Sermon Point

II. Jesus brings us peace with God, and peace with each other.

a. Through Jesus, our relationship with each other, and our relationship with God, can thrive with peace. Christ destroyed, the conflict which kept us from peace with heaven and humanity.

b. And so, in our passage, Paul shows us how Christ gave us peace, and how we can be near to God and to each other through what Jesus did for us.

Ephesians 2:14–16 CSB

For he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In his flesh, he made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that he might create in himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace. He did this so that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross by which he put the hostility to death.

Now let’s break this down. Israel at the time were the only covenant people of God. But because of the law, which Paul here calls “commands and regulations”, the Israelites weren’t allowed to even eat with Gentiles. Gentiles were considered unclean along with their daily practices, and this kept the two groups from having peace with each other.

These commands and regulations also kept everyone from having peace with God, because they showed us that we are sinful and we can never come close to God on our own.

But Jesus himself is our peace. He lived his life perfectly, fulfilling the law, and paying for our sins, so that for those who believe in him, there is no more hostility between us, we are all his people. And we can all have peace with God. We are one new man altogether.

So what does it look like to live as one body in Jesus? Maybe, it looks like Dan’s walk. Dan had moved from his small town into a new city. The city life has been rough for him, not do the people act different, but their entire worldview is different as well. Anyways, quite a bit of this different has carried over into his new local church. Many of the churchgoers are opposite politically, which has challenged him quite a bit. He thinks “These people seem to love Jesus, and serve him, and submit to scripture, but how can they even be a Christian and support that political party?” And in this thinking, Dan beings to rebuild the very wall that Jesus torn down. And in this thinking, Dan has put “commands” and “regulations” on others that Jesus put to death.

Or maybe we rebuild the wall in the way we conduct worship, we condemn others as “out of touch” when they want to stick to their old worship style.

Or maybe we rebuild the wall in the way we burden others with our theological preferences. Or our preferences of dress. Or our preferences of demeanor.

Regardless of how we are tempted rebuild the wall in our daily life, we must trust in the peace of Christ to live out our new identity.

So who are we? What is our new identity? How does this peace affect how we see ourselves and each other? That’s what our next point shows us...