Unity in the Gospel
Ephesians 2:11-17
|
Sermon Summary In Paul's day, there was often tension between Jew and Gentile believers because of all their differences. However, Paul here strives to demon- strate that Christians have far more that unites them than divides them. |
|
Ephesians 2:11-18
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
One of the things that I love about the way we do church is that those who become members have to stand up here and take vows of membership. And one of the most important of those vows goes like this, “Do you promise to submit yourself to the government and discipline of this church and pledge to study its purity and peace?”
I’ve always found that second part of the vow quite interesting. It is one thing to say, “Yes, I will submit to my elders.” But it is another thing to commit to studying the purity and peace of the church. If you make a commitment to submit to your elders, you only have to do that when they come knocking at your door. You can, in a way, lay low and not worry about getting in trouble.
But if you promise to study the peace and purity of the church, that’s different. When you say yes to that, you make a commitment - an all-in commitment. You commit yourself to daily doing whatever you can to promote the unity of the church. You pledge to make it your life’s objective to keep factions from rising and doing whatever possible to solve any conflict that may arise.
And that is exactly what Paul calls us to in the passage before us. The Ephesian church was like every other church. It was a veritable tinderbox. It was ever on the brink of exploding. Part of the reason for this is that it was an international church. Right there in the same congregation were found Jews and Gentiles, two peoples who had a long history of hating each other. These were the Hatfields and McCoys of their day.
If ever there was a church that would have been on the verge of splitting, it was the Ephesian church. So Paul takes this opportunity to remind them that they were to be a united people. They are to be a people inseparably joined together in Christ.
I love this passage because it should be a reminder to us that we are to be a united corpus as well. We are a diverse bunch and there is always the possibility of faction. And we are sinners too. So, as with every church, discord could easily pop up and end up fracturing our fellowship. And like the Ephesian church, we need to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ has united us together.
Do you know what Paul does? He helps preserve the unity of the Ephesian church by reminding the members of it how much they have in common. There is more that unites us than divides us. Really, if we keep what we have in common in mind, we will be less likely to be divided.
What do we have in common? Well, there are actually five things that are mentioned in this passage.
I. We have a common background
There’s always a bond between people who have some kind of similar background. I remember being on my trip to Israel and someone walking past us said, “O-H!” and our group responded by saying, “I-O.” Someone in our group was wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt and this random person who was walking past happened to be from Columbus, OH. There we were on the other side of the planet and we were talking Ohio State Buckeyes. There was a bond because we had all come from the same place.
Well, that’s what Paul is doing in the first couple of verses. He’s showing that these Jews and Gentiles have something in common.
You might look at it at first and say, “Paul’s talking about the Gentiles and how they had nothing in common with the Jews.” The Gentiles were uncircumcised, and the Jews were circumcised. They were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel (i.e. they were not a part of this chosen nation). They were strangers to the covenants of promise. It would seem at first glance that Paul’s talking about how they have radically different backgrounds.
Well, the point he is making is that these Gentiles are sinners, right? hey were without God, without hope in this world, and didn’t have any interest in Christ. In other words, they were far off - far from God and deep in sin.
But notice what Paul says about the Jews. They may have had all these great privileges; they may have had the covenant promises; they may have had a special nearness to God as his chosen people. But notice what Paul calls them. He says that they are known as “the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.”
Do you see how that is a little jab? You know what that means, don’t you? Remember that outward circumcision didn’t really mean anything. It was supposed to point to the inward circumcision of the heart. The Jews may have had a lot of perks, but in their hearts, they were just as far away from God as the Gentiles.
Do you know what can help preserve unity in this church? It’s recognizing that we all have the same problem. We all come from the same starting point. Each of us was a sinner. Some of us might have grown up in the church; some of us might have never been to church until very recently. But there was a time when each and every one of us was estranged from God.
It’s getting to be Christmas time and I bet my kids are going to start listening to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It’s a story about the Herdmans and how these kids who have never gone to church before (and are, shall we say, a little rough around the edges) come to be in the church Christmas pageant. It can be hilarious at points as it recounts how the church folks interact with the Herdman kids. It’s a great book. But do you know what the point of it is? The point is that the church folks are, when it comes down to brass tax, just as sinful as the Herdman kids.
You know, there’s no greater equalizer than that. When it all comes down to it, we all deserve God’s wrath and curse. And if we recognize that we all used to live in the same neighborhood, that we all were in deep need of God’s grace, then we will likely realize that there’s less reason to be at odds with one another.
Secondly, our unity stems from our common standing with God.
II. We have a common standing with God
Just as we each started off as sinners, each of us was brought near to God. As we mentioned, verses 11-13 emphasize what the Gentiles had been missing. But notice that that was a previous life. Paul says, “at one time” you were the uncircumcision, you were separate from Christ, you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel… But now,” he says in verse 13, “in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near.”
What do these Jewish and Gentile Christians now have in common? It’s that they both have a special relationship with the Lord, a closeness with God.
The Jews couldn’t look down on the Gentiles anymore. The Gentile Christians now had equal standing with them. They weren’t lesser Christians or some sort of second-class believers. They had all been brought near and enjoyed the same degree of fellowship with God.
This is what we should recognize too: there is no one who is more spiritual than anyone else in this congregation. There may be some who are more mature, some may be a bit more advanced in holiness, but no one has any less standing with God. We are all as close as anyone can be to God because we all live in union with Christ. We all have that nearness of relationship.
There’s a great story about George Whitefield and John Wesley. Early on, Whitefield and Wesley had a very close relationship. They studied together at Oxford and did many activities together. They visited prisons and taught orphans to read together. As a matter of fact, Wesley entered the ministry only after the urging of Whitefield.
But while they had had a robust relationship during those years, filled with Scripture study and godly encouragement, they later had a bit of a falling out. Whitefield took a Calvinistic approach to his theology and Wesley was hotly against it. As a matter of fact, Wesley preached a famous sermon against Calvinism. His railing against it didn’t do much to help the already-strained relationship. Whitefield isn’t all that innocent either. When he was invited to preach at Wesley’s headquarters in London, he preached on the doctrines of grace, something that was just a little provocative.
Knowing that there had been a breach in the relationship and that the two were at odds with one another, people began to wonder about where things stood. Some of Whitefield’s followers began to question whether or not Wesley would even be in heaven since he questioned the nature of God’s grace. Someone came up to Whitefield and asked him, “Will we see John Wesley in heaven?” Whitefield responded by saying, “I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance, we shall hardly get sight of him.”
You know what Whitefield was saying there, don’t you? He was saying that, whatever their differences in doctrine were, the gospel was still the primary thing. So there should be no looking down on one another. There should be no kind of segregation due to one being better than the other.
Purity of doctrine is important; there’s no doubt about that. But no one is nearer to God because of their doctrine. God doesn’t relate to his people on the basis of some kind of ladder that they can climb. It’s simply not true that if you have a better life or your understanding of Scripture is a bit sharper, then you are a little higher up, a little closer to God. It’s not like that.
God relates to people on the basis of grace. And since he relates to us on the basis of his grace, each of us has an equal share in him. Each of us has equal standing before him. There’s not one of us that can look down upon another because God has brought each of us near.
The third thing that we have in common is the way of salvation.
III. We have a common way of salvation
There is, of course, only one way of salvation and it is through the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s through the atoning sacrifice that he made on Calvary. Paul talks about that in this passage in a variety of ways:
In verse 13 he says that we were brought near “by the blood of Christ.”
In verse 14 he says, “He himself is our peace.” How did he become our peace? It is by killing the hostility, as Paul says in verse 16. What Paul is talking about is the cross. Jesus became the sacrifice that atoned for our sins.
You’ve got to understand that God was hostile toward us. God was our enemy. We were his enemies. There was no peace between God and us. We had provoked his wrath and displeasure with our sins and we deserved to die. That flood of terror would have been released upon us if Christ had not stood in our place. The only reason we have peace with God is that Jesus shed his blood.
When Jesus went to the cross, he stood there as our substitute. He died as a sacrifice in our place. God’s wrath fell upon him instead of us. That’s why Paul can say that Jesus is our peace. God’s wrath has been turned away from us; the demand for blood has been satisfied.
You should understand that there’s no possible way that we can now be at odds with one another. Each of us stands at the foot of the cross. Each of us has come to God through the blood of Christ. The Lord is no longer hostile toward us; how then can I be hostile toward anyone of these people?
This is what makes us able to be long-suffering with one another. Sometimes you will want to walk away from someone. You’ll not want anything to do with them. But when you think, “Christ died for this person, just like he died for me,” that puts things in a different perspective. That’s going to make you have a different attitude towards them.
If God loves them enough to sacrifice his Son for them, then we can love them too. And we can endure whatever differences may come between us.
We have so much in common. We have a common background (we were sinners, all of whom were far from God in some way). We have a common standing with God (we’ve been brought near to him and entered into a relationship with him). We have a common way of salvation (through the blood of Christ; he’s died for each of us).
There’s a fourth thing that we have in common. It’s a common way of life.
IV. We have a common way of life
Verse 14 says that Jesus has “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace.”
Paul’s talking about Jewish traditions and laws. Not the moral law, but the ceremonial law, things like circumcision and dietary laws. There were certain things that the Jews were commanded to do that made fellowship with Gentiles pretty much impossible. You couldn’t just go over to the Gentile’s house for lunch because you can’t eat their unclean food, and Gentiles aren’t really interested in getting all cozy with the Jews because of the whole circumcision thing.
But Paul says here that because Jesus has come and has died, those things have been abolished. The things we often associate with the Mosaic law and those special ordinances that he instituted have been abolished. So now there can be mutual fellowship.
It’s kind of illustrated in the phrase “dividing wall of hostility.” In the temple, there were certain sectors that certain groups of people could not enter. There was the Gentile court and then, beyond that, there was the Jewish court. The Gentiles couldn’t go into the Jewish area.
As a matter of fact, there was a placard placed at the entrance to the Jewish court forbidding Gentiles to answer. It basically said, “We’re not responsible for what happens to you if you pass through this gate.”
Paul is saying that when it comes to this barrier and any other barrier that might hinder your fellowship, you need to understand that it’s all gone. But more than that, these laws and such often created hostility between Jews and Gentiles. Not that the laws themselves were wrong. It’s just that people’s hearts used these laws to create hostility. Jews could use these laws as an excuse to hate Gentiles, and Gentiles could hate the Jews because they wouldn’t buy their meats and acted so aloof.
So what really is at heart here is the heart itself. It’s not only hostility with God that is killed, but it is the hostility that Jews and Gentiles had with each other.
And isn’t that what really makes for union and communion with one another? It’s not that we don’t have problems, it's that we seek to kill the hostility that creates those problems. We seek to rectify things because we know that there should be no hostility between us.
So, if you are in a disagreement with your brother, you should recognize, “God has called me to a different way of life. He’s called me to holiness. He’s called me to humility. He’s called me to love this person.” That’s going to alter things. Where the hatred would have caused a split in your fellowship, the new attitude creates an atmosphere where you can live together.
V. We have a common access to God
Look at verses 17 and 18. Paul says, “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
You can kind of look at this passage like this: the Jews and Gentiles were on opposite extremes. They were separated. But in the first couple of verses, you see that the Gentiles gain something. They come into the commonwealth of Israel; they gain the covenants of promise; they are now near to God.
Then in the second part, you find that the Jews lose something. The ceremonial laws that they had to follow are all gone; they’ve been abolished. So the Gentiles gain something, the Jews lose something, and they come together.
But here in verses 17-18, what you find is that they now both gain something. There’s one thing that Jews really didn’t have in OT times. It was access to God. When they went into the temple, they may have been able to get closer to God, but they didn’t get to go all that much farther. They gained maybe 50-100 feet, but that was it. They were not allowed into the Holy of Holies. They didn’t have unhindered access to God because only the high priest could go in there, and only once a year.
So Paul is reminding his audience that all of us have this unique blessing. Jesus’ coming has given us a special privilege. We have access to God. The Spirit of God draws us into His presence in a new and unique way.
And here we are today. Our worship is not in a temple or in some deserted place. When we enter into this time of worship, we find ourselves in the presence of God. When we bow our heads to pray, we don’t shout our prayers from a distance. We actually come before the Lord.
And we should remember that we all step over that threshold together.
Have you ever thought about what it will be like when we get to heaven? Maybe you’ll run into that Christian brother that you were estranged from on earth, and you’ll say, “Boy, that was stupid of us, wasn’t it? Why were we so petty?” Why? It’s because you’ll be in the presence of God. You’ll be in heaven and you’ll realize that those things shouldn’t have separated you.
Well, the truth is, we already have that same kind of access. We might not be in heaven, but we have heaven opened to us. We do have that nearness to God. And since we do, we shouldn’t have to wait until heaven to be united.
Conclusion:
If you would ask me how I would sum things up, I would say that the best way to do it is to think about what we will do in just a few moments. The best summation of this passage is found in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We call it Communion. Why is that? It’s because it is a time when we have communion with God and with each other.
When we celebrate this meal together, we are all recognizing the one who died for us. We are recognizing that we need a Savior. And we enjoy the fact that the Lord comes to us and ministers his grace to us during that time.
The reason we partake together is not simply for ceremony’s sake. It is not just a part of the ritual. It is to remember that we all are united. We come before him together and enjoy his presence as a corporate body.
That’s why there is no better symbol of our unity than the Lord’s Supper. And I hope that every time we partake of it, we might be strengthened all that much more so that we can strive for the peace and purity of the church.
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
One of the things that I love about the way we do church is that those who become members have to stand up here and take vows of membership. And one of the most important of those vows goes like this, “Do you promise to submit yourself to the government and discipline of this church and pledge to study its purity and peace?”
I’ve always found that second part of the vow quite interesting. It is one thing to say, “Yes, I will submit to my elders.” But it is another thing to commit to studying the purity and peace of the church. If you make a commitment to submit to your elders, you only have to do that when they come knocking at your door. You can, in a way, lay low and not worry about getting in trouble.
But if you promise to study the peace and purity of the church, that’s different. When you say yes to that, you make a commitment - an all-in commitment. You commit yourself to daily doing whatever you can to promote the unity of the church. You pledge to make it your life’s objective to keep factions from rising and doing whatever possible to solve any conflict that may arise.
And that is exactly what Paul calls us to in the passage before us. The Ephesian church was like every other church. It was a veritable tinderbox. It was ever on the brink of exploding. Part of the reason for this is that it was an international church. Right there in the same congregation were found Jews and Gentiles, two peoples who had a long history of hating each other. These were the Hatfields and McCoys of their day.
If ever there was a church that would have been on the verge of splitting, it was the Ephesian church. So Paul takes this opportunity to remind them that they were to be a united people. They are to be a people inseparably joined together in Christ.
I love this passage because it should be a reminder to us that we are to be a united corpus as well. We are a diverse bunch and there is always the possibility of faction. And we are sinners too. So, as with every church, discord could easily pop up and end up fracturing our fellowship. And like the Ephesian church, we need to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ has united us together.
Do you know what Paul does? He helps preserve the unity of the Ephesian church by reminding the members of it how much they have in common. There is more that unites us than divides us. Really, if we keep what we have in common in mind, we will be less likely to be divided.
What do we have in common? Well, there are actually five things that are mentioned in this passage.
I. We have a common background
There’s always a bond between people who have some kind of similar background. I remember being on my trip to Israel and someone walking past us said, “O-H!” and our group responded by saying, “I-O.” Someone in our group was wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt and this random person who was walking past happened to be from Columbus, OH. There we were on the other side of the planet and we were talking Ohio State Buckeyes. There was a bond because we had all come from the same place.
Well, that’s what Paul is doing in the first couple of verses. He’s showing that these Jews and Gentiles have something in common.
You might look at it at first and say, “Paul’s talking about the Gentiles and how they had nothing in common with the Jews.” The Gentiles were uncircumcised, and the Jews were circumcised. They were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel (i.e. they were not a part of this chosen nation). They were strangers to the covenants of promise. It would seem at first glance that Paul’s talking about how they have radically different backgrounds.
Well, the point he is making is that these Gentiles are sinners, right? hey were without God, without hope in this world, and didn’t have any interest in Christ. In other words, they were far off - far from God and deep in sin.
But notice what Paul says about the Jews. They may have had all these great privileges; they may have had the covenant promises; they may have had a special nearness to God as his chosen people. But notice what Paul calls them. He says that they are known as “the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.”
Do you see how that is a little jab? You know what that means, don’t you? Remember that outward circumcision didn’t really mean anything. It was supposed to point to the inward circumcision of the heart. The Jews may have had a lot of perks, but in their hearts, they were just as far away from God as the Gentiles.
Do you know what can help preserve unity in this church? It’s recognizing that we all have the same problem. We all come from the same starting point. Each of us was a sinner. Some of us might have grown up in the church; some of us might have never been to church until very recently. But there was a time when each and every one of us was estranged from God.
It’s getting to be Christmas time and I bet my kids are going to start listening to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It’s a story about the Herdmans and how these kids who have never gone to church before (and are, shall we say, a little rough around the edges) come to be in the church Christmas pageant. It can be hilarious at points as it recounts how the church folks interact with the Herdman kids. It’s a great book. But do you know what the point of it is? The point is that the church folks are, when it comes down to brass tax, just as sinful as the Herdman kids.
You know, there’s no greater equalizer than that. When it all comes down to it, we all deserve God’s wrath and curse. And if we recognize that we all used to live in the same neighborhood, that we all were in deep need of God’s grace, then we will likely realize that there’s less reason to be at odds with one another.
Secondly, our unity stems from our common standing with God.
II. We have a common standing with God
Just as we each started off as sinners, each of us was brought near to God. As we mentioned, verses 11-13 emphasize what the Gentiles had been missing. But notice that that was a previous life. Paul says, “at one time” you were the uncircumcision, you were separate from Christ, you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel… But now,” he says in verse 13, “in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near.”
What do these Jewish and Gentile Christians now have in common? It’s that they both have a special relationship with the Lord, a closeness with God.
The Jews couldn’t look down on the Gentiles anymore. The Gentile Christians now had equal standing with them. They weren’t lesser Christians or some sort of second-class believers. They had all been brought near and enjoyed the same degree of fellowship with God.
This is what we should recognize too: there is no one who is more spiritual than anyone else in this congregation. There may be some who are more mature, some may be a bit more advanced in holiness, but no one has any less standing with God. We are all as close as anyone can be to God because we all live in union with Christ. We all have that nearness of relationship.
There’s a great story about George Whitefield and John Wesley. Early on, Whitefield and Wesley had a very close relationship. They studied together at Oxford and did many activities together. They visited prisons and taught orphans to read together. As a matter of fact, Wesley entered the ministry only after the urging of Whitefield.
But while they had had a robust relationship during those years, filled with Scripture study and godly encouragement, they later had a bit of a falling out. Whitefield took a Calvinistic approach to his theology and Wesley was hotly against it. As a matter of fact, Wesley preached a famous sermon against Calvinism. His railing against it didn’t do much to help the already-strained relationship. Whitefield isn’t all that innocent either. When he was invited to preach at Wesley’s headquarters in London, he preached on the doctrines of grace, something that was just a little provocative.
Knowing that there had been a breach in the relationship and that the two were at odds with one another, people began to wonder about where things stood. Some of Whitefield’s followers began to question whether or not Wesley would even be in heaven since he questioned the nature of God’s grace. Someone came up to Whitefield and asked him, “Will we see John Wesley in heaven?” Whitefield responded by saying, “I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance, we shall hardly get sight of him.”
You know what Whitefield was saying there, don’t you? He was saying that, whatever their differences in doctrine were, the gospel was still the primary thing. So there should be no looking down on one another. There should be no kind of segregation due to one being better than the other.
Purity of doctrine is important; there’s no doubt about that. But no one is nearer to God because of their doctrine. God doesn’t relate to his people on the basis of some kind of ladder that they can climb. It’s simply not true that if you have a better life or your understanding of Scripture is a bit sharper, then you are a little higher up, a little closer to God. It’s not like that.
God relates to people on the basis of grace. And since he relates to us on the basis of his grace, each of us has an equal share in him. Each of us has equal standing before him. There’s not one of us that can look down upon another because God has brought each of us near.
The third thing that we have in common is the way of salvation.
III. We have a common way of salvation
There is, of course, only one way of salvation and it is through the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s through the atoning sacrifice that he made on Calvary. Paul talks about that in this passage in a variety of ways:
In verse 13 he says that we were brought near “by the blood of Christ.”
In verse 14 he says, “He himself is our peace.” How did he become our peace? It is by killing the hostility, as Paul says in verse 16. What Paul is talking about is the cross. Jesus became the sacrifice that atoned for our sins.
You’ve got to understand that God was hostile toward us. God was our enemy. We were his enemies. There was no peace between God and us. We had provoked his wrath and displeasure with our sins and we deserved to die. That flood of terror would have been released upon us if Christ had not stood in our place. The only reason we have peace with God is that Jesus shed his blood.
When Jesus went to the cross, he stood there as our substitute. He died as a sacrifice in our place. God’s wrath fell upon him instead of us. That’s why Paul can say that Jesus is our peace. God’s wrath has been turned away from us; the demand for blood has been satisfied.
You should understand that there’s no possible way that we can now be at odds with one another. Each of us stands at the foot of the cross. Each of us has come to God through the blood of Christ. The Lord is no longer hostile toward us; how then can I be hostile toward anyone of these people?
This is what makes us able to be long-suffering with one another. Sometimes you will want to walk away from someone. You’ll not want anything to do with them. But when you think, “Christ died for this person, just like he died for me,” that puts things in a different perspective. That’s going to make you have a different attitude towards them.
If God loves them enough to sacrifice his Son for them, then we can love them too. And we can endure whatever differences may come between us.
We have so much in common. We have a common background (we were sinners, all of whom were far from God in some way). We have a common standing with God (we’ve been brought near to him and entered into a relationship with him). We have a common way of salvation (through the blood of Christ; he’s died for each of us).
There’s a fourth thing that we have in common. It’s a common way of life.
IV. We have a common way of life
Verse 14 says that Jesus has “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace.”
Paul’s talking about Jewish traditions and laws. Not the moral law, but the ceremonial law, things like circumcision and dietary laws. There were certain things that the Jews were commanded to do that made fellowship with Gentiles pretty much impossible. You couldn’t just go over to the Gentile’s house for lunch because you can’t eat their unclean food, and Gentiles aren’t really interested in getting all cozy with the Jews because of the whole circumcision thing.
But Paul says here that because Jesus has come and has died, those things have been abolished. The things we often associate with the Mosaic law and those special ordinances that he instituted have been abolished. So now there can be mutual fellowship.
It’s kind of illustrated in the phrase “dividing wall of hostility.” In the temple, there were certain sectors that certain groups of people could not enter. There was the Gentile court and then, beyond that, there was the Jewish court. The Gentiles couldn’t go into the Jewish area.
As a matter of fact, there was a placard placed at the entrance to the Jewish court forbidding Gentiles to answer. It basically said, “We’re not responsible for what happens to you if you pass through this gate.”
Paul is saying that when it comes to this barrier and any other barrier that might hinder your fellowship, you need to understand that it’s all gone. But more than that, these laws and such often created hostility between Jews and Gentiles. Not that the laws themselves were wrong. It’s just that people’s hearts used these laws to create hostility. Jews could use these laws as an excuse to hate Gentiles, and Gentiles could hate the Jews because they wouldn’t buy their meats and acted so aloof.
So what really is at heart here is the heart itself. It’s not only hostility with God that is killed, but it is the hostility that Jews and Gentiles had with each other.
And isn’t that what really makes for union and communion with one another? It’s not that we don’t have problems, it's that we seek to kill the hostility that creates those problems. We seek to rectify things because we know that there should be no hostility between us.
So, if you are in a disagreement with your brother, you should recognize, “God has called me to a different way of life. He’s called me to holiness. He’s called me to humility. He’s called me to love this person.” That’s going to alter things. Where the hatred would have caused a split in your fellowship, the new attitude creates an atmosphere where you can live together.
V. We have a common access to God
Look at verses 17 and 18. Paul says, “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
You can kind of look at this passage like this: the Jews and Gentiles were on opposite extremes. They were separated. But in the first couple of verses, you see that the Gentiles gain something. They come into the commonwealth of Israel; they gain the covenants of promise; they are now near to God.
Then in the second part, you find that the Jews lose something. The ceremonial laws that they had to follow are all gone; they’ve been abolished. So the Gentiles gain something, the Jews lose something, and they come together.
But here in verses 17-18, what you find is that they now both gain something. There’s one thing that Jews really didn’t have in OT times. It was access to God. When they went into the temple, they may have been able to get closer to God, but they didn’t get to go all that much farther. They gained maybe 50-100 feet, but that was it. They were not allowed into the Holy of Holies. They didn’t have unhindered access to God because only the high priest could go in there, and only once a year.
So Paul is reminding his audience that all of us have this unique blessing. Jesus’ coming has given us a special privilege. We have access to God. The Spirit of God draws us into His presence in a new and unique way.
And here we are today. Our worship is not in a temple or in some deserted place. When we enter into this time of worship, we find ourselves in the presence of God. When we bow our heads to pray, we don’t shout our prayers from a distance. We actually come before the Lord.
And we should remember that we all step over that threshold together.
Have you ever thought about what it will be like when we get to heaven? Maybe you’ll run into that Christian brother that you were estranged from on earth, and you’ll say, “Boy, that was stupid of us, wasn’t it? Why were we so petty?” Why? It’s because you’ll be in the presence of God. You’ll be in heaven and you’ll realize that those things shouldn’t have separated you.
Well, the truth is, we already have that same kind of access. We might not be in heaven, but we have heaven opened to us. We do have that nearness to God. And since we do, we shouldn’t have to wait until heaven to be united.
Conclusion:
If you would ask me how I would sum things up, I would say that the best way to do it is to think about what we will do in just a few moments. The best summation of this passage is found in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We call it Communion. Why is that? It’s because it is a time when we have communion with God and with each other.
When we celebrate this meal together, we are all recognizing the one who died for us. We are recognizing that we need a Savior. And we enjoy the fact that the Lord comes to us and ministers his grace to us during that time.
The reason we partake together is not simply for ceremony’s sake. It is not just a part of the ritual. It is to remember that we all are united. We come before him together and enjoy his presence as a corporate body.
That’s why there is no better symbol of our unity than the Lord’s Supper. And I hope that every time we partake of it, we might be strengthened all that much more so that we can strive for the peace and purity of the church.