Ephesians 2:11-22

Introduction:

One thing I’m very interested in is watches. I love the attention to detail, and the craftsmanship that is almost wasted on a simple timepiece. But, if you know watches, you will notice that very often the best, most expensive watches, often look the plainest. There is nothing in their appearance that suggests how valuable they are. Unless you know the craftsmanship that went into a luxury watch, you wouldn’t believe it could be so valuable. Church is like that. Church, on the surface, appears to be a very strange thing. An otherwise random group of people gather to sing some bad soft rock and listen to a person speak to them for 30 minutes. But, when you take into account the vision of the NT, and what it has to say about the church, you see that it is the start of God’s great plan to bring everything under God’s feet.

In Ephesians, Paul has been teaching about God’s plan to unite bring all things under Christ. In chapter 1 he gives a great celebratory poem about God’s plan. In chapter 2 he elaborates on some key ideas from chapter 1. In 2:1-10 he talks about God’s grace. And then, Paul turns, in our passage today, to look at the Gentiles being brought into God’s family the Jews, to create a new multiethnic community. And in doing so, he presents a vision of the church that’s both rich and glorious. To see this, we’re going to look at where the Gentiles were, then we’re going to look at how God brought Jew and Gentile together in Christ, and we’re going to close by looking at two Old Testament Images that Paul uses to convey the wonder of what God has done in Christ.

The Distant Gentiles Brought Near:

Our first point for this afternoon is to see how Paul was urging the Ephesian Gentiles to remember that they were far away from Christ, and to remind them that Christ has drawn them in.    

 In this section, Paul is writing to make sure that the Gentiles realise what a wonder it is that they have been welcomed into the family of God. And he doesn’t pull punches. Paul gives an overlapping list of no less than five ways that the Gentiles were lost before Christ and his work to reconcile them to himself.           

 He starts by saying that they were separate from Christ (v12). By this Paul means the Gentiles were so far away, lacking as they did the Jewish Scripture and Messianic hope, that they didn’t even know to hope for Christ. They were also excluded from citizenship in Israel, which means they were outside of the unique sphere of blessing that belonged to God’s covenant people. They were foreigners to the covenants of promise – since they were not Israelites, they could not enjoy the covenant of promise with its blessings and eventual restoration. Put simply, as Paul does at the end of v12, they were without hope, and without God in the world.In other words, Paul is reminding the Ephesians that, for all the richness of Ephesian culture, for all their great dedication to Diana, and all their Greek heritage has to offer, in real terms, the terms of connection to God, they were totally lost. They were so far outside the sphere where God, to that point, had worked, that they had no chance of being redeemed apart from a magnificent work by God.     

  I think it’s important that we sit with this point for a second. You see, just like the Ephesian Gentiles, a lot of us were born outside of the family of Israel. That means that we are by nature outside of the covenant and promises God has given his people. We ourselves were, like the Ephesian Gentiles,“Christless, stateless, friendless, hopeless, Godless.” And Paul wants us to come to grips with that fact, because its only when we realise how far away we were, that we realise what a mighty work it will take to enter God’s kingdom.   

 And yet, Paul doesn’t leave us there the language of 2:11-13 already tells us something amazing has happened. Notice that In 2:11-12, Paul’s call for them is to remember who they were. He asks them to look back. But in v13 the language has changed. Where previously it was remember, in v13 it is “But now, in Christ.” they have been drawn near. How reassuring those four words must have been to the Ephesian Gentile who heard them. That distance from God, that’s a thing of the past. Your present reality is, in Paul’s language, “in Christ”, “brought near” by his blood.    

How Christ Brought Them Near:

To see what God did to bring Gentiles like us to himself, we are now going to turn to our second point, and we’re going to consider how God brought the Gentiles in.                 

    And the way that Christ has drawn us near is remarkable. Vv14 and 17 both assure us that Christ is our peace. And, the first peace that he made was between Jew and Gentile, which he did by fulfilling the law in the body and so set it aside (vv14-15). By doing this, Paul argues, Christ set aside the wall that divided Jews and Gentiles. Some people think that the wall that Paul is talking about is the wall in the temple that separated Jews and Gentiles. But I think it makes more sense of the Gentile context, and the grammar of the passage itself, to see the law and the wall as the same thing. In other words, it was the law, that mark of national, ethnic Israel, that was both the symbol of her distinction from the Gentiles and the actual barrier, since Gentiles did not have the law. But now, in Christ, that law has been fulfilled, the barrier broken down, and the Gentiles are no longer separated by it.           

And now, Paul tells us in v15 that in Christ there is a new, multiethnic community, a new humanity. The two peoples, Jew and Gentile, were previously separated by the law. But now, in Christ, the two that were separated have been joined together into one new humanity.           

But the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile into one new humanity isn’t the only reconciliation taking place here. Look at v16. Paul is telling us that in one body, or, better, as one body, we are all reconciled to God through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. So now, in Christ, not only is the new humanity is joined together to by his abolishing of the law, who is Christ, but it is also reconciled to the Father by his precious blood.

Pictures of What the Unity Means:

For my final point this afternoon, I want to look at two Old Testament images that Paul uses to convey how wondrous the work God has acheived in Christ is.     

The first one is the picture of a restoration from the fall, or a new Eden. Now, this is only really alluded to, but if we bear in mind what was lost in the Fall, we can see fairly clearly that in Christ’s newly reconstituted humanity, the curse of fall is being repealed. And so, at the fall, humanity lost its unity. The man and the woman were separated from each other, and their previous trust and joy were lost. Now, in Christ, those people who were separated have been joined together by his love (v15). At the fall, humanity traded intimacy with God for enmity. But now, in Christ, we are reconciled (v16). And finally, where the fall gave us only strife, Christ’s work has resulted in peace for all those who trust in him. And so the picture of the new humanity we end up with is a multiethnic community living under Christ, enjoying peace and fellowship with God and with one another.

The secod picture is that of the Temple, where Paul uses the language of building to describe the church as one, unified building. The foundation is the prophets and the apostles, and their work in proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ as Lord. The Ephesians were built into it too, as indeed are we, but as Paul says, the most important part, the cornerstone, is Christ himself. Because when he’s there, we are not just any building, we rise to become the holy temple of God, in which God lives by his Spirit.       

Now, of course, we’ve all done our biblical theology, so we all know what the temple means, but let me say something about it anyway. The temple was God’s dwelling place, the union of heaven and earth. But it was also, by its walls and regulations, the thing that made sure God’s people could only get so close to him.  

But now, in Christ, all of God’s church is drawn together to make for him a living temple, one in which he dwells. In more plain language, God is now pleased, through Christ, to live with his people in person, as it were. So, not only is the church God’s kingdom, the symbol of his victory through Christ, but it is also his temple, the place where God is pleased to dwell with his people.

Application:

In my last minutes, as I seek to draw some application from this passage, I want to draw our attention back to those two images that Paul gives us of God’s church: the new kingdom of God, made up of Jew and Gentile, reconciled to each other and God through the work of Christ and living in light of God’s peace, and God’s new holy temple. Friends, you are the church. This is who you are, and I want to urge you this afternoon to be who you are.  

The first way I think you canbe who you are is by just rejoicing in what Christ has done. These images aren’t just pretty metaphors. They’re God’s very truth about who you are in his sight. As the church, let’s rejoice in the fact that our God draws near to us. Let’s rejoice in our reconciliation to one another. Let’s rest in God’s peace given to us through Christ.      

But also, we must be who we are in terms of unity. God has all the power in the universe, he could do anything, but he chose to exercise his power to unify his people into one. Friends, let us not work against the grain of what Christ has chosen to do. We can be different, some of us want the fans, and some of us don’t. That is no sin. But, when all is said and done, may our class be one who rejoices in the unity Christ has won for us. Amen.