Since just after the last Apostle died, Ephesians 2 has been read as if Paul is announcing the end of God’s Law—an internal shift from one covenant system to another, where Torah is essentially set aside in favor of something entirely different.

But when you read the passage in its first-century setting—its language, its imagery, and its Temple-world assumptions—that interpretation becomes very difficult to sustain.

Paul is not describing the abolition of Torah. But, in spite of the fact that Paul said He died daily so Yeshua could live in him, and Yeshua said, “I did not come to abolish the Torah,” people today, lofty theologians and laity alike, teach that Paul is saying here that the Torah, God’s Holy Law, is indeed abolished.

But, Paul is describing the collapse of a system of separation that had come to define access, identity, and belonging.

The specific passage in question is in verses 14-22. I have paraphrased it below to make a tricky passage more understandable:

Yeshua is our peace. He took two divided groups [Jews and Gentiles] and made them one, tearing down the barrier that separated them. By what He did in His body, He removed the hostility—embodied in a system of manmade rules that was causing division—so He could form one new, unified people.

He brought both sides back into a right relationship with God through His death, ending the hostility. Then He came and announced peace to everyone—those far away and those close [from/to the covenants and promises of Abraham].

Because of Him [Yeshua], we all now have access to the Father through the same Spirit. So you’re no longer outsiders—you [Gentiles] belong. You’re citizens with God’s people Israel and members of His household.

You’re being built on the foundation laid by the apostles [NT] and prophets [OT], with Yeshua Himself as the cornerstone. The whole structure is growing [together] into a holy temple for God, and you’re part of it—a dwelling place for God through His Spirit.

וְהָרַס אֶת הַמְּחִצָּה שֶׁעָמְדָה בַּתָּוֶךְ

The Hebrew above is, “He has broken down the dividing wall between them”. That is not an abstraction. That’s plain reading of the context and culture of the day. Paul was a Jew, and used to be a Rabbi, and was addressing the beginning of a split between Jews and Gentiles in Ephesus. The ‘wolves’ he feared in Acts may have already emerged. It’s not a metaphor when he said, “the dividing wall”; that’s a “Mekhitzah”. There are walls in some Synagogues today that are named after that wall.

In the Temple in Yeshua’s and Paul’s days, there was a literal stone barrier wall that separated Gentiles from the inner courts. It was a very obvious boundary between those who could draw nearer to the sanctuary and those who could not. Inscriptions have been found today that warned Gentiles not to pass beyond that point under penalty of death.

This was not symbolic theology. It was the marking of a sacred space, which kept Gentiles away from nearness to God’s inner sanctuary. When Paul said that Messiah Himself had torn down that wall, his readers, Jew and Gentile, would never have heard “He did away with Judaism altogether”; They would have heard “the barrier that kept you away from the God of Israel has been removed”.

So, what was “abolished”?

Torn down is not ‘abolished’. But Paul said specifically in this passage what was ‘abolished,’ or ‘done away with’: the ENMITY between Jews and Gentiles. That is the focal point of his argument, not the Torah.

“He has abolished by His body the enmity, and the teaching of regulations in its commandments…”

This is established by language alone, both the ‘enmity’ as the focus, and ‘teaching of regulations’ as a secondary focus.  Again, this is not the Torah. But, because people read without the 1st Century Messianic Jewish framework, they see something else entirely, especially after 1900 years of teaching it the wrong way. Because of dogma, translations were tweaked. Later teachers twisted Paul’s words, just like Peter said they did in the first century. [2 Peter 3:14-17]

The Greek reads thus: nomon tōn entolōn en dogmasin katargēsas, which best translated means: “abolished the framework of instruction in regulations”.

Most people assume that ‘nomon’ here means ‘Torah/law’. And it could, but for the linguistic and cultural context.

In other words, Paul is not simply referring to “the law” as a whole category.

He is addressing how commandments functioned when they were expressed as binding boundary regulations between groups, specifically Jews and Gentiles.

This distinction matters. Because in the Second Temple world, Torah was not only understood as divine instruction—it was also expressed through layers of interpretation, communal rulings, and identity-defining practices that marked who was “in” and who was “out.”

Over time, those applications became more than guidance.

They became fences.

And fences, eventually, function like walls.

That literal wall became a figurative ‘fence’ in ancient Judaism, which still exists today in modern Judaism. The misunderstanding of Paul regarding what was actually abolished caused later Christian theologians to rebuild that figurative fence, and hard, doctrinal separation between Jewish believers and Gentile believers. “They went out from among us,” John writes.

The Jewish Rabbis later attested in “Pirkei Avot”, a Talmudic reference, that Israel was to “make a fence around the Torah.” Truthfully, they did it long before the Talmud names it a fence, and we see that in Yeshua’s conversation with the Rabbis in Mark 7. Their motive was to ‘preserve’ obedience by creating a litany of rules to try to make sure no Jews broke the Torah. What they did instead, according to Yeshua, was to create such a hard system that not even the Pharisees themselves could keep it, according to Yeshua’s own words. Some of the sections of their fence are:

• Table fellowship between Jew and Gentile was forbidden, even though the Patriarchs are seen dining with Gentiles.

• Purity expectations: washings and rituals of washing outside the Temple, seen in Mark 7, repudiated by Yeshua.

• Social distance encoded in daily life: general contact rules with Gentiles.

• Temple access structured by ethnicity

These things were originally seen as ‘safeguards’, but they became separation, and that separation produced tensions between the two groups. That is what Paul referred to as ‘enmity’.

Paul never said the Torah was the problem. He says it was the hostility between the two people groups, because of rules and regulations related to the Torah. That is what He said Yeshua ‘tore down’.

Yeshua breaks down the ‘wall of division’

Yeshua nullifies the enmity

Yeshua creates one new humanity

Torah is ‘instruction’, and Paul did not ‘erase’ instruction. He condemned the Jewish, manmade ‘rules’ that separated the two communities Yeshua wants unified. And that is the whole point of Ephesians chapter 2. It was written to Gentiles in order to get them into the effort of preserving the relationship between Jewish and Gentile believers in Yeshua. They appear not to have listened, and today, neither do many Jewish believers.

“That He [Yeshua] may create, from the two, one new man in His image, thus making shalom…”

This is not Paul saying that Gentile believers are no longer Gentile. Nor is it in any way saying that Gentile believers are replacing Israel, which is what 2nd century teachers taught, and most follow today. Neither is Paul saying that Jews are no longer Jewish in that verse.

It is God making one people out of two, inside the cultural and religious boundaries of Israel. Paul actually said this in the previous section:

“At that time you were without Messiah, being aliens to the customs of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.  But now, through Yeshua the Messiah, you who at one time were far off are brought near [to the customs of Israel, and the covenants of promise] by the blood of Messiah.” Eph 2:12-13

This idea of “one new man” being a culturally “Jewish” entity is supported also by Paul’s letters to Corinthian and Thessalonian Gentile congregations. In 1st Corinthians and in 2nd Thessalonians, three times Paul says ‘keep the customs of Israel as I gave them to you’, remembering Paul is Jewish. [1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6]. Paul taught Gentiles the Jewish scriptures exclusively when he founded those many congregations. He taught them prayers, he taught them ordinances, and he taught them guiding principles, all of which derive straight from the Torah. He did so also by showing how they help us to understand Yeshua’s message more clearly. That’s why he said, “through Him we both [Jew and Gentile] are able to draw near by ONE Spirit to The Father.” [v. 18] The only thing that changed was the locus of the Father’s access, and the ‘gate’ by which we enter: Heaven, through the door of Yeshua’s human body, by confession of the true Gospel.

Thus, Paul pushes the imagery further into the image of the Temple, without a dividing wall. “Built together”, joined into one single structure, being a sacred dwelling place for God Himself [us when we assemble]. The separation is gone: Gentiles and Jews have the SAME access to the heavenly Temple, and are in fact ‘part of it’, since it is quite literally made of spirit. Distance and separation are no longer issues. A ‘divisive architecture’ has been replaced by the architecture of a Divine Presence accessible to all.

But, as stated earlier, the second century became a turning point in doctrine, and a very disappointing one. Writers like Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr turned the direction of the Congregations. Ignatius contrasted ‘christianity’ against ‘judaism’ as if they were and needed to be utterly separate systems of life. Later, Martyr interprets the Sabbath and circumcision as temporary signs for punishment on Israel and no longer applicable in religious practice at all. This was because of an anti-Judaic sentiment that emerged after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and the Bar Kokhba rebellion in 132 AD, which increased social tensions between Jewish and Gentile believers. That tension was already present in the days of all the Apostles, and John wrote to try to correct it, similarly as Paul did.

Those 2nd century, ‘early fathers’ tweaked Paul’s words and decided God did not remove simply a doctrinal barrier, but replaced all things Judaic in the faith entirely. Not everyone followed immediately, but in 320 AD, the nail was in the coffin when Hebraic-influenced faith in Yeshua was made illegal, and snuffed out within a hundred years by the death penalty and other polemic activity toward any who would remain loyal to the Jews of the faith.

When we read the scripture in context, Biblical, linguistic, cultural, and  historical context, Ephesians 2 is not about abolishing the Torah. No Jew would ever even think that, including Yeshua Himself: “I did not come to abolish the Torah, but to confirm it”. [Matt 5:17] Ephesians 2 is about abolishing division of people within the Body of Messiah:

The ‘wall of division’ is torn down.

The hostility is destroyed.

Two people groups have become ONE.

Access to GOD is identical.

There is one NEW ‘man’: a Singular Congregation. Genetics is irrelevant.

One remaining question: If Messiah has torn down the wall of division between Jew and Gentile, then the question is whether we are rebuilding what Yeshua tore down? Are we building a system of ‘regulations and rules’ that separate Jews and Gentiles? Are we assuming division is proper and making boundaries between us based on doctrine that prevent “shalom” between Jews and Gentiles who believe in Messiah?