“I Am Reconciled”
(Eph 2:11-22)
Here’s the attitude of the first century Jewish religious man: “Thank you God for not making me a Gentile, and thank you God for not making me a female”. The pious Jew was ever aware of the privilege they had inherited, and frankly they found little value in others who were not God’s chosen ones. There is an arrogance that still exists in some very pious Jewish groups. And the primary sign of this acceptance from God was circumcision.
Gentiles and women were not circumcised so they were thought of as lesser beings, and unless a Gentile man became a proselyte and was circumcised, they had very little status in Jewish religious culture. In fact on the wall of the outer courts at the temple there was an inscription warning the Gentiles that they were to blame for their own death if they passed into the inner courts. This was a very racist culture and these were God’s people. And it was based on misinterpretation of the Scriptures.
Many people think that this is God’s mindset because of it, but that is far from the truth. Circumcision was only ever implemented, because God’s people would not obey the real spirit of being God’s people, so God gave them a bunch of laws for them to obey until the Messiah came.
That’s what makes this section of chapter 2 so wonderful, it expresses so beautifully what God’s heart intentions are and always have been, unity and reconciliation with Himself, and between all people.
So the reconciliation we see today has both a horizontal and vertical aspect to it. Vertically God has reconciled all mankind to himself, and horizontally he has reconciled all mankind to each other through the blood of Christ.
Let’s first look at the horizontal. Let’s read verses 14-22… This is also stated so beautifully by Paul in Galatians 3 starting in verse 27:
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.” This is really a summary of what he’s talking about here in Ephesians 2.
Now God has often been accused of being racist, promoting slavery, promoting the suppression of women, and intolerance, but here we see that the opposite is true. It is man that has created all this inequality, sometimes by misunderstanding the words of God, that’s true.
But Christ is our peace as we read in verse 14, he has broken down the wall of hostility between each other and between us and God. This he did by abolishing the law, of which circumcision was a primary ordinance.
The church should be the most accepting, fearless place in the world. Starting with those who are in Christ, who are true believers, it shouldn’t matter what race, gender, socioeconomic status, or denomination they are. God has made us one in Christ and our love for each other should be what characterizes us.
Jesus gives us a new identity in Christ, we are all born again into a new family, and our differences should not define us or divide us. Here’s the picture from Revelation 7, “A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
That’s what church will be like in eternity and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be like that now. Our Ephesians passage says God has reconciled us in one body through the cross thereby killing hostility. Now in a healthy state how does our physical body operate? Is there tension and competition and fighting against each other between our body parts? Are our ears jealous of our toes; will our liver say to our heart I am going to stop working because you offended me with all your fancy beating, and everyone talks about you but never mentions me?
No, the only time our body works against itself is when there is a cancer in it. And cancer is a foreign invader from within our own body that we try to kill before it kills us. Paul has much to say about this in the church, especially in 1 Corinthians. And Jesus brother Jude addresses this as well in Jude 1:16-19: “These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud mouthed boasters, showing favouritism to gain advantage. But you must remember beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions’. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.”
Paul then says in Titus 3: “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned”.
A true Spirit filled Christian will not stir up division or controversy in the church, and if someone continues to after being warned, have nothing to do with them. In essence, if a person is doing this and won’t stop, they are a cancer that needs to be eradicated from the body. They are worldly, not spiritual, they are sinful and do not have the Spirit of God in them, and are thus not saved.
Nobody wants to hear that do they? People who stir up conflict in the church are not saved. “Well isn’t that a pretty high standard pastor?” You bet it is. And should we not have high standards in the body that bears Christ’s holy and perfect name. You see here’s the thing. When a person is not acting in accord with the body, the body should work to get that part in line just like a physical body will attempt to restore balance when a body part is out of line. Sometimes the immune system will be activated to destroy whatever is causing the problems. Sometimes various healing mechanisms will be set off, and sometimes external intervention is necessary.
We like to make the excuse that we are all sinful and nobody can be perfect. I won’t argue with that, but clearly if a body part acts out of line with God’s will and will not repent and change, that part is not really part of the body.
The Bible gives very clear instructions on how to deal with all of this. If there’s something wrong in the church we are to address it by the protocols that Scripture gives us, and a true believer will first of all know the Scriptures, and accept this biblical rebuke and correction with gratitude, because the Spirit of God lives in their hearts and their highest desire is to be obedient to God and to seek the welfare of Christ’s church over his own desires.
The cancer of divisive, self-centered body parts has to do with people who stir up conflict and division based on their own personal desires. They don’t simply, openly, and honestly address their concerns with the leadership of the church because they know inside that their complaints are not appropriate, they are personal; instead they seek people who may have similar thoughts and seek to work behind the scenes to create change for their personal benefit at any cost. They show favouritism, Jude says, to gain advantage.
Anyone truly in Christ has had this wall of hostility broken down and it has been killed in him. They are so focussed on Jesus and honouring Him, that they don’t even notice the things that they don’t like in church. That is one of the fruits of being in Christ. This does not mean peace at all costs, but it means always seeking the churches and others best interests above our own. There will be conflict and disagreements in a church, and how those are dealt with define the health of a Christian and the Church, not whether or not there is a complete absence of disagreement.
So horizontally, God by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances has reconciled people to each other through the Holy Spirit. This does not mean he has abolished all commandments however. He has abolished the LAW of commandments expressed in ordinances.
That means that he has done away with the law that says you must do this in order to be right with God, that was the Law and it was expressed in commands to be circumcised, to burn certain animals at certain times and a whole slew of other ordinances that were demanded to satisfy the Law.
Other than that, all the commandments still hold and the two ordinances that we keep are communion and baptism. These are not to legally be right with God, but because the legal requirements were met by Jesus for all of us. We keep the commandments because we are right with God.
This leads us to the vertical reconciliation as we hear in verses 11-13…
Now the point in verse 11 there is that nothing done by the hands of man could ever bring this reconciliation. Mutilate yourself all you want, that will not bring you to a right relationship with God. Why then did God tell them to do this? Because there was no other sign that they were God’s people. Do you get that? Because they did not act like God’s people, God got them to distinguish themselves by this act of circumcision. In essence it was like Baby baptism. Had absolutely no effect on the heart and no one could see it once you grew up. It was not an outward mark at all.
Now both male and female can identify with Jesus through believers baptism, which represents, not something physical done by man, but the death and rebirth that is facilitated by identifying with Christ. It is an outward sign as a public profession. But even that will not be seen after it’s done unless it’s accompanied by the ongoing fruit of the Spirit in ones life.
We were all separated from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world. But, now in Christ Jesus we have been brought near to God by the blood of Christ. We are no longer strangers to the covenant of promise. But it is all in Christ, by His blood.
This new covenant fulfills all the promises of God, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him, Paul declares in 2Cor 1:20. Reconciliation is an interesting word meaning to make oneself no longer opposed to, and it comes from the word meaning to overcome the distrust of. Now what’s interesting is to look at who’s doing the reconciling. It was never us, it was all God who through the blood of Christ has overcome His distrust of us and is no longer opposed to us.
Just think about that for a minute. Who really needs to do the reconciling? Can God trust us? Of course not, but he does anyway. Yet we on the other hand who have one that we can trust completely, the only being in the universe that we can completely trust, and yet over thousands of years we never permanently anyway, reconciled with Him. He had to do it, and frankly we still haven’t and probably never will this side of heaven. So praise to God that he was willing and able to find a way to be reconciled to us without us participating.
We are reconciled to God by nothing we did or ever could do. We still have trouble trusting Him, but he trusts us with no good reason to do so. Why is that? Why can God trust unworthy people, while we can’t even trust Him, judging from our behaviour?
In order to completely trust, one thing has to be lacking, or non-existent. And that thing is fear. Of course God fears nothing, and the bible says that perfect love casts out fear. The only reason we do not trust God is because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of having our freedom taken away, fear of not being able to enjoy what we desire, fear that the Bible may not be entirely true. We also have trouble trusting other people. We’re afraid they might not like us, they might betray us, and so on. This is why we could never do this reconciliation on our own, we are bound by fear. We do not have perfect love, we cannot forgive ongoing offenses.
But that is what God does and who He is. He is not afraid of us not obeying Him. He’s not afraid of his own existence being threatened. He is the most confident and secure being in the universe for good reason. But there’s the thing. He is the only one who can be completely trusted, and he is the only one that trusts completely.
That’s why Jesus was able to be perfectly faithful. The Holy Spirit is also perfectly faithful, and He lives in true believers. Does that mean we can perfectly trust and be perfectly faithful to God? In theory yes, and some people get closer than others, but in reality it’s extremely difficult because we also have our old nature and we have a hard time putting it to death and living exclusively in the Spirit all the time.
This is such great news. Because if God didn’t do this we would still be strangers to Him without any possibility of reconciliation. In verse 13 it says you who were once far off have been brought near (we did not choose to come near, we were brought) by the blood of Christ. If you tried to get near to God before, which you probably never would have tried to do anyway because no one seeks God, you would have died on the spot. But when we come dressed in the blood of Christ we are trusted and accepted as Jesus is. He lets us into his perfect Glorious house.
That’s why Jesus is the only way. Now does that mean we don’t have to do anything to be trusted and covered by Jesus blood? No it doesn’t. We have to surrender to Him or put our lives in trust with Christ. That’s what “believe” in the New Testament really means.
It’s in the last verses of our passage. This citizenship in the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ being the cornerstone. In other words the foundation is Jesus as revealed to us by the prophets and apostles teaching in the Bible. And it is him who continues to build us into a holy temple for God to dwell in by the Holy Spirit. And it is that which we must be surrendered to, the foundation, and the ongoing building or sanctification that Jesus does in us through the Spirit.
That’s why it’s not just a one time decision, but an ongoing surrendering, and the trusting of God to take our lives and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. It’s a marathon, and we too often treat it like a hundred meter sprint, we make a one time decision and nothing changes. Because once we are reconciled we should be able to overcome our distrust and fear, which will appear in our lives as fruit, as we trust God through obedience, and trust others through love, being willing to allow ourselves even to bear persecution without retaliation just as Jesus did. We become fearless through perfect love. We’ll talk more about this next week.
That is why this identity as reconciled is so important. With this identity we become secure in Christ, capable because of our fearless trust of God, to stand and stay standing in the face of the world’s persecution and our own fleshly doubts and temptations. As reconciled people we can be truly in the image and likeness of Christ, completely submitted to the one we trust. Until that is true for all of us, we are not fully trusting the Lord. Our fear wins more often than our trust does. You say you have faith, let me show you my faith by what I do, James says.
And I believe our degree of trust has to do with what I talked about last week, that we find in the first half of this chapter. Do we truly understand and believe the fullness of what Christ has done, who He is, so that we can without reservation put our lives in his hands completely, walking in the good works that he prepared for us through the Holy Spirit, and revealed to us through His Word.
And one last important thing from Paul that we find in 2 Cor 5 starting in verse 14, as we read this, ask yourself if this is true for you… Read 14-21.
I pray that that is your reality and that you know that you are reconciled to reconcile others.
