2:19 Because of this union Gentile believers are no longer strangers (foreigners) and aliens respecting Israel. They are fellow citizens with Jewish believers in the church, God's new household (1 Tim. 3:15). Christians are also fellow citizens of heaven with all the other saints of other ages.
2:20 Paul compared the church to a temple. It rests on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Evidently New Testament prophets are in view since the word "prophets"follows "apostles"(cf. 3:5; 4:11). These men constituted the foundation of the church since it was through them that God revealed and established the church. Until then He had not revealed or established it (3:5).
When Paul wrote, the cornerstone was the crucial part of the foundation of a building. It was the stone with which the builder squared up every other stone including the other foundation stones.66
"In the East it was considered to be even more important than the foundation."67
2:21 Paul pictured the church as under construction with God adding new believers constantly (cf. 4:15-16; Matt. 16:18; 1 Pet. 2:5). The individual stones represent believers, both Jewish and Gentile. Today God does not inhabit a physical temple somewhere on earth as He did in Old Testament times. He indwells His church, which is a spiritual temple spread over all the earth. It began on the day of Pentecost, and it will continue until the Rapture (1 Thess. 4:13-18). As physical temples glorified the gods they represented in ancient times, so the church glorifies God today.
Paul may very well have used the illustration of a temple because the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was the city's most outstanding claim to fame. It was four times as big as the Parthenon that still stands in Athens. One hundred twenty white columns rose 60 feet high and surrounded an image of the goddess Artemis (Diana). Authorities still regard this temple as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (cf. Acts 19:23-41).
2:22 The Holy Spirit indwells the church universal. He, of course, also indwells ever believer individually (John 14:17; Rom. 5:5; 8:9, 11; 1 Cor. 2:12; Gal. 3:2; 4:6; 1 John 3:24; 4:13). Paul also compared the individual believer to a temple of God elsewhere (1 Cor. 6:19). He also referred to the local Christian congregation as a temple (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16). However here he revealed that all Christians are part of one great temple, the church universal.
"Now His presence is dispersed, not localized. Now His presence is incarnated, instead of confined behind a veil."68
"What a fellowship rivets our gaze in the communion of saints! Where shall we find its like? Gathered from east and west, from patriarchs of the prior and laggards of the last times, from the courts of kings and the cabins of beggars, from babes-in-arms and centenarians, right honourables and ragamuffins, from the ranks of the learned and the ignorant, the pharisee and the publican, the sharp-witted and the feeble-minded, the respectable and the criminal classes--what a divine power must be put forth to mould all these incongruous elements into one consentient [united in opinion] whole, stamped with one regenerate likeness for evermore, the radiant image of the Alpha and Omega,' God's Yokefellow and theirs, coequally David's Son and David's Lord!"69
God's plan for believers included the building of a new entity after Jesus Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension (cf. Matt. 16:18). It was to be the church. The church is not just a continuation and modernization of Israel but a new creation (v. 15). In it Jewish and Gentile believers stand with equal rights and privileges before God. Membership in this new body is one of the great blessings of believers in the present age along with our individual blessings (vv. 1-10). Paul glorified God for that blessing in this section of Ephesians.
