One of the things we love to do is to remember the past. We keep journals and photo albums, we tell stories and reminisce, all to preserve our memories. On the other hand there are some memories that we don’t want to remember. Memories of past hurts, of things we’ve done that we’re ashamed of. Some people repress these sorts of memories, try to pretend they’re not there, but all that does is to allow them to work their way down into our subconscious where they continue to hurt us. The alternative is to bring them out and expose them. To seek forgiveness, To see how far we’ve come since we were hurt. That’s what Paul does in this passage from Eph 2. He says "remember" Remember what life was like before Christ. Then he says look at what Christ has achieved. Then he says look forward. So that’s what I want to do today. To look first at the Old Order - at alienation, at Christ’s work - reconciliation, and The New Order - unification, and then we’ll think about some of the implications for us.
The Old Order - Alienation
I’d like you to try to imagine what it must have been like for the first disciples, steeped as they were in 2000 years of history, of an understanding of themselves as God’s chosen people, his special possession out of all the nations, to be told that they were to treat Gentiles the same as they would Jews. It’s hard to imagine what that would have meant to them, because we don’t have any real equivalent today. I guess you could liken it to the attitude of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, but that doesn’t go anywhere near the strength of feeling of the 1st Century Jews. Here they were, a tiny, insignificant nation, and yet God had chosen them and revealed himself to them. He’d sent them Moses and the Prophets. He’d told them they were to be a nation holy to him. That is, set apart for his service, and over the years, they’d developed a somewhat arrogant view of their calling. Let me read you something that William Barclay wrote about this: "The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles, said the Jews, were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made ... It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother [at childbirth], for that would simply bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews. The barrier between them was absolute. If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death." Harsh words, are they not? So how must Peter have felt when he lay on his rooftop and dreamed that God was telling him that the Gentiles were now clean, or Paul when he saw his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus and was later told that he had been chosen to take the gospel to the Gentiles? It must have been overwhelming!
But lets imagine that we were Gentiles at that time. Remember how the people of Israel were told that they were to be a light to lighten the Gentiles? They were to show by their national life just how good life could be under God, so that the nations would come to them to share in their blessings. But imagine you were one of those Gentiles who had come to Israel to join with the people of God. What would you have encountered? First you would have experienced the contempt expressed in that description we just read. But even if you got past that to convince the Jews that you were serious about worshipping God with them, you would still have found yourself excluded from the centre of Jewish worship. When you walked into the Temple precincts here’s what you would have found. A one and a half metre high wall with a sign on it that said something like this: "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!" Not "Trespassers will be prosecuted", but "Trespassers will be executed!" This is probably what Paul has in mind when he refers to the dividing wall of hostility. Gentiles could get close enough to look up and see the Temple above them, but they could never enter it. They could never be part of the full worship of God. In other words, they could never enjoy the full benefits of being part of God’s people.
Well, that’s the situation of the Old Order. Paul describes the Gentiles in v12 as without Christ. That is, missing out on all the benefits he’s spoken of in chapter 1 that come from us being in Christ. As being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise. That is, they were excluded from all the benefits that God had promised to Abraham, and finally, as having no hope and without God in the world. They were without hope, not because God didn’t love them or have better things planned for them. In fact God’s promise to Abraham was that he’d be a blessing to all nations. No, they were without hope, first because they didn’t know about God’s promise, but second because as we found earlier in the chapter they’d suppressed what truth they had about God and instead had turned to the worship of idols.
The Work of Christ - Reconciliation
Well, as I just said, God’s promise to Abraham, his plan for the world, was that Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. So there was quite gap that needed to be bridged before God’s plan could come to fruition. To bridge that gap, or to use Paul’s metaphor, to break down the dividing wall of hostility, required God’s intervention. The Gentiles needed to be brought into the people of God and the only way that could happen was by them being incorporated into Christ. He says "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." How has he done this? Look at v15. He has abolished [in his flesh (v14)] the law with its commandments and ordinances. The thing that separated the Jews from all the other nations was the law, given to them to mark them out as separate, as a holy nation. The other nations couldn’t please God, because they didn’t have his law to guide them. But now Jesus has abolished the law as the means by which people are made right with God. Now all people come to God on the same basis. That is, on the basis of their faith in Christ as we saw last week.
Notice too, that the way Jesus has broken down this alienation between Jew and Gentile also removes the grounds for alienation from God. This is all part of God’s plan. He’s done all this so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace. As we saw in chapter 1, God’s great plan for the creation is that all things should be brought together in unity under Christ as head. Christ brings reconciliation between Jew and Gentile so that they’ll form a single body with himself as the head. And in that body, through the cross, he’s reconciled both groups not only to each other, but more importantly to God, thereby putting to death their hostility to one another.
The New Order - Unification
So what’s the result of this reconciling work of Christ? Well, first of all the Gentiles are no longer aliens and strangers, visitors without any legal rights, but rather citizens of God’s kingdom. They now enjoy all the privileges of being part of God’s people. I’m reminded of that movie "Green Card", where Gerard Depardieux goes to all sorts of lengths, even arranging to marry an American woman, in order to gain the right to live and work in the USA. The benefits of being an American citizen were worth going to any lengths to get. Well, if being a citizen of America is so good, what about being a citizen of heaven? But it’s even better than that. Paul extends the analogy. He says, "You’ve now become members of God’s household. You’re part of the family of God. Being part of a Kingdom is one thing, but being part of the household, or the family of the King, is another. It means, in the context of this passage, that we’re now brothers and sisters of one another. No matter what our background, we’ve been brought into a new relationship of care and affection and support that may not characterise yours, but does characterise the ideal family, the family of God.
But Paul isn’t content to leave his analogies there. He moves from the picture of a household to a picture of a building. He says you’re part of a household "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord." I’m reminded of the story of the Tower of Babel, where people tried to build a great tower to reach heaven, and God came down and confused their speech so they couldn’t communicate with each other. So they all went off to their own parts of the earth. That was the beginning of the alienation of the races. But here we see the process being reversed. Here we see a new humanity, a new community being formed in unity with Christ as its foundation. As this new community is formed it becomes the place where God dwells and where his people come together to worship him. Don’t miss how important the corporate nature of the church is here. If you were ever tempted to have an individualistic view of Christianity, to think that God simply comes to dwell in each one of us as individuals and the church is just an add-on, think about what we read here. As we’re built together we become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. As we’re joined together in Christ (v21) we become the new Temple of God, God’s dwelling place.
Notice the structure of this building. What is its foundation? Its foundation is the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. Nothing is more important to a building than its foundations. Now what is it about apostles and prophets that makes them a good foundation? Well, what did the apostles and prophets do? They taught God’s words. They’re the human authors of most of the Bible. In other words the church is built on God’s word. That’s why we take it so seriously and its why we don’t tamper with it. Everyone knows how dangerous it is to tamper with a building’s foundations. That’s why we should prick up our ears whenever we hear someone undermining the authority of God’s word, or questioning its authenticity.
Similarly Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. That is, he holds the rest of the building together: "In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord." Paul may be thinking here of the way a cornerstone was used to hold the two sides of a building together. So he’s saying that Christ is the key that binds Jew to Gentile and allows them to grow together into this new temple of God that reaches out and encompasses all people.
Finally, notice that the building still isn’t complete. It’s still being built. In fact it won’t be complete until after the creation of a new heaven and a new earth when the voice from the throne will declare "Behold the home of God is among mortals and he will dwell with them as their God they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them." For now we see the building under construction. We wait for it’s final completion at the return of Christ.
The Implications for Us
Well, where does all this leave us? We don’t live in the 1st century. We haven’t experienced the sort of animosity from Jews that Paul talks about. So how does this all affect us.
It seems to me that it affects us on three levels: On the personal, on the congregational and on a national or even international level.
Personal
You see, if Christ could make it possible for two such opposed groups as Jews and Gentiles to be reconciled and built into a single new humanity, then there isn’t any broken relationship that can’t be fixed by Christ. So on a personal level this new humanity in Christ can mean a complete change for the better. It’s been said that one of the great diseases of modern life is the sense of alienation that so many people feel. Mother Teresa once said that the greatest problem facing humanity wasn’t poverty, rather it was loneliness. That is, alienation. This is one of the reasons given for the rise in the teenage suicide rate: that teenagers have a growing sense of alienation from their peers and from society as a whole and the only way out is to get out altogether. But the message of the gospel is that we don’t need to feel like that. Jesus has made it possible for us to be reconciled first to God, to have our alienation from God removed, to be brought into his family, and consequently to be reconnected with those others who are also part of God’s family. In a society like ours, this is very good news indeed. This is why our communal life is so important, and why it’s so important that we include others in that life.
If we want to truly reflect the gospel in our lives then let’s make sure that we don’t let personal hurts get in the way of our relationships with one another. Let’s seek and offer forgiveness as freely as God has offered it to us. Let’s show his reconciliation in our personal relationships.
Congregational
That brings us to the next level. That is at the congregational level there’s no excuse for any disagreement or dispute that leads to a breakdown in relationships. How can we be feuding amongst ourselves if we claim to be being built into the dwelling place of God. Internal harmony is one of those things that architects look for when they’re sizing up the aesthetics of a building. But the harmony we’re talking about here is more than just aesthetic. We’re talking about a harmony where all the parts work together to bring the building to completion. In his first letter, Peter uses the image of us being living stones built into a spiritual house. Imagine if you were building a house and the bricks were alive, and they all started shifting because they didn’t want to be near each other or because they weren’t talking to the one you’d placed them next to. The building would never stand up would it? Well, it’s the same in the church. Churches where there’s strife and bitterness, where people aren’t talking to one another soon start to crumble if it isn’t dealt with pretty quickly.
National
Finally does this say anything to us at a national or international level? Well, given the debate that’s been raging in Australia for the last couple of years over Asian immigration and our relationship with our Aboriginal population, I think it probably does. You see the attitude of those who want a white Australia is not much different to the attitude of the Jews in the first century. They don’t want to have anything to do with those of other races. But what has Christ done? He’s broken down the dividing wall of hostility.
The things that divide us fade into insignificance when we think about ourselves as God’s sons and daughters. The worth of people different from ourselves can only be judged from God’s point of view. He’s the one who determines worth. And what does he say? "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you." The colour of your skin, the sound of your accent, the language you speak with most comfort have nothing to do with it. What matters is that Christ died to reconcile you to the father and to the rest of humanity. So the next time you’re walking down the street in Box Hill and you notice how many Asian faces there are, don’t think to yourself, "I wonder when Chinese will become our official language." Rather think how wonderful it is that the fastest growing churches in our area are the Chinese churches. That the reconciliation that God promised through Christ is being experienced by people of every race and tongue right here in our midst.
The same understanding applies where a particular national grouping has done things that later generations now regret. Christ’s death has dealt with the failings of the past. He offers forgiveness and reconciliation to all people. So it’s right that we look to being reconciled to our Aboriginal brothers and sisters following the mistaken actions of our forbears.
At whichever level we’re thinking, personal, congregational or national, where there have been wrongs done we should ask for forgiveness. Where the wrong has been done to us we should offer forgiveness. We should seek to be reconciled, particularly with those who name the name of Jesus.
So let’s remember the past, when we were alienated from God and from others, let’s thank God for the reconciliation we can enjoy through the work of Jesus Christ, and let’s seek to live for the future, for a time when all of God’s people will be joined as one, in a new heaven and a new earth, gathered around God’s throne to praise him and live with him forever.
For more sermons from this source go to http://www.stthomasburwood.org.au
