Alba 2-19-2023
RECONCILIATION THROUGH THE CROSS
Ephesians 2:14-18
A minister and his wife were going to give a mid-morning garden party. They invited everyone with engraved invitations.
The back yard of the parsonage was manicured, tables decorated the lawn, the clematis vine and rose bushes elegantly bloomed their floral splendor! This was going to be THE EVENT of the year.
The night before the party the minister discovered (to his horror) that one lady, a charter member, and the resident matriarch of the church, had been left off the invitation list.
The minister immediately called the lady, whose name I'm told was Mrs. Snoot. “I’m sorry, it was a terrible oversight,” he pleaded, “Won’t you please come to the garden party anyway?” Mrs. Snoot replied, “It’s too late, Preacher….I’ve already prayed for rain!”
Oh, it only takes little things to cause hostilities between people. And once started, it is difficult for them to reconcile. Even little things can cause whole nations to be at war. It doesn't take much.
It is said that World War I started with the shot heard 'round the world when in 1914 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated.
World War II came a fairly short time later. On September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain received a joyful homecoming after signing a peace pact with Nazi Germany. Chamberlain proudly declared “Peace for Our Time”.
Less than a year after that agreement, Hitler's invasion of Poland began World War II, and England declared war on Germany. Chamberlain was forced to resign eight months later.
Nations war with other nations and history records the deadly results. Reconciliation is hard to achieve.
Hostility is not limited to country against country. In our country we have repeated charges of racism when things go badly.
One would think that after a civil war was fought almost 170 years ago which resulted in the end of slavery, and the signing of the civil rights act of 1965, that the charge of racism would die.
But peace between various groups of people is difficult when they are being taught that our culture makes some to be victims and others to be oppressors. Such teaching causes more division than peace. More strife than reconciliation.
But then there is the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. It has gone on since the time of Abraham. Did you know that Noah's son, Shem, was still alive when his great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson Abraham came on the scene?
The Jews are sons of Shem. So how about the Arab/Muslim nations? Did they not come from Ishmael, a son of Abraham, all descendants of the same Shem? Why can't we all get along!
Thankfully the Trump administration was able to make some headway in what is called the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and, potentially, Sudan.
The Declaration at the beginning of that agreement states the following: “We, the undersigned, recognize the importance of maintaining and strengthening peace in the Middle East and around the world based on mutual understanding and coexistence, as well as respect for human dignity and freedom, including religious freedom.
“We encourage efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity.
“We believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among States advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world.”
The report is that so far progress in developing relations has achieved mixed results. That was also true of the early church. The gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ was open to all, Jews and Gentiles alike. The past animosity between these two groups had been great.
So the apostle Paul provides the churches with teaching in Ephesians chapter two that will help those Christians to get past their previous divisive behavior. Let's read Ephesians 2:14-18.
“14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, 16 and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
Paul is talking about the ending of the great conflict between the Jew and the Gentile Christians of his day. He says the first thing Jesus did was to break down the “middle wall of separation”, also called the "dividing wall of hostility."
That refers to a feature of the temple in Jerusalem. There was a wall which ran through the court of the temple, dividing it into two sections, separating the court of the Gentiles, where the Gentiles were permitted to come, from the inner court, into which only Jews were permitted.
In the year 1871, archaeologists, digging around the temple site in Jerusalem, actually uncovered the very stone that marked this warning to the Gentiles. These are the actual words, translated from both the Hebrew and the Greek:
"No man of another race is to proceed within the partition and enclosing wall about the sanctuary. Any one arrested there will have himself to blame for the penalty of death which will be imposed as a consequence."
The hostility was strong. But Jesus came and made reconciliation possible. Jesus breaks down the barriers we may construct based on our foolish ways, and brings peace to both Jew and Gentile alike.
We all stand on exactly the same ground. Jew and Gentile alike need to be forgiven. Our Lord gives us a common ground of forgiveness. And because He did that, there is no room left for hostility.
Those who come to Jesus in obedient faith, have come to the same place, no matter their background. So verse 15 says that in Christ we are one. The things we may see as differences disappear. Jesus makes us one. He creates us in Himself as one new creation. And He can do that because He is the Creator. Scripture says that “all things were created by Him” (Colossians 1:16)
If He can create the world, He can make us new. And oh, how we and the world need that! Because when people are made new in Christ, the walls of prejudice and division are broken down.
The old ways don't exist anymore for God’s people. Galatians 3:26-28 tells us, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
To drive home this truth, that we are all made one in Jesus, Paul expanded on this a couple of chapters later in Ephesians 4:4-6 that says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
There is a unity formed which cannot be discovered apart from the reconciling work of Jesus Christ. When we are one in Christ, the barriers are broken down and we are together in one household, the household of God. That is the blueprint for world peace.
Ted Turner, founder of the Turner Broadcasting System and the Cable News Network (CNN) is rich and powerful, but he is also strongly opposed to Christianity, openly ridiculing both Jesus and Bible.
Several years ago in Atlanta, he told a gathering of contributors to CNN’s World Report that he wanted to see if anybody had a real vision for a world at peace and in harmony with the environment. So he bankrolled a competition to find and produce a book that would present a workable plan for world peace.
He reported, "Out of 10,000 manuscripts submitted, we did not find one plausible treatise on how to get to a sustainable, peaceful future." Then he added, "Without a feasible plan, the prospects of creating peace are grim."
He is absolutely right. And the tragedy of it all is that Ted Turner has easily available to him the one book that speaks of peace, of a "peace that passes all understanding," and of Jesus, the one who offers us that peace.
It is a peace that is available because of reconciliation through the cross of Jesus. Isaiah 53:5 proclaims: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (NIV).
These are prophetic words written over seven centuries before the crucifixion. They were fulfilled when Jesus bore that heavy cross to Calvary's hill where He offered Himself for us.
An American business man enjoyed the famous Passion Play at Eureka Springs, Arkansas. After the play, the man went backstage to meet the actor who portrayed Jesus.
As they talked, the man saw the cross that the actor carried in the play. Before the actor had a chance to stop him, the business man handed over his camera and said, "Hey, take a picture of me carrying the cross." He bent over and tried in vain to lift the huge cross to his shoulders.
He turned in frustration to the actor and said, "I thought it would be hollow; why is it so heavy?" With a smile of compassion the actor answered, "If I could not feel the weight of it, it would be impossible to play the part."
When Jesus went to Calvary, He carried our sins with Him. Perhaps this reality alone caused the cross to weigh so heavily upon the strong shoulders of the carpenter from Nazareth.
Unless we feel this weight He bore, we will never fully understand the meaning of how much He has done for us. For you. For me. Jesus died a RECONCILING death.
Once there was no peace between us and God because of sin. When Jesus hung on that cross, the only thing separating man from God was sin. And when God poured out His wrath on that sin, it was laid that day on His Son.
In His flesh, Jesus abolished the hostility. He put it to death. He nailed it to the cross. That day, as the carol sings, there came "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinner reconciled!"
What is reconciliation? When you sit down with your records and the bank’s records and begin to make sure they agree, we call that “reconciling” the books. That means, we go over them to make sure that there’s no disagreement between them.
Similarly, a peace treaty is a document drawn up by two parties that are at odds with one another to bring reconciliation. In a sense, a “peace treaty” between sinful humanity and our holy God has been drawn up, and Jesus has signed it with His blood shed on that cross.
As we look at this whole second chapter of Ephesians, it tells a lot about ourselves. It says we were dead in our transgressions and sins. It says we walked according to the course of this world.
We were children of wrath. We were far away. We were foreigners and aliens. These things speak of our sin and shame in the past tense; all before Christ is in the lives of believers. Is that true about you? We need peace with God. We need to be “reconciled.”
Thankfully because Jesus made possible reconciliation through the cross, we can be reconciled to God. Sin's penalty is paid and we can be forgiven by coming to Him in obedient faith.
But that reconciliation does even more. If nations were serving the Lord, we would not have wars. And if people were truly born again, there would not be racism.
Our brokenness is what results in the mentality that looks at other people who are unlike ourselves in color, language, creed, socio-economic status, philosophy, or geographical location and causes us to treat them differently or inferior because of the differences that exist.
But when we acknowledge our sin and allow Jesus to be the Lord and Savior of our lives, the differences we have with others disappear. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
Because He Himself is our peace. And through Him we all have access by one Spirit to the heavenly Father. The blood of Christ, shed on the cross, brings us together with God, and it brings us together with each other.
Reconciliation is possible, because of the cross of Jesus Christ.
CLOSE:
After ten years of marriage, Cindy and Chip Altemos were in the long process of getting a divorce. The baggage they brought from their previous marriages seemed too great to overcome, so they separated and even agreed to date other people.
Five years into the painful separation, Chip was in the hospital with kidney failure. His health was deteriorating rapidly, but his soon-to-be ex-wife came to his aid—in spite of Chip's being in another relationship at the time. “He was still my husband,” she told the press. “There was no way I could walk around with two kidneys, and he had none. It was the right thing to do.” She agreed to donate a kidney, telling Chip there were no strings attached.
The transplant took place on February 21, 2007, and a funny thing happened as they both recovered in the hospital: they fell back in love. Chip thought to himself, “Why would I want to date someone else, when I have a woman who would give part of herself so I can keep living?”
He put an end to his other relationship and asked Cindy to come back home with him, and they celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary in October of that same year. (Associated Press, Kidney Saves Marriage, www.foxnews.com, 5-6-07)
There is something about sharing the same body that brings people together. So it is in the Body of Christ. We are part of one another, so we cannot remain apart from one another for too long without doing serious damage to the entire body.
The cross of Christ brings us together as one. It brings us together as one nation – so be hopeful. It brings us together as one body – so be healed.
