He Is Our Peace
Notes
Transcript
Family Matters
Family Matters
Decorate next Sunday (bring food); invite folks to the Christmas Eve service (6:30 pm);
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
Prayer
Prayer
Adoration: God of all grace, who alone saved us; no one could save but you; you have saved to the uttermost; all glory to you
Confession: Pride—we seek our own glory; Unbelief—we forget your grace and seek to obtain your favor by our own strength
Thanksgiving: Your rich grace in Christ more than covers
Supplication: Hearts that give all glory to you; faith that rests in your forgiveness; wisdom for home and work; homeless; POTUS
Benediction
Benediction
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Sermon:
Sermon:
(Read Eph. 2:11-18)
Imagine standing outside at night. It is snowing, and a biting wind is driving the snow hard against your face. Your coat is thin, and you are shivering uncontrollably. Up ahead, you see light—the light of a heath-fire through glowing windows. It is the only warm shelter within a hundred miles. But you don’t even bother to try: those are your sworn enemies—you are totally alienated from them. There is no peace between you. And so, you remain in the bitter cold.
Do you remember, in our first sermon on Ephesians, how I told you that Paul’s greeting, at the beginning of the letter, was a sneak peak of what he was going to say later on?
The greeting goes like this:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace and peace. We’ve heard a lot, so far, about grace—about God’s favor given to people who deserved his wrath in judgement. In the last couple of weeks, especially, we’ve seen that we were spiritually dead, children of wrath, but that God has raised us to new life in Christ. He made us alive as an act of pure grace, that we might be co-enthroned with Christ in heaven, and empowered to walk in good works on earth. And this was all in the first 10 verses of chapter 2.
But now, in verse 11, Paul writes, “Therefore, remember.” In other words, ‘because of this first great truth, that you were rescued from spiritual death, there is a second thing also for you to remember.’
And what exactly is this? The first problem that Paul explained to us in chapter 2 was the problem of spiritual death—that our heart condition was one of willing rebellion against our Maker. But there was another problem that resulted from this spiritual death. In verse 12, Paul calls it, “separation from Christ.” In other words, because of the foulness of our hearts and the record of our treason—because of our spiritual death—we were also excluded from God.
But actually, there is more texture and detail to the way Paul describes this second problem. And we will need to pick up some of this detail in order to hear God speak to us today through this passage.
First of all, notice that Paul is not writing to all believers here in verse 11. He is speaking specifically to non-Jewish believers: “Therefore, remember that you Gentiles in the flesh...” he says. The Ephesian church is being told to remember something specific to their ethnic past: physically speaking—in the flesh—most of them were Gentiles.
And so, Paul says, they were:
“called, “the uncircumcision” by what is called “the circumcision”—which is made in the flesh by hands...”
What in the world is Paul talking about here? What does the practice of circumcision have to do with anything? This actually reaches all the way back to Abraham, the original forefather of Israel. Abraham was, himself, a Gentile of sorts—he grew up in a household where there was idol worship (Josh. 24:2). But God called him out of this to travel to the land of Canaan, and gave him a promise:
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So then, Abraham would become the father of a great nation—of Israel, which would be separated out from the rest of the nations, who were the Gentiles. And yet, at the same time, he would become the father who would some day bring blessing to all the families of the earth—to the Gentiles! So Abraham was separated out from the Gentiles, yet to some day offer blessing back to them—blessing which would reverse the original curse from Genesis 3.
And as time went on, God sharpened his promise to Abraham: this hope would come specifically through a child who would be born to him and to his wife, Sarah—the child, Isaac. And a little later, to signify this covenant promise, God gave Abraham’s household the covenant sign of circumcision. And so, the promise was ultimately to reverse the curse through the descendents of Abraham.
This is the origin story of the nation of Israel. And so, over the course of time, as Israel became a nation, they also inherited the practice of circumcision from Abraham, to signify that the were heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. They were the great nation, from whom some day all the families of the earth would receive God’s blessing.
So, then, we get the New Testament era, and at first there is only one group of people on the face of the whole earth that know anything about God, or have any kind of access to him at all—the Jewish people. They are the ones who know something about God’s promise to Abraham, and they are the ones who bear the mark of that promise—circumcision. Everyone else is uncircumcised, excluded.
And so, in Ephesians 2:11, Paul is reminding the Gentile believers, in a sense, “Ethnically, this is your category. You are not physical descendents of Abraham. Your family line does not connect to the nation which received God’s promises. And the citizens of that nation know it—and so they call you the uncircumcised.”
But he’s saying something else as well, at the same time. He remarks that this practice of circumcision is done in the flesh—it’s done to physical body, by human hands. Is Paul demoting circumcision when he says this? Not quite. Remember, circumcision was given to Abraham by God. Circumcision was a sign given as a reminder of God’s promise to redeem the world.
But no matter how wonderful a sign is, it is always only a shadow of the thing that it points toward. And so Paul is saying, “remember that you are Gentiles, uncircumcised; but remember also that circumcision is not the ultimate thing…” The physical difference between a Jewish father and a Gentile father at that time was circumcision—a mark, a sign, made with human hands. And if you were a Gentile at the time, listening to this letter, that is a powerful statement, because Paul just finished saying, in verse 10, that all believers, Jew and Gentile alike, are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works...”
So Paul is giving the Gentiles a lesson in their identity: “You do not belong ethnically to that nation that originally received God’s promises and covenants and law and temple. You do not have, in your bodies, the covenant symbol of those good things—circumcision. But did you realize, circumcision is only a creation done with human hands? But you—you’ve been made new by the hand of God himself!”
And this was the whole problem for ancient Israel: they were circumcised in their bodies, but not in their hearts. And so Moses told them that some day:
And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
But the mystery hidden in Christ, and now revealed, is this: that the Gentiles also would enter into God’s covenant, with hearts circumcised by God’s own power—dead hearts, made alive in Christ.
But here, in the same way that Paul wanted us to remember our spiritual death so that we might know the riches of God’s grace in giving us life, so he also wants us to remember the darkness of our exclusion from God’s presence. And if we can catch a true glimpse of it, this is also going to reveal something truly wonderful to us about the cross. But look at verse 12:
remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
What was their basic condition prior to the gospel? Separation from Christ! But notice, this is specific to Gentiles. Paul does not say that Israelites, prior to the cross, were separated from Christ. This is because the promise given to Abraham, which we just examined, was ultimately about Christ. In Christ, who is the true descendent of Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Galatians 3:16 explains:
Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
So then, the promise that Abraham received was ultimately about the coming Christ. And it says that Abraham believed this promise from God, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. And so it was with everyone who received the promise of a coming Messiah—of God’s coming salvation—and believed in it. All of these Old Testament saints “had Christ” in a very real sense, even though he had not yet been born in Bethlehem. They had Christ by way of promise. But the Gentiles did not.
And Paul gives four descriptions of what it looked like for the Gentiles to be without Christ in the OT. All four are striking. But for us, the first one may be the most unexpected:
“Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.”
OK. I guess. But why is that so important? Why does that matter? Isn’t Christ all that really matters? Who cares whether or not someone was connected to the nation of Israel? But it is these unexpected, odd phrases in Scripture which often hold important truths that we’ve missed.
You see, as modern Christians, we’ve become accustomed to the idea that faith is purely an individual and private affair. “What matters is that I have faith in Jesus. And then, if I want to also be active in fellowship with his people, or if I’m dedicated enough to do that regularly, that’s good too but it’s not necessary.”
But here, Paul just assumes that if you have Christ you are an active participant in the community of Christ’s people. That’s why he uses the word, “alienated”—it’s the opposite of participating in people’s lives. You were without Christ, he says, and therefore had no participation in the lives of God’s people, Israel.
Second, he says that they were:
“strangers to the covenants of promise”
What are the covenants of promise? When you read Scripture, you encounter a thread that runs the entire length of the Old Testament. It begins right after the fall of Adam, when God promised Eve that one of her children would crush the serpent’s head. Then it continues and makes a major appearance in God’s covenant promise to Abraham, as we saw. Then it continues on still further, until finally it climaxes in God’s covenant promise to King David, to give him an everlasting throne on which one of his descendents would sit—and that descendent of David is Jesus! In him, all of these promises have been fulfilled.
But, since the Gentiles were alienated from God’s people, they did not have or know these covenant promises, and since they did not have these promises, they were without Christ.
And so, third, he says that they,
“had no hope”
And when he says that they had no hope, he isn’t referring to an experience of hopelessness. Some of them may have experienced hopelessness, but others experienced great hopes—hopes for good crops, many children, wealth, comfort—whatever it was that their hearts desired.
But Paul says, whether they were hopeless and gloomy, or very positive and optimistic people, it was all one and the same—they neither had nor trusted in the promises of God, and therefore, they were objectively without hope. Whatever they may have felt about the future, their destiny was hopeless. Whether or not they realized it, they had no true hope.
Now, all of this is a description, specifically, of the state of the Gentiles before Christ came and accomplished redemption at the cross. In context, that is what Paul is writing about. Yet, it is almost the exact same situation for you today, if you have not surrendered to God and trusted in his promise of forgiveness and redemption in Christ.
If that is you this morning, first of all, we are so glad that you are here with us! You are our honored guest. But because we love you, this is also the truth that we want you to know: if you do not have Christ, then you are, spiritually speaking, alienated from the true spiritual life of God’s people. You are completely without the saving benefits of Christ, and therefore, you have no real hope. Regardless of how you feel about yourself, you have no hope which in the end can save you from God’s good judgement against your sin, or make you into his child.
And we want you to know this, not so that you will feel hopeless, but so that you will turn to Christ for salvation, and find in Christ all of the fathomless love of God for sinful, dark-hearted people like us.
But if you refuse this salvation, then you will remain like the Gentiles before Christ—Paul’s fourth description:
“without God in the world”
But look at this: what did God do about this problem? What did God do about the fact that we were excluded from himself?
Verse 13:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Brought near by the blood of Christ!
It’s as if you, standing out in that bitter cold about to die, were suddenly and unexpectedly welcomed into the warmth of your enemy’s home, by some unbelievable sacrifice on his part. Brought in and made part of his family, given a place at his table forever.
Remember, this exclusion from God was the result of our spiritual deadness—our life of willing sin as God’s enemies. But as we saw in Ephesians 1:7 “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses...” So in the first place, Jesus’ blood—meaning, Jesus’ bloody death on our behalf—forgives the guilt of our sin. But there is a second thing also.
Paul has already described our condition before redemption as, “children of wrath” (2:3). This wrath is God’s good hatred of our evil, and his judgement against us for it. But when Paul talks about Jesus’ blood, he is referring to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice on our behalf—the true sacrifice to which all Old Testament sacrifices pointed. And one of Jesus’ accomplishments in offering himself as a sacrifice was to bear the Father’s judgement against sin, in our place. This is how he won the forgiveness of our sins.
But then, by forgiving our sin through Christ, the Father also opened the way for us to be no longer children of wrath, no longer excluded from God and his people. So, the second thing is this: the blood of Christ saves us by making us fit to approach our holy God, and to be near to him. By the blood of his Son, through forgiveness, the Father has brought us near to himself in peace. For this reason, Paul says about Christ: “He is our peace.”
But actually, look at the whole two verses where he says this:
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,
He has made us both one? One new man in place of the two? That’s referring to Jews and Gentiles being brought together and made into one new people. But, weren’t we talking about the peace which Christ creates between individual human beings and God? Why is Paul suddenly talking about peace between Jews and Gentiles? Apparently, peace between man and God and peace between man and man can’t be separated from each other.
What’s Paul’s logic here? In verse 14, it says that Christ, “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” This dividing wall may refer to the wall in Jerusalem, on the temple grounds, which separated the Gentile court from the rest of the temple complex—which kept the Gentiles on the outskirts of the temple grounds. They could come no closer. They were divided off from the closer access that the Jews had to God’s temple.
But symbolically, this wall of separation represents, as it says in verse 15, “the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.” This probably does not refer to all of God’s OT law, but rather to those specific parts which excluded Gentiles—the purity laws, the regulations which required Israel to maintain separation from the nations around them, and so on. Those laws served to teach and to show the very real spiritual separation between spiritually dead, sinful human beings and our holy God.
There was one class of people—the Israelites—who had some degree of access to God. They were his covenant people, and had some degree of access to him, especially through the temple. Then there was another class of people—the Gentiles—who were in no way God’s people and had no access to him at all. That’s why Paul described them as, “without God in the world”—a very dark and hopeless state! And there was bitterness and hostility between these two groups.
But in reality, even the Israelites had a very insufficient access to God at the temple. Only the priests could actually enter the temple—not just any Israelite. And of the priests, only the high priest himself could enter the holy of holies, the place where God most centrally manifested his presence in Israel. And the high priest could only go in there once per year!
But, as Hebrews 10:20 explains:
Hebrews 10:19–20 (ESV)
…we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh...
That is to say, in Jesus’ blood poured out for us—a far better sacrifice than all those ever made at the temple—we have continual access to God’s own holy presence, where even the high priests of Israel could only go once per year! By Jesus’ blood, we all—Jew and Gentile—have been brought near, into the very holy of holies.
But here’s the logic, then. If Jesus has brought a whole bunch of Jews and a whole bunch of Gentiles into the holy presence of God by the same blood, shed for both, then he has necessarily forged them into one new people—one new nation—one new creation.
Where there was once hostility between these peoples, there is now peace. “He is our peace,” who by his blood, “has made the two into one.” By his blood, Jesus has reconciled us to both man and God.
But the world is often a hard place to hold on to these truths. As we experience fears within and hostility without, the unkindness of our neighbors and the falseness of our own hearts, the weakness of our minds or perhaps the world’s claim to have better truths than these, or a thousand other reasons—we may fall into doubt, and these truths may lose their power to comfort us. Even in those moments, when we do not sense his presence, God is faithful to us.
But in his kindness, he also provides yet another layer of comfort here. Why does it say that he broke down the dividing wall and abolished the regulations that separated us, in his flesh? That’s in verse 14 or 15, depending on which translation you are reading. And why does it say that Jesus reconciled us all to God in one body—meaning his own body? Verse 16.
In one sense, Jesus brings us to the holy presence of God through his blood, through forgiveness of sin. But in another sense, Jesus is the holy of holies, the very presence of God among his people. Jesus is Immanuel: God with us. So then, by uniting us with himself, Jesus brings us—finite creatures—into the intimate presence of the infinite God. This is what it means by saying that we have been brought near.
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
But notice, Jesus does these things: “...that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,” verse 15. He does not say, “so that he might create a bunch of new people,” thought that would be true enough. Everyone who belongs to Christ by faith is a new creation individually. But that is not so much Paul’s focus here: he stresses that we have been made into a new creation, which is One New Man.
And then in verse 16 we see that it is this One New Man—this One Body of both Jews and Gentiles—that Jesus reconciles to God through his cross. He reconciles us in one body to God. So then, this is how the whole matter is summed up: by giving himself up for us, and uniting us to himself, Jesus brought us near to God, reconciling us to both God and each other. In his death for us, he killed all of the hostility! He made us one!
Do you see the spiritual reality here?
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
There is one body—a body within which peace is expressed, by Christ’s power, between people who might naturally be enemies. And this is a truth which absolutely cannot stay in our Bibles, but must be worked out in our lives. The glory of God’s grace—the display of the power of his grace to a watching world—is at stake.
First of all, to be a true believer is to be a part of that One Body, that community in which true peace is expressed between its members. And do you know what you can’t do? You can’t express true peace to one another from a distance, and you can’t express true peace to one another without being committed to living in community with one another.
Now, in ultimate spiritual reality, this peace between believers is something which has been created for us by Christ’s blood. It is not something that we have to manufacture for ourselves. It has been accomplished for us by Christ. Yet, in practice, it is something which often doesn’t come naturally to us, and which we have to learn to live out over time as we grow in grace. And, according to the New Testament pattern, the place where we are to learn to live out that peace is in commitment to a local body—a local expression of that universal One Body—a local congregation.
Brothers and sisters, this means that our faith can’t be lived out as God designed it without commitment to a local, gospel-believing congregation. You can only live out the peace of Christ toward those you know, and are committed to. Learning to live in peace toward one another requires a committed love which is deep enough to endure difficulty. Peace which is expressed to other believers only when it is easy is no peace at all!
And so, watching our gatherings online is a great benefit for difficult seasons, and for those who are home-bound, and so on. But it is no substitute for gathering with God’s people, and doing the hard but glorious work of learning to express peace toward each other.
And secondly, this doctrine of “One Body” has something to say to us about relationships between different cultures and ethnicities within a congregation. Now, this is a complex discussion, and often a heated and strained one these days. But, let this truth be always our foundation: that in Christ, the two have been made into one body. When Paul wrote that, he was referring to Jews and Gentiles, perhaps the only legitimate separation between people groups that has ever existed, since it came about by God’s covenant with Israel. So then, if God has abolished that separation in Christ, then every other wall of separation has most certainly been abolished in Christ!
Verse 17 says:
And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
Christ has preached peace to everyone, without distinction. And so when we draw lines between people based on language, skin color, or culture, we are not just sinning against man, but we are assaulting the gospel of peace. We are sinning against the blood of Christ.
But the answer to this problem is not merely to stop building walls between different kinds of people, but to work to break them down. In ultimate reality, Christ has already destroyed these walls by his work. But in practical living, it is for us to break them down in imitation of Christ, reaching across barriers and doing the long, hard, and humbling work of building unity between peoples. Then, if God provides, our life together might be even more a foretaste of that great scene in heaven, where people from every tribe, language, and nation, ransomed by the Lamb, proclaim his excellence forever!
And third, look at verse 18:
For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
Do you see? Not only God’s grace, but also God’s peace, has a trinitarian shape to it. We have access in the Spirit, through Christ, to the Father in peace.
Do we model this peace in our homes? Do you plead with God for help, that you might model this peace toward your spouse in imitation of Christ? For those of you with kids at home: they are watching. And do you show peace to them? If it was easy, it wouldn’t mean much. But it is hard, and so you have the opportunity to be Christ to them.
And if you are not married, do you live with peace toward those who are closest to you? To your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends? Do you live at peace with people at work? Now of course, not all people will return your peace with peace. But, so far as it depends on you, do you live at peace with all? And most importantly, do you strive to live with peace toward the household of God—especially your own congregation?
We belong to Christ, who has made us all into one body. The power to live this out comes from him, and he will certainly give us this power, and grow us in grace and peace, if we ask.
