Ephesians 2:11-22
Intro Questions
- God is ... What do we learn about God in this passage?
- We are ... What do we learn about people in this passage?
- I will ... What has the Holy Spirit revealed to us in this passage? How can I apply it to my life this week?
- Am I building walls Jesus has already destroyed?
- What am I doing to destroy walls that already exist?
- How am I embodying and sharing the gospel that has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility and brought peace?
- You can ... Who do you know who needs to hear this? Feel free to share with others by social media links at the bottom of this.
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From Exclusion to Embrace (Ephesians
2:11-22)
One of the worst feelings you will ever
experience is that of feeling excluded. Just this past week, a mother wrote to
an advice column in a major newspaper:
Dear Amy: My daughter is in elementary
school. Over the past few years, she has experienced some unfriendly behavior
from other girls, mostly in the form of obvious exclusion. There are times when
she has addressed these issues, and times when I have contacted a teacher or a
parent.
Last year, a good friend stopped speaking
to her. She was devastated. It went on for months. I know the parents, but I
didn't speak with them about it...
I cannot force this kid to like my
daughter, but should I try to contact the parents and find out what is up? Am I
over-involved?
Perplexed Mom
You can feel that mother's pain as you
read the letter. Most of us can remember what it's like to be excluded as a
child at school. But exclusion isn't just a school-age problem. Exclusion
happens to adults. At work, it can take the form of "incivility, yelling,
spreading gossip or lies, insulting employees, as well as hostility, verbal
aggression, and angry exchanges" - or just a cold shoulder. In can also
take place in families as one person begins to turn the shoulder on each other.
It happens within people groups. In Rwanda, the exclusion of one people group
(the Tutsis) by another resulted in the slaughter of over half a million people
in just a hundred days.
Exclusion is horrible. Yet there's another
type of exclusion we rarely think about: spiritual exclusion. This is very
real. Here are a couple of examples, although I have to admit they're extreme.
The son of a prominent Hamas family recently became a Christian. He's said,
"I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father,
but I hope that he'll understand this." He's been told by some to change
his name and facial identity for his own safety. In August, a young woman was
found guilty of converting to Christianity in Saudi Arabia and was burned alive
by her father, a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and
Against Vice.
I told you that these are extreme
examples, but you almost have to think of this type of exclusion as you come to
the passage we're looking at today. Paul is writing to a church, particularly
one that is full of Gentile (non-Jewish) believers in Jesus Christ. The
division between Jews and Gentiles in that day was one of the most fundamental
divisions in the first century world. These tensions would have been felt as
Jews and Gentiles came together in the church as followers of Jesus Christ.
Let me give you a bit of a taste of what
the tensions were like between these groups. In the Jewish temple, signs were
posted at the barrier separating the Court of the Gentiles from the Court of
the Israelites. They've found two of these. The signs said: "No foreigner
is allowed to enter within...Whoever is caught will be personally responsible
for his ensuing death." Some believed that Gentiles were made as fuel for
the fires of hell, and that it was wrong to help a Gentile woman give birth,
because it would bring another heathen into the world.
Gentiles were also suspicious of the
Jewish people. Plato said said barbarians (non-Greeks) were his enemies by nature.
Closer to the time that Ephesians was written, a Roman historian wrote,
"The Greeks wage a truce-less war against people of other races, against
barbarians." The tensions between the two groups would have been
monumental.
Because these tensions aren't part of our
world. it's tempting to think this passage has nothing to do with us. But this
passage still about us: most of us are Gentiles, so this is about us, even if
we don't feel it. Not only that, but our world is still full of these types of
divisions. The world is divided into two groups: people who are like us, and
people who aren't. We feel these divisions in society when we're with someone
who's from a different group than us. These tensions can spill into the church
in all kinds of ways as well when different kinds of people come together as
followers of Jesus Christ.
This is also one of the most significant
passages on the church in the entire New Testament.
So what do we learn from this passage?
Three things: we learn how significant these differences are; how the gospel
applies to these differences; and what this teaches us about the church.
First, Paul tells us about how significant
the differences are.
We've already seen how Gentiles and Jews
viewed each other. Besides the tensions I've already mentioned, Paul lists five
ways that we as Gentiles were excluded not only from Israel but from God. The
background to this passage is that God had chosen Israel out of all of the
nations of the world. This was great news for Israel, but really bad news for
everyone else. In Deuteronomy 7:6 Moses said to Israel, "For you are a
people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all
the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured
possession." This means that Israel had something that no other nation
enjoyed: a covenantal relationship with God.
Paul explains what this means to those of
us who are not Jewish. He writes in verses 11 and 12:
Therefore, remember that formerly you who
are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call
themselves "the circumcision" (which is done in the body by human
hands)— remember that at that time you
were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners
to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
If
you look at this, there are five things that separate those of us who are
Gentiles from the covenant God made with Israel:
·
"separate from Christ" -
When we read this, we think "Jesus Christ," when we really should be
thinking "Messiah." Israel had the expectation of a coming Messiah
who would triumph over all their enemies; Gentiles had no such hope.
·
"excluded from citizenship in
Israel" - God had chosen to known by Israel and no-one else. If you were
non-Jewish, you were excluded from all of God's blessings unless you became
Jewish. None of God's blessings for his chosen people were yours.
·
"foreigners of the covenants of
the promise" - God made all kinds of promises in the Old Testament on the
basis of his covenants with Israel. The Gentiles - that's us - had no share in
these promises.
·
"without hope" - As bad as
things got in Israel, the faithful always had God's promises. They believed in
the promised messianic salvation. Gentiles had no such hope.
·
"without God in the world"
- Gentiles had gods, but they didn't have the one true God. So it's like Israel
had the one true God and the rest of us had fakes.
Put
this altogether and you have a picture of our exclusion: cut off from the
Messiah, cut off from God as king, as well as all of his promises; cut off from
hope, and from God himself. Paul wants the readers of this letter to feel the
significance of their exclusion, not only from Israel but their exclusion from
a covenantal relationship with God and all of its benefits.
Paul's
telling us that we need to see the enormity, the significance, of our
exclusion, both from Israel and from God. Part of the reason is that perhaps
the recipients had forgotten the gravity of the situation and had forgotten the
Jewish heritage of their faith - something that is probably very true of us as
well.
One
of the major themes of the book of Ephesians is God's eternal purpose to bring
all things together under Christ. Paul wrote in chapter 1 that God purposed
"to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ"
(Ephesians 1:10). What Paul writes here is significant not only for the
Jewish/Gentile divide, but also for all the ways that people are excluded, even
within the church. Most of us are tribal by nature. We divide by class, race,
economics, age, music. This is true not only in society, which is very
fragmented. It's also true within the church.
Paul
says that we need to understand - not only understand, but feel - the
significance of these divisions.
But then Paul applies the gospel to these
differences.
You may be thinking, "What does the
gospel have to do with any of this?" There's a lot of confusion about the
gospel today. We tend to think it's about how someone becomes a Christian. For
Paul, though, the gospel is much more comprehensive than that. The gospel isn't
just about individual souls going to heaven. It's not just that God has
reconciled us to himself; he's also reconciled us to each other.
Read what Paul says in verses 13 to 18:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were
far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made
the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by
setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His
purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making
peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by
which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who
were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have
access to the Father by one Spirit.
Paul is clear: the solution to exclusion
and alienation and division is nothing less than Jesus Christ and his work at
the cross. Peace is found in a person: Jesus Christ. That's why verse 14 says,
"He is our peace." He has overcome every division that separates Jews
from Gentiles.
And you can't miss this. Before, the world
was divided into two kinds of people: Jew and Gentile. But Paul says now there
are three kinds of people: Jews, Gentiles, and the church. "His purpose
was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two..." (Ephesians
2:15). There's a new category of people now. God has already begun to bring
together people who would otherwise have nothing in common, and make them into
a new people. In other passages, Paul make it clear that this obliterates all
that separates us and makes us one in Christ Jesus. The Gospel is the good news
that God reconciles us to himself, and also to one another.
This means, by the way, that whenever we
separate in the church according to our distinctives - age, class, culture,
economics, music - we're acting contrary to the nature of the gospel. One of
the purposes of the church is to show to the world what it's like when God's
reconciling power brings people together who would otherwise have nothing to do
with each other. We're like a pilot project showcasing God's reconciling power.
Tullian Tchividjian writes:
Plainly stated, building the church on age
appeal (whether old or young) or stylistic preferences is as contrary to the
reconciling effect of the Gospel as building it on class, race, or gender
distinctions. Negatively, when the church segregates people according to
generation, race, style, or socioeconomic status, we exhibit our disbelief in
the reconciling power of the Gospel. Positively, one of the prime evidences of
God's power to our segregated world is a congregation which transcends cultural
barriers, including age.
The Gospel is the good news that God
reconciles us to himself, and also to one another. It breaks down all the
barriers and makes us into a new humanity in which all the divisions that
separate us are destroyed.
Let's close with what this means for the
church.
Verses 19 to 22 say:
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners
and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his
household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ
Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined
together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are
being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
We're tempted today to think that the
church is an optional extra. What matters is our relationship with God. Here,
Paul challenges that view. He wants us to see who we really are. He gives us
three images, and each one is more intimate than the one before:
·
We're
citizens in God's nation. We're not second-class citizens. We're part of his
kingdom, part of his new society.
·
But
then it gets even tighter: members of his household. We're related by blood. If
you're a fellow citizen, you're still distant. But if you're family, the ties
are intimate and the bonds are tighter. We're related to each other. God has
brought us into intimate relationship.
·
But
then it gets even tighter. We, together, are the temple in which God lives.
You're a living stone in God's dwelling place; we're part of where God has
lives all throughout this earth. Alone you're just an isolated stone; together,
we are where God himself has chosen to live.
Eight in ten Canadians say that you don't
need to go to church to be a good Christian. Seventy percent of Christians say
that their private beliefs are more important than the church. But that's not
what Paul says. It's not private, and it's not even going to church. It's much
more than that. It's that you become family, and together with other
Christians, where God lives. You can't do that alone.
The Gospel is the good news that God
reconciles us to himself, and also to one another. He's made us fellow
citizens, family, and the dwelling place of God.
This all comes together as we come to the
Lord's Supper this morning. What we're about to celebrate has different names. Eucharist
means giving thanks; when we think of what Christ did at the cross for us, we
have many reasons to give thanks. Communion refers to the communal
nature of this meal.
In his sermon "The Sinner's
Feast," Lee Eclov describes what this means:
This table is different. This table of the
Lord isn't where sinners find Christ but where sinners celebrate being found
...
Maybe some morning, instead of solemnly
passing these trays, we should dance for joy. Maybe we should sing every
born-again song we know. Maybe we should tell our "homecoming"
stories and laugh like people who no longer fear death. Maybe we should ask if
anyone wants seconds and hold our little cups high to toast lost sisters found
and dead brothers alive.
Let's celebrate communion this morning.
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