Thoughts on Exodus 30 & Ephesians 2

Today’s reading: Exodus 30; Ephesians 2

Having these two chapters together today couldn’t have set a better contrast.

As you read Ephesians (and much of the rest of the New Testament for that matter) it’s clear that there was some tension between the believing Jewish community and the believing Gentile community. While it doesn’t excuse it, it is kind of expected. The Jews had the belief that they were better than other people, because they were God’s chosen people, baked into their culture. Practices like ritual washing before eating in case you might have bumped into a Gentile in the market and gotten their uncleanness on you take deep root in peoples’ psyches and create views of those “other” people that don’t just fall away because of a theological truth.

When God called Abram and set him apart as His personal inheritance, part of His promise to him was that He would bless the nations through his family. By Jesus’ day, it really seems like they were more focused on how much God must dislike those other, ungodly, heathen nations than on how God desired to use them to be a blessing to those other nations.

As we get into Ephesians 2, Paul starts off by leveling the playing field. He points out that all of us were dead in our trespasses and sins (Jew an Gentile alike), that all of us were, by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind, and that it was only God’s mercy that has changed that and drawn us into relationship with Himself through Christ. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” All people, regardless of cultural or religious heritage, are on the same footing before the Lord. All are alienated from Him by sin and have only one way by which we may be saved: faith in Christ apart from works.

From there though, Paul gets into the division between the Jews and the Gentiles. Yes, the Gentiles have been brought into the people of God now and have access, through Christ, to the promises made to Israel as God’s inheritance. There is a very important theological reality here, but, rather than being a point of division and disunity in the church, Paul points out that that division has been broken down in Christ as He brings both sides, the Gentiles and the Jews, in before the Father.

This is the point that makes me really glad we’re reading in Exodus where we are alongside Ephesians. In Exodus 30 God is giving Moses rules for approach for Aaron and his sons. Yes, Israel is God’s chosen people, but even as His people, they cannot approach His presence. From among Israel God has designated Aaron and his children as the priests, able to come closer into His presence than all the rest, but even they aren’t worthy in and of themselves to come before Him. We saw the special clothes they have to wear and the special care they have to take when approaching Him over the last couple chapters of Exodus, and here, in chapter 30, we see how they have to wash at the bronze basin every time they approach the altar, and we see the very specific mixes of spices and oils that they have to use in the tent of meeting to signify and separate the place of God’s presence from the rest of the camp.

God is holy. He has chosen, during the Exodus and wilderness wanderings, to have His presence reside among the people, but they are not worthy of His presence. Just the Presence remaining in their camp requires the Israelites to follow cleanliness laws and other regulations that deal with maintaining a separation between the holy and the profane, but even within that broader separation, there are strata of approach, and as we get into Leviticus next, those strata will become much more clearly defined and we will see just how careful and considerate the Israelites had to be with how they approached the increasingly sacred space, nearing the presence of God.

The point I’m trying to make here is that while Israel was truly God’s chosen inheritance, and while that came with a greater access to God’s revelation, promises, and presence, there was still a vast gulf between the Israelites and God, and it was a gulf they could never cross on their own, just as the Gentiles could never cross it on their own. But now, in Christ, Paul can say, in verses 18 and 19, “For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

The access we have now is not like the access we see described in Exodus. In Christ, we don’t approach God with careful washings, incense, and offerings that allow us to enter slightly further into sacred space. In Christ, we become sacred space. In Christ, by the Spirit, we have full access to the Father. In Christ, we are members of the household of God, and fellow citizens with the saints (literally “the holy ones,” the same expression used in the Old Testament for the members of God’s divine council).

The readings today, I think, really shine a light on just how silly this prejudice was. Israel was God’s chosen people, but even they did not have the access to the Father that we now share and enjoy in Christ. And this pairing of readings also shines a light on just how much better our access to God is. There are movements in the Christian church trying to return to the Jewish festival calendar and worship practices, but they miss the fact that those things were to prepare the people and the land for the continued presence of God among them, to sanctify sacred space from the encroaching chaos of the surrounding nations and their gods, but, in Christ, we have been made sacred space as God’s Spirit has taken up residence in our hearts. We have full, unfettered access to God in Christ, a level of access that even the high priest in Israel couldn’t hope to achieve.

Praise God for the gift of His presence in Christ!

And let us grow in our gratitude for the access we now have to His presence and make use of it, coming before Him regularly and boldly as we now can in Christ, having been adopted as children into the household of God.