It was the famed New York Yankees’ catcher turned philosopher, Yogi Berra, who once said, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it!” Paul’s discussion in Ephesians 2:11-22, addresses the relationship between Jew and Gentile in Christ’s church. It is a passage which requires us to ask a “fork in the road” sort of question. “In the new covenant era, does God have one people (the church), or two peoples (Jew and Gentile) each assigned different redemptive purposes?” Reformed amillennarians and dispensationalists take quite different directions when coming to this important Pauline “fork in the road.”

Dispensationalists struggle to understand and explain Ephesians 2:11-22 because Paul assets something much different than the standard dispensational claim that although there is but one gospel, nevertheless, God has two distinct redemptive purposes, one for national Israel and another for Gentiles.

To illustrate the problem faced by dispensationalists, it is useful to survey the way in which traditional dispensational writers have approached this passage. J. Dwight Pentecost, writes that this passage describes God’s purpose for the present age (where there is a visible unity), but does not describe his purpose for the millennial age when the two peoples (Jew and Gentiles) are again distinct groups. Pentecost is so bold as to state, “Scripture is unintelligible until one can distinguish clearly between God’s program for his earthly people Israel and that for the church.”[1]

John Walvoord understands the passage as referring to the “new program” for the church which, he claims, was a mystery in the Old Testament. In the New Testament dispensation, a living union is formed so that Jew and Gentile are brought together with all racial tensions eliminated [2]. Like Pentecost, Walvoord argues that such unity is only temporary and in the millennial age the historic and ethnic differences between Jew and Gentile re-emerge.

To read the rest, follow the link below

Read More