sometimes used as proof that the biblical law has been abolished. It is usually assumed that the “law of commandments” refers to the biblical law. However, this popular Christian interpretation does not make several important considerations.

1. The Biblical Law in the Book of Ephesians

In Ephesians 6:1–2, Paul wrote:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ₂ “Honour your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise). (ESV)

Paul grounded the rightness of children to obeying their parents on the fifth of the Ten Commandments: “Honour your father and your mother.” (Exod. 20:12) Clearly, Paul did not think that the biblical law was abolished such that Christians no longer have to keep it today.

2. The Context of Ephesians 2:15

In context, Paul was writing about how God reconciled both Jews and Gentiles in Christ (Eph. 2:11–22). Verses 14–15 say that Christ “has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility”, and that he accomplished this by “abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances”. Whatever this “law of commandments” is, it stood as a “dividing wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles.

Contrary to popular misconception, the biblical law never intended for the Jews to separate themselves from Gentiles. In fact, as part of the law which God gave to the people of Israel, non-Israelites were to be treated in exactly the same way as Israelites (Lev. 19:34).

3. The Inclusion of the Gentiles

According to the biblical law in Genesis 12:3, God’s promise to Abraham was, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”—and not just his physical descendants, the Jews. We know that the Book of Genesis is part of the biblical law because the Apostle Paul called it “the law” (Gal. 4:21).

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. ₈ And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles [ta ethnē] by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations [ta ethnē] be blessed.” ₉ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

The Greek expression for “the Gentiles” here is the same expression for “the nations” later on in the same verse, where Paul quoted Genesis 12:3. According to Paul, God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 was that God will justify the Gentiles through faith and make them “sons of Abraham”—a title normally used by Jews (Matt. 3:9; Joh. 8:33, 37, 39, 43, 56; Rom. 9:7).

Apparently, Paul did not see the biblical law as a “dividing wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles. Contrarily, he saw the biblical law as the basis for the inclusion of Gentiles into the family of Abraham alongside Jews!

4. What, Then, was Abolished?

So, if “the law of commandments” which Christ abolished is not the biblical law, then what is it?

In the years before the birth of Jesus, Jewish religious leaders began enforcing their own man-made traditions as if they were commandments from the law of God. In the incident recorded in Mark 7:6–8, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for doing this very thing:

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honours me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (ESV)

Interestingly, this incident set the stage for Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles, whom he had not ministered to previously according to the Gospel of Mark. Immediately after this incident, it is recorded that Jesus healed the daughter of a Gentile woman (vv. 24–30) and a deaf man in the highly Gentile-populated region of the Decapolis (vv. 31–37).

The man-made, anti-biblical traditions which the Pharisees were enforcing as God’s law were standing as a “dividing wall of hostility”, sharply separating Jews from Gentiles, making it seem as though God’s law required Gentiles to convert and become Jews in order to enter into the Kingdom of God (cf. Matthew 23:13–15), when in reality God’s law welcomed Gentiles on equal footing with Jews all the while!

5. Anti-Gentile sentiments

Unfortunately, the Pharisees’ anti-Gentile mindset was so influential that even Jesus’ disciples were affected by it. The Council of Jerusalem had to be convened to discuss whether Gentiles had to convert and become Jews before they could be saved (Acts 15). Until God spoke to him in a vision (Acts 10:11–16), Peter would have been reluctant to preach the Gospel to Cornelius because his traditional upbringing had taught him “how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation” (v. 28 ESV). However, the biblical law never considered it “unlawful” for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, and as Peter learned from the vision.

In the Book of Galatians, Peter tried to enforce this “dividing wall of hostility” by dissociating himself from the Gentiles when James and the Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem. Paul rebuked Peter for forcing the Gentiles to live Jewishly, saying that even though the both of them were Jews and not Gentiles, “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” (2:15–16) The rest of the Book of Galatians was written to prove from the law of God that Gentiles did not need to become Jews by being circumcised, but that in Christ, they could enter into the Kingdom of God on equal footing with Jews.