Jesus’ sacrificial death removed the division that led to hostility between Jew and Gentile by abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims. “Abolishing” (katargeō) might be better translated “vacating” or “nullifying.” Paul is saying that by means of Christ’s death, a covenant relationship with God no longer depends on observance of the law of Moses. Israel had indeed been graced with a special relationship with God through the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai—a relationship not available to Gentiles unless they became Jews by accepting circumcision and the law. Now the relationship of both Jews and Gentiles to God is founded on “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Corinthians 11:25), that is, on Messiah Jesus’ death on the Cross, rather than on the law of Moses that divided them.

Whether or not the law constituted the “dividing wall of enmity,” there is no doubt Paul is saying that Jesus’ death radically changed the status of the law of Moses. We need to proceed carefully here, since Paul clearly does not think that the law has ceased to be important (See 6:2–3 and sidebar on p. 181). Elsewhere he recommends love of neighbor as a means of keeping the commandments (Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14) and even says that Christ’s death took place “so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Romans 8:4).

Later theological reflection distinguishes between the law’s moral requirements that continue to reveal God’s will and its ritual requirements that are no longer binding since they have been fulfilled in Christ’s sacrifice.

Williamson, Peter S., Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), pp. 73–74

Ephesians 6:2 is an example of how Paul assumes the continuing validity of the law of Moses as a guide to Christian conduct, provided that it is properly applied. Some people think Paul regarded the Old Testament law as obsolete because of his reference to Christ “abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims” (2:15) or his firm insistence that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by “works of the law” (Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16). But Paul’s position is more nuanced than that. In Romans he emphatically denies “annulling the law” (Romans 3:31) and says rather that the purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross for sin and the gift of the Spirit is so “that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4 RSV). The whole of the law is summed up in the commandment to love, which the Spirit enables us to fulfill (Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:13–23).

In Paul, the law functions in several ways, including (1) to indicate the kind of conduct God approves, as in Galatians 6:2–3; (2) to identify patterns of conduct that God rejects (1 Timothy 1:8–10); (3) to bring awareness of sin (Romans 7:7–9); and (4) to foreshadow things about Christ and Christian life (1 Corinthians 10:1–11).

Williamson, Peter S., Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), p. 181

To the things that they have already “died to” and “stripped off” through baptism into the Messiah, Paul adds the bond against us. The word for “bond” (cheirographon) literally means “a hand-written document.” The qualifying phrase against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us gives it the specific meaning of a certificate of indebtedness. God has “obliterated,” or “erased, wiped out,” this record of our debts, leaving a clean parchment. That he removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross powerfully images the assertion in verse 13: he forgave us our transgressions. Debt was the prevailing image for sin during the period of Second Temple Judaism (from the return from exile and rebuilding of the temple in 515 BC up to the Roman destruction of the temple in AD 70). Paul’s picture of the Father not only erasing the text of the IOU but even nailing the blank parchment to the cross of Christ is perhaps the most vivid expression of the definitive nature of God’s forgiveness of our sins through Baptism.

(Hamm, Dennis, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, Senior Editors: Peter S. Williamson and Mary Healy, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), p. 201 ad loc.)

The Mosaic Law, to which the scribes and Pharisees added so many precepts as to make it unbearable, had become (to use St Paul’s comparison) like a charge sheet against man, because it imposed heavy burdens but did not provide the grace needed for bearing them. The Apostle very graphically says that this charge sheet or “bond” was set aside and nailed on the Cross—making it perfectly clear to all that Christ made more than ample satisfaction for our crimes. “He has obliterated them,” St John Chrysostom comments, “not simply crossed them out; he has obliterated them so effectively that no trace of them remains in our soul. He has completely cancelled them out, he has nailed them to the cross […]. We were guilty and deserved the most rigorous of punishments because we were all of us in sin! What, then, does the Son of God do? By his death on the cross he removes all our stains and exempts us from the punishment due to them. He takes our charge-sheet, nails it to the cross through his own person and destroys it.”

(Homily on Colossians, ad loc.) (Saint Paul’s Captivity Letters, The Navarre Bible (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005), p. 146 ad loc.)