But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Whatever your supposed disadvantage was before no longer matters now that you are in Christ. You have a connection to God and a relationship with God now.
This is how it was said in prophecy:
“Then I will plant her as My own in the land. I will have pity on ‘No Pity.’ I will say to those labeled ‘Not My People,’ ‘You are My people.’ And they will reply, ‘You are our God!’”
This is about the nations becoming blessed through faith in Jesus (Galatians 3:7). It is the same blessing of Abraham: through Abraham, all the nations of the world will be blessed (see Genesis 12:3).
We don't need to wonder how that will be fulfilled now; it has been fulfilled. Notice the word now in the focus verse? These things were not possible before. That is why it is the gospel, it is the good news. It is new.
It is a new thing that God is doing.
“Don’t remember these earlier events;
don’t recall these former events.
“Look, I am about to do something new.
Now it begins to happen! Do you not recognize it?
Yes, I will make a road in the wilderness
and paths in the wastelands.
the people whom I formed for myself,
so they might praise me.
There is a light-and-day difference between the new and the old covenants. In that prophecy in the book of Isaiah, God said He would do unusual things.
That new thing was inaugurated with the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 9:15–18). And we cannot begin to rehash all the ways that God communicated that this is a new thing.
For example:
By raising Jesus up from the dead.
By the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2)
By the tearing of the veil of the temple from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51).
By signs and wonders and various miracles (Hebrews 2:3–4).
“Don’t recall these former events” means it’s a new start. It's a clean slate. It means nothing of the old makes it to the new.
so now he will startle many nations.
Kings will be shocked by his exaltation,
for they will witness something unannounced to them,
and they will understand something they had not heard about.
How do you understand what you have not heard about? Meaning these people were not exposed to the oracles of God in the Old Testament, but they will come into an understanding of the truth about God and about Jesus through preaching and by the Holy Spirit.
It is about a new covenant with new details, not built on the old but on Christ (Colossians 2:6–7). The old is the shadow, Christ is the substance (Colossians 2:17).
What brought you near was not the works of your hand, but the blood of Jesus, according to the focus verse.
The blood of Jesus is the stand-in for all the work that Jesus has done. He poured His life for us; now we are alive in Him, in God. His blood found a place in us (Hebrews 9:14).
In the book of Genesis, God said that blood is more than a red liquid (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:11); it is the life of a being. And He prohibited the eating of blood, thereby communicating that the blood is a stand-in for life. So what Christ did, His blood did. And He was clear that he was inaugurating a new covenant in His blood (Luke 22:20).
Again, we have been brought near; we cannot bring ourselves near. God orchestrated our hearing of the gospel to ensure that we are brought near to God after we have faith and believe.
That we were far away is about a gulf that we cannot bridge except with the blood of Jesus. His blood procured forgiveness of sins for us (Hebrews 9:22). And with that, having been purified, we can become the dwelling place of God (Ephesians 2:22). We are not just brought near, but God is brought near to us.
We have a new state; we are the people who have been brought near to God. We have been empowered by the Spirit to live a new life, the life of those who have been brought near, who are now alive in Christ. We were dead in offenses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), but we have now been made alive and brought near.
The focus verse communicates a before-and-after. The before was far away; the after is brought near. This is something that happened to be orchestrated by God, motivated by His love and amazing grace, which includes the gift of faith, made possible by the sacrifice of His Son, who bore God's wrath on our behalf.
Our new reality of being brought near in Christ mirrors the word of God concerning Israel.
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.