Understand the gift of salvation; a gift which unites peoples

Scene 1/ You can’t be alive when you’re dead; unless God does something about it. Eph 2:1-10

That is the simple truth of Ephesians 2:1-3.

When this passage speaks of death it is a spiritual death, a separation from God.

There is no ability to please God and therefore all hope is lost.

Hell is not a place to party with your mates.

Hell is a place where there are no mates, no love, no fellowship just separation from all that is good, where all hope is lost, forever!

Ephesians 2:1 gives us a simple and straightforward reason for this hopelessness.

Without Christ our sins cannot be dealt with.

All that we do and are is an offense to God and why should he allow something so offensive into his home.

Would you allow a truck load of rotting, unwrapped rubbish to be dragged through your house and left lying about everywhere?

Now I am not talking about hubby’s bait box which he forgot to clean out and left in the laundry.

I am talking about tons of rubbish, all rotten strewn throughout the house.

So why should we expect the stench of our sin to be allowed into heaven?

Why should we expect that God would allow corruption to pollute his throne?

God is a Holy God, pure without imperfection and our sin our desire to live life our way is simply incompatible with the very nature of God.

It is rebellion, worse it is seeking to make our desires better than God’s.

One commentator puts it this way;

“The unbeliever is not sick; he is dead! He does not need resuscitation; he needs resurrection. All lost sinners are dead, and the only difference between one sinner and another is the state of decay. The lost derelict on skid row may be more decayed outwardly than the unsaved society leader, but both are dead in sin—and one corpse cannot be more dead than another! This means that our world is one vast graveyard, filled with people who are dead while they live (1 Tim. 5:6).[1]”

The Zombie Apocolypse is here now and we are living in it. We just don’t realise it!

You can’t be alive when you’re dead;

PAUSE Unless God does something about it.

And he has done something about it. Have a look at Eph 2:4-10

Ephesians 2:4–10 NLT

But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Christ was raised from the dead.

He overcame death.

Because he was without sin.

Because the one true perfect man.

Jesus the second person of the Trinity, God born as a man.

Lived a perfect sinless life in obedience to his heavenly Father.

Because of this, because of God’s love for us while we were still sinners.

Because his heart breaks over each and every one of us.

Gave us the gift, the gift of salvation.

Grace & Mercy.

Undeserved kindness and merit we could not earn.

Now in Christ we are alive, not dead.

Without Christ we are dead, in Christ we have life eternal;

In Christ we are not resuscitated, we are resurrected.

It is a whole new existence now.

Before we were dead, now we are alive.

We are united with Christ, we are not only allowed into God’s house.

We are welcomed as joint heirs, free from any corruption.

There is no rotten bait smell on us anymore.

Instead we are created into a masterpiece, an illustration of God’s great creative power.

A masterpiece designed to do good work as an example, a living illustration of God’s goodness.

It is more than a dramatic change.

It is a total transformation.

A transformation that is not just spiritual.

A transformation that is not just about us.

It is a transformation that changes the relationship between entire peoples.

Scene 2/ Ephesians 2:11-13 tells us that you cannot be united when you are divided; unless God does something about that as well.

Without Christ there is division & strife between peoples, in Christ there is unity.

If you want to honour God, you need to honour your brothers and sisters who are united with you in Christ, even if they are different from you!

And isn’t this one of the greatest challenges.

Many years ago I was serving as a Youth Pastor in a large inner city church.

In this church there was a young Vietnamese uni student.

She wanted to get baptised and it was my responsibility to make sure that she and her sister understood what Baptism was all about.

Toni & I were invited to her parent’s home; the hospitality was incredible from this couple who really struggled with English.

Now their hospitality, while incredible is not uncommon in many cultures.

Their story of escaping persecution in their homeland, and taking up clothing manufacture in Australia because their qualifications and grasp of English were not up to the standard required to work in their profession as teachers is not that unusual either.

Their story of working long hours to pay for their children to get an Australian university education is also not that uncommon.

But what blew me away was the unity we had in Christ.

These people were committed Christians, we were struggling to communicate.

Our cultures were very different.

But here I was, a young pastor sitting in the house of a mature man, a leader amongst his own people and we had a bond that was far beyond culturally expected hospitality.

This was the unity of Christ.

It is this unity which is unique in the world.

Other religions do not have it.

There might be a common set of beliefs, but it is a commonality amongst diversity.

Other groups may have a unity, but it is a unity of ethnicity, a unity of having been born into a certain group.

It may be a unity of country of origin, of belonging to the same sporting club.

The unity of being in Christ is very different.

It is more than a common set of beliefs.

It is a common relationship with our creator.

A relationship which makes us one.

Equal in God’s sight because we are all equally in need of God’s grace.

Scene 3/ Life & Unity is a sign that a group of people belong to God, no matter how diverse those people are.

When that life & unity is evident, then Christ is honoured and we are living lives worthy of our calling

Have a look at Ephesians 2:14-18

Ephesians 2:14–18 NLT

For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death. He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

These words were written to a mainly Gentile church.

There were the Jews & then there was everyone else, the Gentiles.

Those who had not received the commandments and laws of Moses which are referred to in verse 15.

There was not unity.

There was exclusion.

This was the holding of people at army length because they were considered unclean.

This was seeing others as inferior.

A gentile could not enter the temple in Jerusalem to worship God.

That was only for Jews.

This was racial segregation punishable by death.

There was a wall in the Jewish temple, separating the court of the Gentiles from the rest of the temple areas.

Archaeologists have discovered the inscription from Herod’s temple, and it reads like this:

No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.[2]

But this is not how things are now.

There are no longer those who are close to God and those who are far off.

There are no longer two groups.

There is one new group.

A group created as verses 15 & 16 tell us.

This group is the church.

Being a part of the Christian family is to be part of something new.

It is not based on where you were born.

It is not based on how rich or poor you are.

It is not based on how much good or bad you have done.

It is based solely and completely on whom you have a relationship with as Lord & Saviour.

If you are united with Christ then you have eternity with God and fellowship with every other Christian in the world; because they are like you a sinner saved by Grace!

Being united with Christ and having unity with the church is an incredible privilege, an act of God’s grace.

But how do we access it?

How do we make it our own?

Last week I said, “What use is a present that you never unwrap?”

Ephesians 2:19-22 tells us how to unwrap this gift of unity with Christ and with our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

READ Eph 2:19-22

Ephesians 2:19–22 NLT

So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

Scene 4/ The power to live in unity comes when we grasp what it is to be united with Christ and when we walk with the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle Paul repeatedly spoke of being “one” in this chapter.

Made both one” (Eph. 2:14); “one new man” (Eph. 2:15); “one body” (Eph. 2:16); “one Spirit” (Eph. 2:18).

We need to grasp this truth; oneness with Christ is to be one with each other and one under the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot be two when you are one!

So grasp that all spiritual distance and division have been overcome by Christ.

In Christ is life, in Christ is unity!

Just to make sure that we get it the Apostle Paul gives us three pictures or illustration of what this unity means.

v. 19a We are all described as citizens of the one nation.

The kingdom was taken from Israel and given to the church because Israel continually rejected God’s rule. This “new nation” is the church, “a chosen generation … a holy nation, a peculiar people” (Ex. 19:6; 1 Peter 2:9).

In the Old Testament there were many nations.

All were descended from either Shem, Ham, or Japheth (Gen. 10).

In the Book of Acts, we see these three families united in Christ.

In Acts 8, a descendant of Ham is saved, the Ethiopian treasurer; in Acts 9, a descendant of Shem, Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle; and in Acts 10, the descendants of Japheth, the Gentiles in the household of the Roman soldier, Cornelius.

Sin has divided mankind, but Christ unites by His Spirit.

All believers, regardless of national background, belong to that “holy nation” with citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3:20–21).

One family (v. 19b). Through faith in Christ, we enter into God’s family, and God becomes our Father. This wonderful family of God is found in two places, “in heaven and earth” (Eph. 3:15). Living believers are on earth; believers who have died are in heaven. We are all brothers and sisters in the one family, no matter what racial, national, or physical distinctions we may possess.

One temple (vv. 20–22) Originally God dwelt in the garden with Adam and Eve. Then in a tabernacle, then a temple and in all cases God’s glory departed because of the sins of the people.

Then God dwelt in the body of Christ (John 1:14), which men took and nailed to a cross.

Today, through His Spirit, God dwells in the church, the temple of God. He dwells in the hearts of those who have trusted Christ (1 Cor. 6:19–20), and in the church collectively (Eph. 2:20–22).

This temple is built upon the testimony of the Apostles and prophets of the New Testament times.

The testimony that Jesus is Lord, risen from the dead.

Jesus himself is the cornerstone, the reference point which every other part of the temple is aligned to.

The people of Ephesus were familiar with temples; they would have got this picture instantly.

The temple in Jerusalem and the pagan temple of Dianna in Ephesus, both would be soon be destroyed.

Paul tells them that there is a new temple, one that lasts forever.

The church

Through Christ, He has raised us from the dead and seated us on the throne. He has reconciled us and set us into His temple. Neither spiritual death nor spiritual distance can defeat the grace of God!

But He has not only saved us individually, He has also made us a part of His church collectively. What a tremendous privilege it is to be a part of God’s eternal program![3]

So can I ask you to demonstrate that you are alive in Christ by being united with your brothers & sisters who are not like you? Examples

[1] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 2, pp. 17–18). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. [2] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 2, pp. 23–24). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. [3]Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 2, p. 25). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.