As I sat contemplating what title I should give this sermon, I asked myself, as is my usual custom when staring at a blank page on my computer screen waiting for inspiration, ‘what title would address the real meat of this passage; the crux; the primary truth being conveyed?’
I read the verses several times. Then I read verses before and after these verses several times. Then I looked at each phrase of these verses individually and pondered them. Several catchy titles came to mind.
But in the end it seemed to me that although there is much to say from Ephesians 2:13-16, if all of it was swirling around and down into an ever tightening vortex, like a funnel or a whirlpool, down there at the narrowest point where it all comes together, would be the words “He Himself”.
I see that we were shut out by the super-religious and kept ignorant of the covenants and the promises. I see that we were far off.
Then I scan verse 14 and learn that there was a dividing wall. A barrier between man and man, and man and God.
But at the center of it all what stood out in sharp relief against this dark and hope-denying backdrop, were these two hope-restoring, life-promising words; “He Himself”.
I want for us to focus today on why God, and only God could have wrought change in these circumstances. I want us to see that He is the only Being in the universe who was in a position to come to our aid, and I want us to see clearly the dear price He was willing to pay to make us one with Himself.
The first obstacle was PRIDE
I’d like to read an excerpt from C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” Book III; a chapter entitled, ‘The Great Sin’.
“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind...If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride. It is because I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competitive by its very nature - while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”
I think a rephrasing of this last line could be very appropriately applied to the attitude of the Jews; the ones Paul refers to in verse 11 as “the Circumcision”. Pride gets no pleasure in the possession itself, but in the fact of possessing it.
It was not to be a symbol of national pride, but that is exactly what they made it. If you were circumcised, you were acceptable to them. If you were one of the uncircumcised masses outside of their religious elite, you were a ‘dog’.
In the act of idolizing the Law and the rite of circumcision they were entirely missing the point and the intended purpose of them.
Paul clarifies for us in Philippians 3:3, that true, spiritual worship is that which glories in Christ, the giver of the Law and the fulfiller of the type of circumcision, not putting confidence in the flesh ~ meaning, thinking the carrying out of religious duty and exercise is what saves.
God gave them circumcision as a sign of an inward truth. They were to be separated unto Him, as His own possession and as the nation through which He was to bless the nations by the coming of His Promised One.
The primary reason they became so murderously enraged at Jesus, was because He talked of letting in the gentiles. He indicated that salvation was for all people and nations who would believe. He told them that many would come from east and west (indicating the gentile nations), and sit at His Father’s table. This outraged them.
But the pride of the Jews wasn’t the only pride God had to deal with, was it? As Lewis indicated in the quote I read, Pride is universal. It is an entity that has insinuated itself into the very core of our being and the very fabric of human history.
Look at every war fought, every law suit filed, every failure of any type of relationship, from business to marriage, and at the base of it you find Pride.
And nowhere will you find it more vibrant, more alive and active, than in the church. Religious pride must be the most hypocritical of all, because while it pretends humility to God, it debases everyone else. And as Lewis said later in that same chapter, they are really worshiping an imaginary God, who approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people.
What the Jews were given to share that they might be a blessing to the nations, and that God might bless the nations through them, they turned into the very thing used to boast in while shutting the rest out.
And before we pass on from here today fellow Christian, let us not let it escape our notice that though times and cultures change, Pride does not. It is a twisted, ugly, pathetic little monster that finds ways to manifest itself in every man of every climb and every tribe and every time. And just like the Jews used the ordinances and the Law and circumcision itself to put themselves above the rest, so we can very easily fall into the trap of using baptism and cultural moral standards, and the ‘old Baptist way of doing things’, to effectively nail our doors shut to all others.
The sad thing about that is, when we do those things; have that attitude; exercise that pride, thinking they should be jealous and want what we have, our very actions are inciting them to declare that they’ll never darken our doors come heaven or come hell.
This was the great barrier then, and now as then, there is only one message that can overcome it.
So the first reason we see, here in Ephesians 2, that only God could have dealt with this problem, is that He is dealing with Pride itself; and no man could possibly have done that.
As we’ve noted, whether the relationship be man with man, or man with God, Pride’s primary fruit is HOSTILITY.
The word is only found in the New Testament, here in verses 15 and 16, and once in Luke 23:12. We’re told there that Herod and Pilate had been ‘at enmity’ with one another. It was a political thing. They were hostile toward one another. That ended when Pilate sent Jesus to be judged by Herod, and Herod having his ego properly stroked, softened toward Pilate and after that they were buds. Awww... how sweet.
Isn’t it interesting that the three times this word is used in the New Testament, Jesus is somehow involved in erasing it.
Enmity. Hostility.
Now, the word ‘enmity’ may be a little old fashioned. I guess about the only place we see it anymore is the bible and bible commentaries. But we all know about hostility, don’t we?
I felt it just recently, when I fell for a hoax email that tricked me into deleting an important program in my computer, thinking that program was a virus. In absolute frustration I wished I could find the greasy little fiend that sent out that hoax and delete a couple of his programs. I had to repent.
There’s certainly no shortage of open hostility in our world, is there? And people are finding ever-increasingly imaginative ways to express it.
Hostility. Hostile.
Hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles.
The Jews had a sign over the door to the inner court of the temple, warning that any Gentile who passed through that door would be put to death.
They wouldn’t even go into the home of a Gentile. That’s why the Roman Centurion whose daughter was sick said that he was not worthy to have Jesus come to his house. It’s why Peter’s friends were amazed to hear that he had willingly gone into the home of another Centurion named Cornelius (Acts 11:3). It wasn’t because they were Centurions; it was because they were Gentiles.
Hostility.
Hostility between man and man.
But there is another, even worse, sort of hostility. It is between man and God. Specifically here in verse 15, between man and God’s Law.
The Law of God shut out both Jew and Gentile; not by its content, certainly. Paul said in Romans that the law is holy and righteous and good (7:12).
No, it shut out all of mankind by virtue of man’s utter uselessness and inability to keep the Law.
It magnified hostility between God and His creation because it revealed the sinfulness of sin, but gave men no power to overcome the problem.
It demanded obedience but at the same time demonstrated man’s inability to obey.
There’s an old poem; I don’t know who first said it, but I repeat it every time I teach Romans.
“ ’Do this and live’, the Law commands,
But gives me neither feet nor hands.”
Hostility. Enmity.
It could be no other way. Man, in his insolent pride, presumed to walk away from God and rule his own life. That was sin. That decision in itself, was enmity. Hostility.
Man drew first blood in this war, and though he has vehemently denied it through history, God isn’t the unfair one. Man is. Like the song says,
“Died He, for me who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?”
- Wesley
Yes, He did. And this is precisely why I chose the title, “He Himself”. Because He confronted the pride, and He stood up to the hostility, and in His flesh abolished it.
Now I want you to see how He made peace between man and man (Jew and Gentile) and between mankind and God.
There was this debt we could not pay. We accrued it in Eden, when the first man committed the act for which Christ would have to die. In Colossians Paul calls it the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us.
Remember I said we drew first blood. God did not act hostile toward us. He never has. The first hostility was ours; and as our rightful due, our hostility resulted in decrees that were hostile toward us. Death. The wages of sin. It was our due.
But Paul says that ‘in His flesh’ He abolished the hostility. Killed it.
Catch that? We were hostile to God, but instead of killing us, His enemy, He killed the hostility, so we could be His friends!
Let’s look at that passage I referred to from Colossians 2:13-14
“And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
He’s telling the Colossians the same thing he wrote to the Ephesians. He abolished the enmity in His flesh. We’ve recently looked at Romans 8:3 and noted that when Paul said there that God condemned (judged) sin in the flesh, he was referring very specifically to the flesh of His Son as He hung nailed to the cross.
All of sin for all time was judged, condemned, and came under the fire of God’s wrath, in the body of His Christ there on that tree.
“He made Him who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf...” II Cor. 5:21
And in momentarily sensing separation from the Father, the Son cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” And in experiencing the plight of all mankind in sin, He became our merciful and faithful High Priest, able to sympathize with our weakness.
In His flesh, He abolished the hostility. He put it to death. He nailed it to the cross.
I want you to understand today, believer in Christ, that when they took His broken body down from the cross, the enmity stayed there. The certificate of debt stayed there. It did not come down with Him. It was paid in full, and blood-soaked and torn and defeated for eternity, it remains nailed to His cross. It is abolished forever.
Thus, the second half of the poem I began earlier;
A better way, God’s grace doth bring;
It bids me, ’Fly!’ and gives me wings!”
In His flesh He abolished the enmity and made peace between man and God.
But He also made peace between Jew and Gentile.
Here was the problem.
The Law and its ordinances were given to the Jew. If anyone was to obey them perfectly and be right with God, it would be the Jew. Gentiles had no chance. If righteousness was to come by the keeping of the Law, then only the Jew could hope ever to be righteous.
The Law and its ordinances became the point of hostility between the two groups. They could never have a mutual meeting place. No common ground on which to stand before each other, or before God.
There was a dividing wall, and it was the Law and the ordinances contained therein, that said, “Do this and live”.
But He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.
This is why Paul told the Galatians that there is now “...neither Jew nor Greek (gentile), slave nor freeman, male nor female. He was talking about God’s economy. God’s way of seeing things.
All one in Christ Jesus, and there is no distinction any more, except the one between those in Christ, and those outside of Christ.
He has broken down the dividing wall, He has abolished the enmity, killed the hostility, and reconciled both groups into one body to God through the cross.
It keeps coming back to this, doesn’t it? It’s about God. It’s not about us! What incredibly conceited and self-absorbed creatures we are!
Look at the big picture here.
By nature, we want the Law. Have you ever thought about that? We want the rules and the ordinances and the rituals and the standards, because that keeps it in our hands and we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are in control.
It’s so much easier (as long as we don’t look closely and admit how badly we’re failing to keep it), and it allows us to impose some kind of standard on others.
You should keep the Law. You should rise up to this standard. You should be like me; then we can get along famously.
It makes us feel very righteous. Very superior. It allows us to be oh, so proud of all our religious accomplishments. “Hi. I’m so and so, and I went to Africa as a missionary”. “Hi. I’m so and so, and I’ve served faithfully on the building and grounds committee for 13 years”. “Hi. I’m so and so, and I am so very happy that I am not like some of those other people”.
Well, you know... it manifests itself in so many ways, but there is one characteristic that is always present, however the legal attitude is demonstrated; it always points, ~whether positively or negatively~ to us.
It separates. It brings hostility. Enmity. Between man and God, and man and man.
But Christian, Christ has abolished in His flesh, the enmity. He has taken the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and nailed it to His cross.
He has made peace between man and man, in that there is nothing to divide them any more. No Law, nor ordinances to keep for righteousness’ sake. Just grace.
Grace that makes them into one new man, reconciled to God. See? There it is again. In the end, that is the ultimate goal; the ultimate purpose of salvation and the abolishing of all that separates.
“And His name will be called...Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6)
“But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity...”
now listen...
“...which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace...”
Peace made between man and man, apart from the Law,
“...and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross...”
Reconciled to God, apart from the Law, through grace alone.
“It bids me, ‘Fly!’ and gives me wings!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As we end today, just take a step back in your mind and see the whole of Ephesians 2. I know, we haven’t finished it yet. We will. But for now put all the pieces together
that we’ve studied so far and take it all in at once.
We were dead in trespasses and sins. Walking according to our lusts. Children of wrath. We were strangers and aliens, ignorant of the promises, without hope, without God.
Far off.
Imagine an astronaut accidentally ejected from his spaceship. Arms and legs splayed uselessly out to the side, floating through space with nothing to grab, no help enroute. Just floating uselessly; away...
But He Himself, by His blood, brought us near; in His flesh, took away the certificate of debt...abolished the hostility, made peace, took away all that could separate, made us one, and reconciled us to a loving Father who yearned to have us back.
He came down from the cross, but the debt stayed there.
It was for God and for His glory, and Jesus did it all.
No wonder Jeremiah called Him “Champion”
