I was in the room once when a friend asked the pastor a question. The pastor asked him whether he had a degree in theology. My friend said no, and the pastor said, “This discussion’s over.” It is a small scene about a very old thing: who stands between a believer and the text.
Here is the text as it stands. Of the Messiah, Ephesians says: “He is our peace, who made both one and broke down the middle wall of the fence, the hostility, in His flesh, setting aside the law of commandments in decrees,” Ephesians 2:14-15. From His own mouth: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill,” Matthew 5:17. And Sha’ul (Paul), writing to Rome: “Do we then nullify the Torah through trust? By no means; on the contrary, we uphold the Torah,” Romans 3:31.
Most of us were handed the first passage with its meaning already attached, and people who loved me handed it to me. The wall was the Torah. It stood between Jew and Gentile; the Messiah ended it so that the two could be one, and the Sabbath, the feasts, and the commandments went down with it. That is the oldest and widest reading of the verse; it is held by serious people, and it is a reading of words that really do say a law of commandments was set aside.
Set the three passages side by side and something does not sit. If the wall was the Torah, then Matthew 5:17 and Romans 3:31 cannot mean what they say. If those two mean what they say, then Ephesians 2:15 cannot mean what we were handed. One of the three has to give, or the wall was something else. What stood between the two peoples?
There is a Hebrew way of telling a story that holds its answer in the middle. A chiasm tells it once, tells it again from the other side, and sets the turning point at the center, so that neither half makes sense until you find the middle. The question above is asking for the middle.
The word to carry is kapar, כָּפַר, to cover. In Bereshit, Genesis 6:14 it is what a man does to an ark with pitch, inside and out, and in Vayikra, Leviticus 16:16 it is what is done on the Day for the sanctuary and the people. The way I take this, the word puts a different question to the wall than the one we were handed: not what was abolished, but what was covered, and for whom. Hold the word, and watch what it does.
I stand at the same fork. My safeguard is looking at Scripture alone first, in context: who were they talking to, what were they talking about, and how would they have heard it. The smallest thing I can ask is ten minutes tonight with your own Bible open: Ephesians 2:13-18, then Matthew 5:17-19, then Romans 3:31, in that order. Write down one line about what you think stood in the middle.
What waits in Two Walls, One Veil: The Prepayment Nobody Preaches is the wall read three ways, each with its owner, and the one verse all three have to answer to. The sources are laid out for you to check.
Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
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thank you for inspiring me to with this post.