United in Christ

Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been fascinated with history, especially war history. One event that really captivated me was an event known as the Cold War. Following the events of World War 2, the United States and Soviet Russia seemingly split Germany in half with what is known as the Berlin Wall. This wall was heavily guarded with guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses to prevent those from Eastern Germany from entering the free Western Germany. One thing I noticed as a kid was hearing stories from my Dad who went just after the wall was torn down. He described how you can see where the wall once stood and it’s almost as though Eastern Germany was lifeless, without color, gray, dreary and covered in graffiti while Western Germany was bright, vibrant, and clean. This was a land that was radically divided.

As we look out at our culture today, it’s not hard to see that there is a lot of division in the world. Whether it be country vs country, race vs race, economic status vs economic status, or gender vs gender; there is no shortage of divisive issues in our world. Maybe you yourself have been exposed to the effects of such division and well, believe it or not, the Bible has a lot to say concerning these matters. You see, in Ephesians 2:1-10 we saw that because of sin we were separated from God, and now Paul is going to refer to one of the most notorious divisions in all of human history, the division between the Jews and the Gentiles. As we look at this story, we will find that Christ alone brings true peace and true unity where division once stood. We will see that as we break this down into three points which are:

What we were

What Christ did

What we now are

As we look in verses 11-12 we will find a call to remember what we were. Here Paul is encouraging the believers in Ephesus to look back on the condition they were in before God saved them and as he tells them to do that, he brings us three significant things about this condition that applies to us too before we were saved. First, we were separated from Christ. You guys may remember from chapter one, how many times Paul says, “In Christ” and shows us all of the spiritual blessings that come with that and then, in 2:1-3 we saw how in our sin we were outside of Christ. Second, he wants them to remember that they were alienated from Israel and strangers to the Covenants of promise. You might remember from the Old Testament that God pledged Himself to the people of Israel and He gave them the privilege of being known as God’s people and it was to Israel that God promised the coming of Christ. What Paul is wanting them to remember is how they were outcasts, they weren’t known as the people of God, but rather they stood against everything God stood for! Not only that, but third, he tells them to remember that they were hopeless and without God. Because they didn’t know of the Covenants of promise, they never knew that there would even be a Redeemer to come for them and so they walked through this life as a hopeless and Godless people. What Paul is wanting us to think about is that time that we were dead in our sins, how we were without righteousness, and without Christ in this world. You know, a lot of people try extremely hard to forget things that they’ve done and no matter how hard they try, they just can’t forget them. Well, here it seems that we learn that it is good to remember where we were before Christ saved us. And you and I probably think to ourselves, “I don’t want to remember that! I don’t want to remember the pain I caused and the sin I committed.” But I want us to know that it is when we look back on what we were before God saved us, that we are often stirred to praise God for His saving grace! These people didn’t know there was a Savior, yet the Savior knew them and came and died for them.

Now, I want to bring out another lesson for us very quickly and that is that little parenthetical statement Paul makes there in verse 11 where he says, “called the circumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.” In the Old Testament, God commands Abraham that all of his male descendents would need to be circumcised and those who weren’t would be considered outside of God’s covenant community. What Paul is referring to is how the Jews developed this sense of superiority and would look down upon the Gentiles as though the action of physical circumcision actually made them righteous, but the physical act didn’t accomplish what only the Spirit of God could. Now, what I want us to grab here is that we need to be careful and gracious with the privileges that God has given us. And what I mean by that is that we have been privileged to know God and to trust in Him, however, as Christians we must be quick to remember what we would be apart from the grace of God and show pity upon those that He has not yet saved. **Story about cage stage and anger**

The next thing that Paul shows us is what Christ has done for those who were once hopeless and the division that once stood between us all. And we find that He brought this unity about in Himself. In His own sacrifice, Christ tore down, Paul says, “That middle wall of partition.” Now here is an interesting bit of information about this wall from John Stott. He says, “The temple building itself was constructed on an elevated platform. Round it was the Court of the Priests. East of this was the Court of Israel, and further east the Court of the Women. These three courts—for the priests, the lay men and the lay women of Israel respectively—were all on the same elevation as the temple itself. From this level one descended five steps to a walled platform, and then on the other side of the wall fourteen more steps to another wall, beyond which was the outer court or Court of the Gentiles. This was a spacious court running right round the temple and its inner courts. From any part of it the Gentiles could look up and view the temple, but were not allowed to approach it. They were cut off from it by the surrounding wall, which was a one-and-a-half metre stone barricade, on which were displayed at intervals warning notices in Greek and Latin. They read, in effect, not ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ but ‘Trespassers will be executed.’... He goes on to say that one temple sign was discovered in the 1800’s that read, “‘No foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure round the temple. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death..” So imagine this division between them all. We really see it described in Acts where the Jews want to kill Paul because they think he brought a gentile into the temple!

It is with this kind of hatred in mind that Paul shouts, “Christ brings unity!” But how? How did He do it? Paul then tells us that He did it by abolishing the law. Now, this doesn’t mean there is no more power in the ten commandments. What this mean is that Christ came and kept all of those priestly and sacrificial laws and fulfilled them fully and He fully kept the moral law, like loving God fully and loving neighbor. And because of this, Christ has gotten rid of those ceremonial laws and He has taken the condemnation of the moral law that belonged to us! So how does He unite us? He unites us because He was the only one who could do what no Jew or Gentile could ever do! And it is through His life, death and resurrection that through Him we aren’t dead in sin, but we are alive as a new humanity where division once stood! And because of Jesus, we can have peace. Peace with God who is no longer angry with us, but is our loving Father. And because we remember how we were, we know we don’t deserve His grace, and because of that, we are to show grace to one another. Paul then says that Christ came preaching peace to those far off and those near, which is from the book of Isaiah and in verse 18 I want you to notice the Trinity there. Through Him, that is Jesus, we, that is the Church, have access in one Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, to the Father. What is the result of this great work? A changed people which brings me to my last point as we see What we now are.

Because of what Christ has done for us, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but we are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. Now, at this time Rome was extremely powerful, but Paul is focused on a God more powerful than Rome and a Kingdom more precious than Rome and it is to that God and His Kingdom that these who were once outcasts now belong. But the thing about citizens is that there can be division among neighbors. So Paul goes on and says that we are members of the household of God as though to say, we are more than fellow citizens, we are brothers. In John 13, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But what does that look like? This new community of unified brothers and sisters who are to love one another? Well, it looks like reaching out to the person sitting alone at lunch and being there for them. It looks like meals together were you fellowship and enjoy being united in Christ. It looks like caring enough for one another where you will call them on their sin, kindly, if you see them slipping. It looks like weeping for those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. It looks like laying aside your preferences and annoyances with others because that is someone that Christ died for. And it looks like forgiving them when they wrong you.