She has lived in England for eleven years and still gets asked where she is from. When she goes back to Jamaica, the taxi driver hears her accent and charges her the tourist price. Her flat in London is rented; the landlord’s rules are pinned to the kitchen wall. The house she is slowly building in St Elizabeth is still just a foundation and a few columns. At church she is warmly greeted, then left alone at the tea table.
There is a particular tiredness that comes from never quite belonging anywhere. Many in the diaspora know it. So do people who grew up as the outside child, or who moved parish after parish as tenants, or who married into a family that never fully let them in. You can have an address and still feel you have no home.
Ephesians 2 was written to people who felt exactly that.
Outsiders, by every measure
Paul reminds the Gentile believers in Ephesus where they started. They were, he says, without Christ, “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12, NKJV).
Aliens. Strangers. No hope. It is a stark description. They were not only on the edge of a community; they were outside the whole story of God’s people. Nobody was saving them a seat.
But God, rich in mercy
And then come two of the most important words in the letter. “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us” (Ephesians 2:4, NKJV). Paul goes on to say that God made us alive together with Christ, raised us up together, and seated us together with him, so that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us (Ephesians 2:5-7).
Notice how often he says together. Salvation in Ephesians is not only a private rescue. It is a gathering. God does not simply pull individuals out of the cold; he brings them in to sit at the same table.
And notice what it rests on. Not our résumé, not our paperwork, not whether we own or rent, not how well our accent fits. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8, NKJV). Belonging is given, not earned.
God’s workmanship, still under construction
Verse 10 adds a building image: “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” The word carries the sense of something made with skill and intention, like a craftsman’s piece.
Anyone building a house in stages understands the gap between the plan and the present. The foundation in St Elizabeth does not look like much yet. But the drawings exist, and the builder knows what it will become. God’s workmanship in us is similar. We may feel half-finished, with rooms not yet plastered and windows still waiting for glass. The One who designed us has not abandoned the project.
Members of the household
Then Paul says the thing that every outsider longs to hear. “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19, NKJV).
Members of the household. Not guests. Not tenants on a short lease. Not the cousin who is welcome at Christmas but never told the family news. Household members, with a place at the table and a key to the door.
Paul goes on to describe this household as a building rising on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the chief cornerstone, “in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:20-21). The outsiders are not added as an annex round the back. They are fitted into the walls.
Making room for others
If this is how God treats outsiders, it should shape how our homes and churches treat them too. The newcomer at the tea table. The foreign student renting the room downstairs. The in-law who still feels like a visitor after fifteen years. The returning resident whom the district calls “the foreigner.”
Very small things say “you belong here”: remembering someone’s name, inviting them to Sunday lunch, asking about the house they are building back home, letting them help in the kitchen rather than treating them as a guest.
And if you are the one who has never felt settled, hear this: whatever your address, whatever your paperwork, whatever the taxi driver charges you, in Christ you are not a stranger. You are home.
For reflection
- Where have you felt like a stranger, and how does Ephesians 2:19 speak to that?
- Who in your church, street or family might need someone to treat them as a member of the household rather than a guest?
Father, rich in mercy, thank you that I am not a stranger to you. When I feel I belong nowhere, remind me that I belong in your household. Finish the work you have started in me, and make my home a place where others find they belong too. Amen.
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