Bible Strands
Ephesians 2:19
Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Paul writes to Gentile believers in Ephesus, drawing the conclusion (ἄρα οὖν) from verse 18's shared access to the Father through the Spirit.
The words — παροῖκοι (paroikoi) is the Greco-Roman term for a resident alien: legally present in a city, entitled to no rights of citizenship. Paired with ξένοι (xenoi, strangers), it marks a person who lives on the margins of a community without belonging to it.
The thread — The same identity-claim recurs in Galatians 3:26 (sons of God through faith), 1 John 3:1 (called children of God), and Philippians 3:20 (citizenship in heaven), each restating that a person's standing is defined by union with Christ rather than by origin.
Why it lands — It removes the reader's self-assigned status as an outsider and replaces it with a fixed, given identity; the practical demand is to stop negotiating one's place in the community of faith.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
Cross-references
- Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
- 1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.
- Galatians 3:26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
- Galatians 6:10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to the family of faith.
- Ephesians 2:12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
- Ephesians 3:6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.
- Hebrews 11:13 All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
- Hebrews 12:22 Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angels
- Revelation 21:12 The city had a great and high wall with twelve gates inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve angels at the gates.
- Galatians 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.