Break Barriers
Paul showed us our past last week, not to depress us, and not to excuse or justify our continuing to sin. He showed it to us so that we would deeply and truly understand what God has done for us, and we would be broken of ourselves and completely given over to Him in love and devotion, so that we would truly walk in newness of life, in the good deeds He prepares in advance for us to do. Today, he wants to remind us of something else from our past, something that we modern believers have forgotten and have no experience of. We don’t understand it, but we need to in order to be fully equipped to do God’s good work. From Ephesians 2:11-22.
Formerly Separate
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)--12 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.
Notice, Paul begins with a “therefore.” That means this seemingly new and unrelated topic is actually directly related to what we talked about last week. He reminded us of our past as objects of wrath because of our sin; now he reminds us that before Christ, before the Gospel came to us, we as Gentiles were cut off and separate from God’s chosen people—except that God had a plan to redeem even us.
This is hard for us to relate to today, since most of us have grown up hearing about Jesus and being offered salvation all our lives. But when Paul wrote this, there was a clear distinction between Jew and Gentile, especially as far as the Jews thought.
That wasn’t really God’s intent, but that is how things developed, especially during the second Temple era, after the return from exile in Babylon.
During Advent, we talked about God’s promise to Abraham, that He would bless all peoples through Abraham’s seed. We know that that seed is Jesus. God had never intended only to choose the Jews and cast off everyone else. He chose the Jews, to reveal Himself to them and teach them how to live, so that they would draw all nations to seek Him by their godliness and blessedness and the nearness of their God!
Deuteronomy 4:5-8 (NIV84) reveals this aspect of God’s plan:
See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?
God’s intent was that the Israelites would walk in God’s amazing Law and all the nations would see how great their wisdom and understanding and would come to understand how close God was to the people and how much He blessed them. That would draw them to seek the Lord, much like the Queen of Sheba came to hear of Solomon’s wisdom.
But the Jews struggled so much with understanding how and why they were to be separate from the Gentiles, and from which Gentiles they were to remain separate. As we talked about in December, any Gentile that gave up their gods to worship the One True God was to be welcomed by the Jews into their community. Anyone who refused to forsake their false gods and embrace the God of the Jews were free to pass through the land of the Jews, but needed to move on. Because one law applied to both the Jew and foreigner dwelling among them. The foreigners who decided to live among the Israelites were liable to the whole Law, including all laws regarding idols, false gods and the worship of God.
(That’s something we conveniently forget in all this discussion about borders and illegal aliens!)
Instead, the Jews violated God’s Law, welcomed pagans to live among them and bring their religion into their lands, intermarried with them, and ended up forsaking God and committing all kinds of wickedness. They were driven from their land into exile, returned 70 years later and started committing the same sins! Only this time, the leadership and prophets hammered the people to separate from the foreigners in the land (they didn’t have authority to drive them out, since they were a province of another empire rather than their own country with their own laws). God sent the Greeks to invade and overthrow the Persians, and especially Antiochus IV Epiphanes so provoked the Jewish priests, that it gelled the Jewish conscience to reject and resist all foreign influence. They gained the right to self-governance for a time, but eventually came under full control of the Romans.
All of those things combined to create such an anti-Gentile sentiment among “good” Jews. To be sure, there were many Israelites who happily adopted foreign customs and culture, but they weren’t considered faithful Jews. Those who were more liberal in their attitudes to foreigners were also less careful in their attitude toward God—even though many were priests of God! They went too far in their liberality. But the conservatives also went too far in their zeal to be God’s “holy” people! They all but hated Gentiles—they’d been under the rule of inconsiderate Gentile kings for more than six hundred years, so you might be able to understand their bitterness! Hence you see the separation of Jew and Gentile in the Gospels, such that a Jew couldn’t even visit the house of a Gentile.
That’s the context in which Paul is writing these things. He had argued and debated other Christians—publicly rebuking even Peter at one point—to defend this truth of the Gospel and break down these dividing walls.
Besides all that, Gentiles across the globe up till then knew little or nothing about God, His commands and His promises. Word had spread to many corners, but the Jews scattered abroad kept their faith mostly to themselves. There was a means by which Gentiles could become “Jew-ish;” these were proselytes. But it meant they had to embrace the whole law, becoming Jewish not just in adoption of God and rejection of all other gods, and in moral requirements, but in all ceremonial aspects as well, including holy days and circumcision and sacrifices—which could be pretty inconvenient, given that the Temple would be so far from most Gentiles!
So the average Gentile was without hope of salvation because they were without God. But they were not merely separated from God and His covenants and promises—they were separated by the Law, the Covenant of God with His people. In particular, the ceremonial aspects of the Law. The cleanness rules and circumcision.
Can you relate to that? Have you ever felt like you knew nothing about the true God and had no clue that you were even ignorant of Him? Did you ever think that, if He really was the true and only God, and since you didn’t know Him and didn’t know how you could draw near to Him, that you would be forever cut off, doomed to an eternal torment just because you were born into the wrong people?
No?
There are still people today who have never heard of Jesus Christ and the righteous requirements of God for salvation. When they hear of it, when they understand the implications of the Gospel and Jesus as the only means of salvation, their mind invariable goes to departed relatives. Perhaps their parents, perhaps siblings that died young. Perhaps grandparents, great-grandparents, even long-past ancestors. What about them? Is there any hope for them?
“Without hope and without God in the world,” Paul says. Their parents, grandparents, ancestors lived and died without hope and without God in this world. And they are devastated. Can they believe in such a God, who gave their forefathers no chance at salvation? Can you believe in such a God who allows millions still today to live without hope and with Him in this world?
I wonder if we realize that the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20, of Mark 16:15, of Luke 24:45-48, of John 20:19-23, of Acts 1:8 were all His idea. They were all His command to bring the Gospel to all those Jews and Gentiles who had yet to hear of God and His only means of salvation. God never forgot all those ancient peoples. He has always desired to gather them, but He intended to use us as His instruments, as His messengers, as His ambassadors.
Paul says to the Greeks of Athens,
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:24-31, NIV84)
God’s not really at fault. Those people rarely bothered to look for Him.
But most painful to consider is how God’s own people gave barely any thought to the plight of those to whom God didn’t directly reveal Himself. They rarely thought it important to take the news of God to other nations. Some even rebuked the few who felt such a burden, saying things like, “If God wants to save the heathen, He will do it Himself.”
Instead, the people of God, whether before Christ or after, chose to occupy themselves with building their lives and gathering wealth to leave to their children in this world. And generation after generation—of people who knew of God and of His great commission—by and large sat at home and busied themselves with vain occupations and activities.
You and I are God’s means to bring the Gospel to those who came into their world without hope and without God. You say you can’t go overseas. Maybe. Why not? You’re too old and weak and sick and crippled? There are old and weak and sick and crippled people all over the world who need God. You already have Him. If you should die on the journey to a foreign land to share Christ, isn’t that worthy of honor? You’ll die anyway! Why not die while carrying out the Great Commission?
Will you miss out on your kids and grand-kids? Will you have to sell all your land and houses? So what? Leave your kids and grand-kids a real legacy—one of living and dying to bring the hope of eternal salvation to people who will live and die without it! A legacy that says God and His Son Jesus Christ and the salvation of the lost is far more important than money or lands or houses. If your children love Jesus Christ, you’ll have an eternity to spend with them, enjoying them. If you’ve lived most your life as a believer and your children and grandchildren still don’t care that much about Jesus, then maybe they need a radical wake-up call, the kind where old people get crazy and leave everything behind to share the love of Christ with a lost and dying world! How many people will depart this life without hearing the Gospel because you stayed home, because you loved the pleasures of this world rather than the people in it?
Now Brought Near
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul reminded us that we were dead in our sin. But we were made alive in Christ. Here he reminds us that we were once cut off, far away from God, but brought near through the blood of Jesus.
Because we grow up in Christianity, we have no sense of that. But we need to grasp it! We need to get it!
Understanding our utter hopelessness in our sin helps us see the magnificence of God’s grace to us in saving us, and that guards us from hypocrisy and arrogance, as if we could have saved ourselves or “helped God” to save us. In the same way, grasping our former separation—exclusion!—imparts to us a compassion for those who remain cut off! At least it should.
Growing up Christian shouldn’t result in an insensitivity to those who have yet to hear of Christ, but sadly, it does. We think it’s all so natural, that surely everyone grows up in the same situation.
Instead of realizing how desperate the rest of the world is, how desperately in need of the Gospel, we sit around worrying about acres and acres of crops, the flu, kids’ schooling, hair styles, what to watch on Netflix, where to vacation next.
To the people Paul was writing to, this being brought near was their real, lived experience. Perhaps that’s why it was so much easier for them to leave everything to go to the next place and bring the Gospel. They didn’t all become apostles, but they were a whole lot more mobile than we think we are today! They had less to give up, so it was easier to move on to the next place. They’d need work; they’d need food. But they brought the Gospel. Because they knew what it was to be without hope and without God one day and to be brought near the next.
Dividing Wall of Hostility
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
“The barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” “Thus making peace.” “To reconcile both of them to God.” “Put to death their hostility.” “He preached peace.”
To the Jews, the Law had become this wall that created not just disdain for Gentiles, but even hostility. And when you meet someone who thinks they’re superior to you in some way, how do you respond? Quite often with equal hostility. It went both ways. And the cause was the Law with its ceremonial laws, forbidden foods, circumcision. All these things originally meant to set the Jews apart, to be seen as wise and to draw other nations to them; all these things became a wall that cut off the Gentiles from salvation. Not because there was a problem with the Law, but because there was a problem with the Jews.
The same problem we have today. That drive to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. That ego. That arrogance.
You may not realize it, but we have our own version of this separation and rejection of others today. We have a similar hostility toward others who do not know all we know. Who are not as well-informed and transformed as we are. Who are filthy and wretched and wicked and sinful. They are inferior to us who are saved, who are saints. And this is where that word is corrupted and destroyed, because of our arrogance and pride and our casting down of all those who don’t meet our standards of goodness and rightness.
How quickly we forget who we were before Christ saved us. If we could remember, we would not be so quick to condemn and be repulsed by those who still live in sin, who have yet to be rescued and made alive in Christ.
If we could only see ourselves in all those we condemn. If we could only remember that we were exactly like them before Jesus saved us. Then maybe they wouldn’t be so disgusting to us.
White-collar folk who know nothing of real down in the dirt hard work! Or rural folk, who are so ill-mannered and brutish. Or rich people who have no idea what it’s really like to scrape to get by, to be forced to skip meals for lack of funds. Or poor people who are too lazy and stupid to apply themselves and make wise financial decisions.
Maybe it’s still race-based contempt. Can you imagine worshiping God side-by-side with an African-American? How about with an African-African? Or does that seem impossible, even frightening to you? Maybe an Asian would make you feel intellectually inferior? What about a native of India? Can you imagine sharing a meal with them—scooping rice and meat and curry with your hand!—and celebrating the goodness of God?
Think about the contempt we have for our husbands or wives. Women are so foolish! Men are so clueless!
Have you rubbed shoulders with the kinds of people living in trailer parks? You are! Right now!
Can you extend mercy to a drug addict and share Christ with him? Can you bring yourself near enough to an alcoholic to tell her about Jesus? Welfare moms! Disability dads! Someone tattooed up one side and down the other! Another pierced through every square inch of their bodies? How about a lesbian, a gay or bisexual? Transgender or queer? A drag queen? Can you see their pain, their lostness and their desperate need for the God of the Gospel to come near and save them?
You don’t need to leave this country to find someone who doesn’t know much about Jesus! You don’t need to go far to meet someone who has a horrible understanding of Jesus because of the Pharisaical Christians they have met. How many of our children turned their backs on Christ because of our godless example of a Christian? Don’t forget that Paul warned Timothy:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3:1-5, NIV84)
“Having a form of godliness but denying its power.” We’re in the last days. God forbid that describes any of us!
Let’s not think you and I have no prejudices lying out of sight, under the veneer of our Christianity. That’s why God moved Paul to start this chapter with: Remember your former way of life, the sin you dwelt in. Apart from Jesus Christ, we’re no better than anyone still dwelling in their sin. We don’t remember that to excuse falling into sin today, as saints. We don’t remember that so as to silence brothers and sisters who want to help us to repent and change and grow.
We need to remember that we as Gentiles were once a hated people, outcasts, rejected by the only people who held the wisdom and revelation of God! So that we regard no one as outcast, no one as unreachable, no one as too disgusting for us to take time to tell them about Jesus. We need to remember that so that we’ll have a heart of compassion that wants to bring Jesus to people who are just like us before we were set free from sin, before we were brought near, through that shattered wall of hostility!
Abolishing the Law
Paul goes on to say that Jesus, through His death and resurrection—the Gospel, that is—has brought us near by abolishing the Law with its commandments and regulations through His flesh—by His death.
In abolishing the Law, Paul does not mean nor did Jesus intend that we no longer have a use for it. Jesus Himself said that He came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. But the intent of the Law was always to teach us to worship God alone and to understand who He is so we can walk in His ways. In Isaiah 1:11-17 (NIV84), God actually reveals He never wanted the sacrifices, but only righteousness and justice.
"The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations--I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
As we’ve said before and we’ll say again, God was always seeking a people who would walk in love for Him and love for their neighbor. If the people had walked in obedience to the moral commands of the Law—the commands that reflect and reveal God’s own character and nature—they never would have needed the ceremonial aspects of the Law.
And those moral commands remain a guide to us, as we’ll see going forward in Ephesians.
In regard to salvation, the Law has no power over us. It’s demands against us have already been satisfied. We have been condemned and put to death—in Jesus! And we have been made alive again, beyond the punitive reach of the Law, a new creation, “God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10, NIV84).
The Law was a tutor to lead us to Christ, but now we’re no longer under its authority (Galatians 3:24-25). However, that’s not to say the Law has no benefit to us. It still teaches us what God considers love for neighbor and love for Him. As Paul wrote Timothy, “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly” (1 Timothy 1:8, NIV84).
As Paul wrote to the Romans, the Law is not actually the enemy:
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. (Romans 7:7-12, NIV84)
In fact, as you’ve heard me quote before and you’ll doubtless hear me say it again, through the Gospel, God has written His Law on the hearts of those who truly belong to Him: “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Hebrews 8:10, NIV84).
So the Law has not been abolished in the sense that it is completely gone from our lives and has no place in our walk with God. It is abolished only in the sense that it can no longer condemn and put us to death. In Christ, it already did!
One New Man
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Because of the finished work of the Law and of Christ, all those who were once doomed to eternal torment by their sin, all those who were once entirely without hope of salvation because they were far from God, now any of these can not merely be brought near but engrafted into the family of Israel. Through the Gospel and the Great Commission, God is making Jew and Gentile into one new kind of person in Christ.
Paul says that God’s purpose in and through the Jesus and His Gospel “was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.” There is no longer Jew and Gentile, but Christian. This is the same thing as when Paul wrote the Colossians, saying, “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11, NIV84). Or when he wrote the Galatians (3:26-29, NIV84):
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Notice, Paul isn’t talking about the removal of my ethnic identity or the elimination of national borders or the blurring of my gender or the emancipation of any slave who believes in Jesus Christ as Savior. Our present identities remain, and Scripture still has specific instructions to those who are under the yoke of slavery or who are male or who are female. Each of us still exists in a certain context that carries with it specific rules of conduct as we live out our faith in Jesus Christ.
But no matter where we come from, no matter whether we are slave or owner, no matter if we are male or female, no matter how evil our past life was, no matter what we’ve done to our bodies or what we’ve done to others, we can all become citizens of God’s kingdom and members of His family. None of these things can keep us from the household of God; none of them ever stood in our way. It was sin, our breaking of God’s laws, our rejection of Him or ignorance of His ways; these made us foreigners and aliens to God’s people.
But those two barriers have been or are being brought down. The Gospel solves our sin issue. The obedience of those who believe the Gospel to the Great Commission is tearing down that last barrier.
Anyone is welcome to come to Christ, to receive forgiveness of sins and a new life, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. It does require repentance and a leaving of our old lives, our old sinful ways. But ANYONE who is willing can do that.
And anyone who repents and believes the Gospel is brought into the family of God, made brother or sister with you and me, joining us in God’s household. In fact, together we are all being built together into a dwelling place, a tabernacle for God—all believers across the globe and across the ages! And we here locally, no matter what we look like, no matter where we come from, no matter what wickedness we once walked in, all of us locally and in this building are being fitted together as a local dwelling place for God’s Spirit.
Conclusion
We were objects of wrath, but God sent the Gospel to us that we might be saved. We are Gentiles who were as far from Israel as can be, yet God made sure we would hear the hope of the Gospel. Can we imagine any reason to withhold the Gospel from anyone else near or far?
You and I have no grounds on which to think we are superior to the worst person we could possibly imagine. We were just like them! You and I have no basis on which to think we are more worthy to be saved because of where we grew up or the color of our skin or the level of education we completed or our natural intelligence or your good looks or the cleanness of our skin, clothes or language. Faithful Jews would look at you and me and say, “No way!” Just because we’re not Jews.
But God crossed sin barriers and ethnic borders to give you the privilege of hearing of His Son and His sacrifice to save someone like you. There is no cause that God will accept for you to deny the Gospel to anyone.
Before you think about boarding a plane and crossing the globe to find someone different from you with whom to share the Gospel, take a moment to think. Did someone come to mind as I described the different prejudices we might have? Is there someone you could never see yourself telling about Jesus? Is it that they’re too different from you? Is it that they’re the most vile person you can imagine? Swallow your pride. Humble yourself. You were just as evil as they still are. You were once as different from God as night is from day.
Seek that person out, strike up a conversation. Extend them the same mercy and grace God extended to you. Tell them that salvation is found in no one else but Jesus, and God invites them to be forgiven and made a child right alongside you, if they will turn away from their own ways and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior.
That person may be desperately hoping for someone to show them such consideration, such compassion. They may also reject you and ridicule you. So be it. Their blood be on their own head. But you will be able to stand before God with a clear conscience.
He doesn’t ask you to save people, just to announce God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ to them.