Second Sunday after Trinity (2025)

Eph 2:13-22

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ, what a blessed epistle we have here as Paul writes to this Congregation that he knew well. He opens this letter speaking about Predestination and Election and just a few verses before us gives us the wonderful passage “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” This passage builds upon that hope we have in Christ.

Context, Context, Context

The Gentiles were strangers, and alienated.

Hear what the 2 verses before this say about the Gentiles. “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 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.”

They did not belong to the Covenant that God had instituted according to the flesh and so they wondered,

Were the promises God made for us?

There was tension in the early Church about the Gentiles who did not have the covenant, nor the prophets, nor the temple, and had not abided by the ceremonial law. Are they included in the promises that God made, and the answer is “Yes!” For the promise of Salvation was given not just to Abraham, but to Adam and Eve. By their sin,

We were all children of wrath.

When the first man fell, all mankind fell in him, and so when the promise was spoken that the offspring, that singular seed, born of woman it wasn’t made just to the Jews, but for all the children who had been corrupted by the sin of Adam and Eve.

The Wall of Hostility

Sin is rejection of our Creator.

For God has spoken how we are to live and as part of His creation we are free in some matters, but where he has spoken, we are to listen to Him. Sin is ignoring what God has said, and just relying upon ourselves instead of looking to him and relying and depending on Him, it is to say to determine what is right or wrong according to your own thoughts.

To sin is to say “I don’t care about you.”

I don’t care that you said this is what is right, I will do things my way. When we do that we walk the same path that Adam and Eve did in the garden, that Israel did when it made a golden calf, that David did when he took Uriah’s wife, or even Judas who loved money more than what was right. God has revealed himself as our Father, and

Do you tell your Father to shut up?

We might try once, and if we are really dumb, a second time. This is what the world has done, not just the Gentiles, but even the Jews who had the prophets and the Word and yet wandered away from God’s word frequently and whose leaders rejected the Messiah and condemned the Son of God to death. Is it any wonder that our text calls this division a wall of hostility?

Brought Near to God

We were far from God.

Both Jew and Gentile for God is holy, and neither group listened to him, and so Jesus came to bring us near to God and He did so by shedding his blood for us and by so doing.

Jesus made peace.

That is why the text says, He himself is our peace, and he has made us both one. Breaking down in his flesh that wall of Hostility that man had built to keep God at bay from our lives so we could remain in our sins and hatred of God. Jesus killed the hostility. Now I don’t know if you noticed this in the text,

The text is passive.

This isn’t what you do, it isn’t what you have done, or what you can do or accomplish, or willed, or anything like that at all. You and I did nothing, it was all Jesus. We didn’t make peace with God, we didn’t make up for the wrongs we had done, we didn’t set things right we didn’t open the door and invite God into our lives, Jesus came to us to do what we never would or could do, make peace.

Preaching Christ Crucified

Our sins were nailed to the cross.

All that hostility and rejection that the children of Adam had for their creator was laid upon His head, and God’s punishment meant for all those who violated the law fell upon his head, as He was suspended between heaven and earth to be rejected by man, and suffer the wrath of God against mankind’s rebellion. By so doing reconciled mankind to God that is why

There is no longer Jew or Gentile.

For we have been made one in Christ Jesus our Lord, and are saved not by adherence to the Old Covenant, which not even the Jews had been able to keep, but by work of Jesus there upon the Cross. So we

We now have access through the spirit.

Who has made both Jew and Gentile children of God, and children of Abraham, not on the basis of the Old Covenant, but through Jesus who is the child promised to Adam and Eve and is the Savior of all mankind. This is why Jesus is called the cornerstone, He is that stone that was laid for the Kingdom of God that we might be built upon by the Spirit to be part of God’s Kingdom. Once again the text is passive. God is the one who saves you and made you a citizen of heaven.

Citizens of Christ’s Kingdom

You were born of water and the spirit.

This is the birth that Christ spoke with Nicodemus about, it is not a birth that is from an earthly mother, but a birth that comes from above as the Spirit is given to us through Holy Baptism that we might be children of God and members of the Kingdom.

God promised this to you.

For whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Now someone might say ah ha, finally something that I have to do to enter heaven. There is something here for me to do. Dear friend, If I hand you 20 dollars and say this is a gift for you. You don’t then say, well this gift is mine because I did the work of receiving the gift, and did the great work of believing that it belonged to me. How sin has twisted our hearts so that even when God gives us a gift, we try to make it into our own work and be independent, instead of recognizing a gift as what it is, a gift!

We are united in Christ.

The effect that this has had in the History of the Church is incredible. The Gospel went forth to all the world, it didn’t matter what language people spoke, who their rulers were, what job they had, be they slaves or kings, for just as Christ had torn down the division between Jew and Gentile, those distinctions didn’t matter as to who was or wasn’t saved. Christ died for all.

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we do not have to worry about whether we are Jew or Gentile, Slave or free, male and female, for Christ has died for all and united us in His death that we might enter into His Kingdom. He has become the peace for all of mankind that we might have access to the Father in Heaven, and be granted entrance into His Kingdom. Let us bring this message of Peace to the World for Christ is our peace and has reconciled you, me, and all people to the Father through His Cross, and is building us up in preparation for His everlasting Kingdom. In Jesus name. Amen.