Our Peace in Christ
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Hey, we’re in part 4 of our series through the book of Ephesians. We’ve entitled this Life in Christ, Life in Christ. And so we’re a church that really believes in studying God’s Word together, and we especially love doing it when we’re looking for Jesus on every page. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re continuing this series, Life in Christ.
We call it Life in Christ because that really is the theme of this 6-chapter series. Letter from the Apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus, and the word in Christ, or the phrase rather, in Christ repeats 36 times in various ways. In him, in Christ, in the beloved, in Christ Jesus, 36 times. And so that’s really what Christianity is, it’s Christ in you and you in Christ. And so Paul is teaching this afresh to us today.
He sent this letter to the church at Ephesus. It was a city that he knew well, a church that he knew well, he planted them, that church. It was a place that he stayed probably longer than he stayed anywhere else when he planted a church. We find in Acts chapter 19 and 20, he stayed there around 3 years. And so he really invested himself in the church of Ephesus.
It became really a Christian center that sent out church planters around Asia Minor, which is what that area was called at the time. It’s modern-day Turkey. And Ephesus was located on the west coast of Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, then Asia Minor, against— it was a seaport city off the Mediterranean Sea, a very influential city in the Roman Empire. It was probably one of the 4 largest cities in the Roman Empire, 200,000, 250,000 people lived there during Paul’s time, a very important city. And he’s writing this letter around 61, 62 AD, and he’s writing this letter from his first imprisonment in Rome, he’s under house arrest, And he’s writing to a people that he knows well and that he loves well.
And this book really divides itself naturally into 2 parts, 6 chapters. The first 3 chapters really tell us who we are in Christ, our position in Christ, our possessions in Christ. And the back half, the last 3 chapters, 4 through 6, really tell us our practices in Christ, what’s it look like to live in Christ. And so we’re gonna cover these first 3 chapters going into the holidays, then we’ll take a break for the holidays, we’ll come back next year and finish the back half. So that’s our plan.
Now we’re in the latter part of chapter 2 today, and we’ve seen Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus, we’ve seen the blessings that he says we have in Christ, we see that he saved us by grace through faith and that we’re God’s workmanship, and now in these final verses, he begins to talk about the peace that we have in Christ. And when Paul uses the word peace, he’s thinking from a Hebrew background, and so when we see the word peace, which in Greek is eirene, which is if your name’s Irene, your name means peace, it’s the Greek word for peace, but Paul’s probably thinking shalom, ’cause that’s his background. Shalom, peace, is the idea not just the cessation of hostilities, but this idea of wholeness, of health, of everything’s at peace within and without.
But we live in a world today that longs for peace. We live in a world today that families are divided, friendships are broken up, even in our own hearts we struggle with anxiety, we struggle with guilt, with unrest. We want peace in our world, we want peace in our relationships, we want peace in our homes, yet no matter how hard we try, lasting peace seems unattainable.
And why is peace so difficult? Why is it so difficult to find peace and quiet in this loud, noisy, divisive world? Why is it so hard? The Bible tells us that our greatest problem is not political, although some would say it is. It’s not relational, it’s not emotional, although all of these do contribute.
The Bible says it’s primarily spiritual. That our problem is that there’s no peace within us. And the problem is, well, it’s a genetic problem. It’s a gene that was passed on to us from Adam and Eve. It’s called the sin gene.
We’re all born with it, and we were all born in rebellion against God, and even rebellion against the purpose for which he made us. And so we carry this unrest within us, and so then we carry it into our relationships and into our world. And so we need a Savior. We need someone to rescue us. We need someone to say to our hearts, which are filled with storms, peace, be still.
We really need that. And that’s the good news of today’s message. Paul reminds us that Jesus didn’t merely come to teach us how to find peace. In other words, he’s not going— Jesus doesn’t come and say, okay, here are the 3 steps steps you need to take to find peace. That’s not how he comes.
Jesus comes saying, I am your peace. I— he doesn’t say that peace is a place. He says peace is a person. He says, I am your shalom. It’s a radical claim.
Peace isn’t merely the absence of conflict, it’s the presence of Christ. In your life. And so no matter what the storms are outside your life, there can be rest in your soul, there can be peace in Christ. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the believers in Ephesus, he called to Gentile believers, which was the prominent population there, to remember. That’s really his key word in our passage today is to remember who they used to be and who they are now at peace in Christ.
And so I believe today we can remember who we used to be and we can remember with great gratitude of who we are now in Christ through this peace that we have with God and with one another through Christ. So let’s look at the text. We’re going to be looking for 3 realities of our peace with God in Christ. So we’re in the latter part of chapter 2, starting at verse 11. Therefore remember.
That’s the only imperative in this section, by the way. An imperative is a command word. He says it twice. He says it again in verse 12, remember. Why is that?
Because we’re a forgetful people. We’re a forgetful people. 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. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. This is God’s Word. Amen.
We’re looking for 3 realities of our peace with God in Christ. Here’s the first, we’ve been brought near by Christ’s blood. We have been brought near by Christ’s blood. And so we began this with a single word. It says, therefore.
What does it mean when we see this? What questions should we always ask if we see the word therefore? In the text, what’s it there for? And so therefore is like an equal sign in the text. It says whatever preceded this equals what’s coming next.
And so just quick reminder, earlier in chapter 2, he reminded us that it was by grace through faith that we were saved. It was not any works of our own. So we’ve got nothing to brag about, nothing to boast about. And then he concluded with verse 10 by saying, that we are God’s workmanship, that this is God’s project, and it’s this new reality that burst on the scene in the first century with Christ, and it’s this reality called the church. And he said, you, and when he says you are God’s workmanship, he’s saying not just you individually, but us together as the church, and that Greek word last week we learned was poema, which is where we get the word poem, and we are God’s masterpiece, This is His ultimate crowning of His glory is the church, which is the body of Christ.
And so therefore, remember, don’t forget. I think one of the main reasons we gather on the first day of the week is because that was the day Jesus defeated sin, death, and the grave and got up from the grave. But it’s also about every 7 days we need a reminder because we’re a forgetful people. And it’s even better if you’re part of a community group, a small group that meets during the week, so you get a bump in the middle of the week. Because we’re forgetful people.
We go out in the world and we get beat up by the sin of this old world and the worldviews that we encounter, and we gather together like this for encouragement from God’s Word and really to remember who we are. He says, therefore remember, he says it twice, verse 11, he says it again in verse 12, that at one time you Gentiles, that’s probably pretty much everybody in the room. There might be somebody here who has a Jewish background in your family, I don’t know, but most of us have a, we’re pretty much, and so that’s how Paul, he was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, and so the Jews really viewed the world in 2 columns, Jewish and non-Jewish, or uncircumcised and circumcised, which is how he talks here. He goes, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision, they didn’t call themselves that, that’s what the Jews called them. And then the Jews called themselves by what is called the circumcision.
But then he goes, which is made in the flesh by hands. So he’s kind of a, he offends both parties here. He goes, you know, the Jews always called you guys the uncircumcision, but their circumcision is only made by hand. It doesn’t circumcise the heart. He’s kind of an equal opportunity offender here.
He says both of us have a problem. We both have a sin problem. And so whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, but he’s really talking to the, I would say the predominant population of Ephesus, it was a Roman city, was primarily Gentile. And so he’s redressing it. He goes, in verse 12, he goes, remember that you were at that time, and he’s going to give 5, ways that they were separated here in one verse.
In verse 12, he’s gonna give 5 expressions of separation. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ. You had no Messiah figure in your future. You were looking for Caesars and politicians, but you had no idea that there could be a Savior, a Christ. So you were Christless.
That’s how you once were. Then he goes, you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. So you weren’t part of God’s chosen people, you were the uncircumcised. And so you’re outside, you’re stateless, you’re without a people, and strangers to the covenants of promise. That’s the third way they were separated.
So you’re strangers to the Abrahamic promise, which is that God was gonna bless all nations through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ. You were outside of that, so you were Christless, stateless, and friendless. Because Abraham was a friend of God. Having no hope, you were hopeless. He’s not finished.
And without God in the world, you were godless. The Greek word there for godless or without God was atheos, atheos. Sound familiar? You were atheists.
That’s who you were. Christless, stateless, friendless, hopeless, godless. Remember that, that’s where you were without Christ. But then as he did earlier when he came to verse 4 of chapter 2 and he goes, but God, now we have in verse 13, but now in Christ. What did I say?
That’s the thing. That’s the theme of this book. But now in Christ, all of that’s the former. All of that’s behind you. But now, oh, but now in Christ, what?
You who were once far off, you were far off from God.
And not only that, you were separated by your sins from one another. So really, The closeness that we have with one another through Christ is unlike, it’s unworldly, it’s unlike anything else in the world. And so you were, but now, you were far off, but now you’ve been brought near. How? How were you brought near?
Was it through human effort? No. Was it because you followed a plan, do A, then do B, then do, no. It was through the blood of Jesus. Through His sacrifice on the cross, that His blood paid for your being brought near.
Now, the modern mind doesn’t like this. The modern mind would do away with the blood, but the Bible says that the life is in the blood, that our life is in the blood. And so from very early on, even when we get in the book of Exodus or even before that, that Abel brought a sacrifice that was pleasing to God, and he brought a blood sacrifice, but Cain didn’t. And so very early on. And then we have whenever Moses is directed to bring the people out in the Exodus, he institutes the Passover.
And he said, there must be a way that you sacrifice a lamb and then take its blood and put it around the door of each home so that when the the angel of death comes, it will pass over that home when it sees the blood of the Lamb. And then when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to be baptized in the River Jordan, he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And so it’s by the blood, it’s not by human effort.
Our peace, remember this, and I remember our church doesn’t have a formal table, you know, we’re trying to reach a modern, But I always grew up, the church I always grew up in had a table down front and it said across the front of the table, do this in remembrance of me. And it was the Lord’s table and they would have the Lord’s Supper stuff often on that table. We have it on tables too, we just don’t have all the fancy equipment. We’re kind of a come-as-you-are church, as we’ve said before. But remember, remember who you were and remember it was by the blood, but now in Jesus.
Isaiah, he describes our problem. What was it that made us so separated from God and one another? Isaiah says this, he says, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. We’re all born in rebellion against God and our sin separates us from God. It creates a gulf, a Grand Canyon, if you will, between us and a holy God.
But because of Jesus and His sacrificial blood, and so there’s this imagery that you couldn’t get to God. And Paul’s really using sacrificial imagery that would remind those of us who, Remember the story of the temple and how for a Gentile especially, they’re in the outer court, which you could kind of picture concentric courts that go in like to a target, which is the temple. So the outer court, that’s as far as the Gentiles could go, then the Jewish women court, then the court of the Jewish men, and then the sacrificial courtyard, and then the temple with the holy place, and then the Holy of Holies beyond the curtain. And so you were far off, you Gentiles. You could see it from a distance, but you couldn’t come in.
But now because of the blood of Jesus, you’ve been brought near. And you can almost picture the imagery here of the high priest that was only allowed to come into the temple, into the Holy of Holies on one day of the year. And even then he had to come in bringing the blood the sacrificial blood of the lamb in order to enter into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. And he would come in past the curtain and he would spread the blood upon the mercy seat and pray for his own sins and for the sins of the people. And so that’s this imagery now that Jesus has done that once for all so that we see in Hebrews this, we see, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh.
And since we have a great High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. And so we have this imagery that he’s saying that we were brought from far away and we’ve been brought near into the Holy of Holies, into the throne room of the Father by the blood of Jesus. That’s the imagery that’s at work here. And not only that, we have in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 27, we have the imagery of what God accomplished on the day that He was crucified. When Jesus says, it is finished, the Gospel writers report there was an earthquake and that the earth and the sky was darkened and that the temple curtain that separated the Holy from the Holy of Holies was torn.
And it didn’t just say that it was torn, it was descriptive in the manner in which it was torn. It was torn from top to bottom. Matthew 27:51 says it was torn from top to bottom. Now if a man would’ve torn it, so this is like a 2-story-high curtain here, if a man would’ve torn it, he would’ve torn it from as high as he could reach, he would’ve torn it from bottom to top. But God tore that curtain from top to bottom because when Jesus died, He opened up a new and living way.
That’s who you were before, you were far away, but now you’ve been brought near. How? Not anything by you, but by the blood of Jesus so that in Christ we can enter with a true heart full of assurance of faith. I want to ask you a question today, do you feel How do you feel today? Now feelings are fickle.
Do you feel close to God today? Do you feel near to God? On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 meaning I am so far from God today, and 10 meaning I’m as close as I’ve ever been, where you at? By the blood of Jesus, you’ve been given level 10 access. You’ve been given level 10 brought near.
To the Father. So if you’re feeling a level 5 or level 6, remember feelings are fickle, they’re like a roller coaster ride. But Jesus says to us through His Word here this morning, through His Word, by My blood, which is sufficient to pay for most of your sins, nearly all of your sins, all of your sins. So now you can come boldly with confidence by the blood of Jesus into the presence of the Father. So if you don’t feel near, you need to get your feelings in a line with your faith because by God’s Word, God’s Word says you’ve been brought near if you’re in Christ.
And so we have peace with God because Christ has brought us near by His blood. That leads us to the second reality that we have. This peace that we have in Christ is we have been reconciled through Christ’s cross. We have been reconciled through Christ’s cross. We’re at verse 14 and following now, and as we get to verse 14, he tells us that it’s by the cross that we’ve been brought near.
If you look down into verse 16, it says, in one body through the cross. And so the cross and the blood are really the same event, But here Paul is pulling at a different aspect, that we were far off, we’ve been brought near, which is kind of the imagery from the temple. But now it’s kind of this idea of reconciliation, that which was broken has been reconciled. And so he uses the imagery of the cross to talk about that. And so let’s just kinda go verse by verse again.
Verse 14, for he himself, who’s he? Christ. And this is the emphatic use to make sure you don’t miss it. He himself is our, what? Peace.
The word peace is in our reading today 4 times. It’s really the centerpiece of what Paul’s talking about here, but it’s not a philosophy, It’s not a place, it’s a person. Our shalom, our peace is He Himself, Christ. If you have Christ, you have the peace of God. Regardless of the storms around you, you have the peace of God.
For He Himself is our peace who has made us both, who’s both? The Jew and the Gentile. That’s who he’s talking to. He’s made us both Jew and Gentile, and He’s made us one. And He’s broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
The dividing wall of hostility. What in the world is he talking about? You have to kind of put yourself in Paul’s position. He’s this from the tribe of Benjamin, Jewish background guy who went to like Jewish Harvard and studied under Gamaliel. He’s really, When he’s teaching, he’s teaching out of his Jewishness, having come to Christ, and he’s putting it all together.
And so when we look at it like that, he’s probably thinking of the very wall that separated the Gentiles from their court to the next court. In fact, archaeologists have discovered a plaque that was connected to the Gentile court from Herod’s Temple. If you remember, Solomon built the first temple, it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, Zerubbabel came in and rebuilt it, and then King Herod the Great followed along and supersized it. And this inscription in Greek is found, and archaeologists have interpreted it. It was found on the Temple Mount, and it says this, no foreigner shall enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure.
Whoever is caught will be responsible for his subsequent death. So do not enter here, skull and crossbones, Gentiles. And so wall of hostility, Paul probably had in mind that wall. And he says this, he goes, He’s made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility. That wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.
Broke it down. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that part that made the Jews different from the rest of the world, the ceremonial law, not the moral law so much, but the ceremonial law, the dietary ordinances, the Sabbath-keeping ordinances, those have now been abolished in Christ, ’cause He’s making a new thing called the church, this new man called the church, And so that differentiation has changed. Now the 10 Commandments and the idea of morality, that’s not being talked about here. He’s talking about certain ordinances. And that he might create in himself, we’re still talking about Jesus, that Jesus might create in himself one new man in place of the 2, Jew and Gentile, so making peace.
In other words, he doesn’t build a hybrid. He doesn’t make Gentiles. He does not make Gent-Jews.
He makes a new people called the church. It’s not a hybrid.
And so He’s making a new thing, a new man in place of the two, so making peace. In verse 16, and might reconcile us both to God. And that word reconcile has the idea of something that was broken being reconnected and brought back together. And so he says, and reconciled, right, both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. He said, reconcile us both, Jew and Gentile.
And so I made this little image to try to illustrate this, that just think about the cross as, the horizontal crossbeam and the vertical way the cross is shaped. And you just kind of see, so that in Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile anymore. There’s neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, all are one in Christ. That’s Galatians, right? And so he’s saying that here, that he tore down this wall of hostility.
So Jew and Gentile, there’s no, like I said, there’s no Jew, there’s no Gentile, Jin-Jew or Jew-Tao. There’s just Christians now. And He’s made us one because Christ is the God-Man. He’s made us one. And so the cross, which was an instrument of Roman execution, has become a symbol of reconciliation.
And so the cross, its very imagery points to this reconciliation that He’s made us one body through the cross. Thereby, and this is unusual language, thereby, Killing the hostility. Like he killed the hostility that was between us, that separated us.
He destroyed it. He killed the hostility. And he came, the he is still Jesus, and Jesus came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. And what are we talking about here? This is the gospel.
Christ came preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the good news, right? And he preached to those who were far off, the Gentile, and those who were nearer and near, that was the Jew. They had the prophets and he preached to all. And so he brought the good news, the gospel of peace. And then verse 18, for through him, through Jesus, We both, Jew and Gentile, have access.
We have an open door, a torn curtain, complete access to one Spirit, or in one Spirit, to the Father. Now what we have in verse 18 is a Trinitarian promise. In Him, you see that, that’s Christ, access through Him, we have both access in one Spirit. You see the Holy Spirit, you see God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. In verse 18.
We have access, we have access through Him. Through Christ’s blood on the cross, He has reconciled everything to Himself. It says in Colossians 1:20, and through Him, God reconciled everything to Himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
He has made peace. Between us. We are now not only given this peace, but we’ve been made ambassadors of this peace. 2 Corinthians, Paul writes, everything is from God who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
And so we now are ambassadors, we are ministers of reconciliation. And you’re looking at me saying, well, I thought you were the minister. No, you’re the ministers, I’m the pastor. Go read, we’ll get to it later, but we get over to Ephesians chapter 4, we find out that I’m an equipper of the saints. I’m a pastor, you’re the ministers.
And so we don’t wanna turn that upside down. And so you come in to remember, every Sunday you come in to remember who you are and what God’s called you to. And so we gather, to worship, but we scatter for witness, right? So we come together for power and we scatter for proclamation, like that. And so you’re the ministers of reconciliation.
So who are you sideways with today? Who do you have a broken relationship with today? You’re called to be the ones carrying the gospel, the good news of forgiveness, You’re the ones who are to deal with this problem that we have in the world of violence and not being reconciled. This is what we’re called to be. When I went to seminary in the very early ’90s, like I was over there in about ’91, a couple years there, there was a young man who couldn’t afford seminary tuition and he offered, he was a stonemason, he offered to rebuild the wall around the seminary.
And if you’ve ever been to Wake Forest and you’ve seen Southeastern Seminary over there, you’ll recognize that there’s a stone wall. You know, you walk along the sidewalk, it’s about that tall from the sidewalk side, but it’s not a very tall wall. Probably it’s only about that tall. And what’s unusual about this wall is there’s no cement, there’s no mortar holding the stones together. And so he agreed, if you’ll allow me to rebuild it, ’cause a lot of it had fallen down, there were vines growing through it, It really needed to be rebuilt.
And so the seminary agreed to give him free seminary if he’d rebuild the wall. And it took him pretty much the whole time he was there. And you’d see him, you’d see him after class, he’d be out there. And the thing was, he had to very carefully put it together ’cause it was held together by gravity. And so he rebuilt this wall.
He tore it down though, you’d see him, he’d tear down a section because it had broken down and then he’d rebuild it carefully and he had to look at each stone and make sure it was placed just perfectly. That’s what Christ has done. He’s torn down the dividing wall. People ask sometimes, is Eastgate a white church or a black church? And I go, it’s not a white church and it’s not a black church.
It’s a red church because of the blood of Jesus that was shed upon the cross. And abolished the separation, the wall of hostility between us. There’s not a black church, it’s not a white church. There’s no racism in the church. If there is, we need to put it to death.
We need to get it out of here. There’s only one race, that’s the human race, and Jesus died for it. That’s the kind of church we are. That’s the kind of church that Jesus calls us to be. His crown, his masterpiece.
And so he’s building us to be that and to be reconcilers of this divisiveness that we see in our culture today, which leads us to the 3rd reality. We are being built together into Christ’s temple. The last 2 points were really past tense points, something Christ has already done for us that we need to recognize, but now this reality is the thing he’s doing now. Paul now moves to what Christ has accomplished, from what Christ has accomplished to what Christ is actively doing now in the present. And he’s changing it with kind of a time word here in verse 19.
He goes, so then. It’s kind of similar to the but God back in verse 4, and it’s a little bit similar to the but now in verse 13. But now he goes, so then.
You are no longer strangers and aliens. If you ever visit a foreign country, you’re an alien there. You don’t have the rights that the citizens there have.
You’re an alien. So you’re no longer that. You’re no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. You’re members of the house of God. Because the church is not the steeple, the church is the people, and you are members of it if you are in Christ.
You’re not strangers. Have you met your family?
Do you say hello to people when you come up in here? Because these are your brothers and sisters. Do y’all know each other? Do y’all spend time together? I mean, you better get used to each other now, come on.
You’re gonna spend eternity together. You better learn to like each other a little bit. You’re commanded to love each other. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. So he’s building a house, it’s called the church.
And at the foundation, he has the apostles and the prophets. And another way you might look at that is, The prophets, well, that’s back here, that’s the Old Testament, you could look at it like that. And the apostles wrote the New Testament, those who saw the risen Lord and had the authority to write Scripture. You could look at it like that, that the Scripture is our record of the prophets and the apostles, and it’s foundational to the church, but there’s something very much more important at the foundation, and he says it next, built on the foundation of the apostles, Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. And so if you’re building a foundation, you lay the cornerstone very carefully because all the other stones in the foundation and all the stones above it have to be in alignment with the cornerstone.
See, so that cornerstone, that’s a big, that’s a big stone. It carries a lot of weight and it, and it sets so that it’s plumb, so it’s square for the rest of the house. Now Jesus is the cornerstone, and then the prophets and the apostles, they’re the foundation, and each of us are being built upon top of that. And so that the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, but yet a new temple has been being formed and built for the last 2,000 years. Some time ago, there was a preacher named Billy Sunday who said he was preaching so that maybe tonight, maybe, you know, he was an evangelist, maybe on this day, the last living stone would land in the building and Jesus would come and take us, ’cause he was waiting for the last one.
Well, Jesus is still building. He’s still building His house. He’s still building this temple built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom, in Jesus, the whole structure being joined together. Remember me talking about the guy rebuilding the wall around the seminary?
If the stone had crumbled or something, he had to bring fresh stone in, he would take a little pick and a little hammer and he would shape it so it would fit perfectly because there was no mortar And this wall is so beautiful, every stone is a different shape. But the top ones are very, they’re very carefully laid because they have to be flat and even. And so he would have all these round, square, rectangle, all these, but at the top these, and the wall is the same height. You can run a string on it. It’s so, like, it’s so plumb like that.
This guy was an expert stonemason. And he knew how to lay it out so that each stone was fitted together for that space, and it’s held together by gravity. Now after the first service, I had 2 young men stop me in the lobby saying, I used to live in Wake Forest, or I used to go over there all the time, and I used to jump up and down on that wall and run along that wall. I didn’t know it was only held together by gravity. I didn’t know that.
Well, it’s because every stone was fitted together perfectly. By a master stonemason. And so then we see this in verse 21, in whom the whole structure being joined together. Can you picture that? Each of you, we’re all shaped different.
Just look around, a lot of different shapes in here. It’s like a Crayola coloring, there’s all kind of colors in here. You know, it’s not just white and black anyway, it’s just like every color in between, you know? There’s all kind of color here. I got it on a lot of you white people.
I got a pretty good tan. But listen, that’s just skin. That’s just skin. He says he takes all of you and he made you and he knows who you are and he’s got a place that he wants to fit you into his temple. Look at that, man.
Joined together grows into a holy temple unto the Lord. In him, Who? In Christ, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by his Spirit. What’s the church supposed to be? What’s the church supposed to be?
It’s supposed to be God’s people with the Holy Spirit living in us, living in us so that when we come together, it’s like a forest fire just blazes off of us because all these little lights, all these little lights of the world come together. We got the Holy Spirit living in us individually, but when we come together, oh my goodness, It gets hot in here. Or it should. I mean, it should. Don’t you want to be the church that’s filled with the Holy Spirit?
That’s what he’s called us to be. That’s who we are. We know who we once were, but now we know who we are in Christ. So let us live as members of God’s household, as living stones. It says in 1 Corinthians, do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
It says in 1 Peter, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That’s the church. That’s who we are. Find your place in God’s church. Don’t be a spectator.
Be a living stone. We began by acknowledging that we live in a world longing for peace, and we’ve learned that this peace is not something we can achieve through human effort. What we’ve learned is, though, that Christ by his blood and through his cross has made peace possible with God and with one another. It’s something that Christ has already accomplished. But we must remember that and take hold of that by faith.
We were once far off, but Christ’s blood has brought us near. We were once divided, but Christ’s cross has reconciled us.
And we were once strangers, but now we are family in the body of Christ, in the family of God. He himself is our peace. Do you know Jesus today? If you’re a Christ follower today, let us live in humble remembrance, saying we used to be like that, we’ve got nothing to brag about because it was the blood and the cross of Jesus that made it possible for me to be part of God’s family. And so we just wanna tell other people about it.
If that’s you, that’s how, that’s our only response is humility and gratitude and proclamation to those who are far from God to be brought near. But if you’re here today and you came in on a thin thread and you came in here and you barely got here, and when I asked you where you were at on a scale of 0 to 10, you said, I’m like a 0, but I don’t wanna be. I pray today that you’d receive Jesus, for He is our peace with God and with one another. Let’s pray. Lord, I pray for that one that’s here today, came in far off but wants to be brought near.
Is that you? Would you humbly admit with me right now in prayer, right in your seat, you can pray right where you’re at. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner. I came in today far from you, but I don’t want to stay that way. I believe that you died on the cross for my sin, that you were raised from the grave, and that you live today.
Come and live in me by your Spirit. Bring me near to the Father.
Forgive me of my sins and make me a child of God. I want to be a child of God and to follow you the rest of my life. If you pray that prayer of faith believing today, the Bible says if you confess Jesus as Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you’ll be saved. So just give him thanks. Say, Lord, I believe.
I thank you for saving me. Others are here today and you’re a Christ follower, but you’ve got some unreconciled relationships that you need to forgive. Some of them you can’t reconcile with them, they’re not with us anymore, but you can forgive them even in the Lord. You know who you are, you know who you’re sideways with, you know who you’re not getting along with right now. Just say, Lord, help me to be a minister of reconciliation everywhere I go.
Help me to be forgiving. Help me to be grace-filled with people. And so I pray for marriages right now, Lord, that are not doing well. I pray for broken friendships. I pray for broken relationships between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons and neighbors.
And Lord, I pray against racism in our culture, but especially in our church, Lord, that that we would be a red church covered by the blood of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank you, we love you, and we pray it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Read transcript
We’re going to continue this morning in this wonderful series covering Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 through 22, and we’ve titled this sermon, Our Peace in Christ. Anybody in the room want some peace? If you don’t, then you’re having a very different life than I am at times. I think most of us probably are looking for some peace either. That may mean a lot of different things to you, but I bet most of us are looking for that peace that the Bible describes as surpassing knowledge, that all-surpassing kind of peace, and we’re all striving for that.
As we’re digging into this text this morning, I want to remind you that Paul is very, very— the Apostle Paul who’s written this letter to first the Ephesians and now to us, he’s very familiar with what it looks like to desire a peace that surpasses understanding. He has lived up until this point a very dangerous life. Most of the places he goes, if not all of the places he goes, cause great persecution in his life, and his life, physical life, is often in danger. As he speaks now to Ephesus, he’s reminding them that they have a unique peace now from God that they could not have had apart from Him, and a peace that not only impacts the way they relate to a heavenly God, but also the way they can relate to one another. And if we’re honest, those are really the 2 spheres where we lack peace most.
Either there’s times where we don’t have a peace vertically with the Lord, perhaps you feel a sense of distance, there’s something there, maybe it’s a sinfulness in your life, something has got you feeling a distance from God and a distance of peace. Most often we feel that peace, that lack of peace in our personal relationships, and so this word today to the Ephesians and now to us, I think, is going to be extremely powerful. And helping us have this true peace that helps us vertically and horizontally. We desire peace in our lives for sure, but a lot of times when we say peace, what we really think that might mean is an absence of conflict. When we think peace, we think it’s an absence of circumstances, that everything is tranquil, and that’s, although as a form of peace you might say, you will often have a restless spirit even in the midst of things being quiet.
And so, there’s a kind of peace that transcends that. It’s the— this biblical peace is much deeper than just the absence of conflict or the absence of problems. It’s a peace that is beyond circumstance. It’s a peace where God has actually transformed the way we live with Him and with one another. So, the question this morning perhaps that you ask as we’re digging into this text is, have I discovered a true peace from God through a transformation in the way I live with Him?
A peace that is more than just the absence of disagreement. Perhaps there’s a strain right now in your marriage or between you and your children or between you and your parents, or maybe it’s a strain on a relationship at work. You’re feeling a lack of peace somewhere in a relationship. I bet almost every one of you in the room have some relationship that’s strained right now. It’s pretty common.
It’s happening to a lot of us all the time. And so as you think about what would it look like to have peace, it’s not that the fight would just end or that everything that was underneath it would just be swept under the rug. That’s not peace. Peace is something more. It’s genuine repentance.
It’s genuine forgiveness when you’ve actually walked through the battles together. Peace in God’s house where you are today is the fruit of living as members of the family and really buying into that. So here’s the questions I want you to think about as we dig into the text. Am I truly understanding what Christ has done for me so that I might have peace with him? Am I living at peace with God’s people?
And am I participating in this thing that he calls the family the church? Am I participating? Am I a part of it? See, God’s Word is calling us in this text to live more at peace than anything else in this life could do. So let’s dig in.
We’re in Ephesians chapter 2. We’re seeing here Paul write this letter saying to now primarily Gentile believers that he’s speaking to in this moment, and he’s calling them to remember all that Christ has done to bring them out of separation from him into reconciliation with God and now reconciliation with the covenant people of God, and we can remember too what God has done. I pray today that you’ll see 3 really clear realities of our peace with God in Christ. So let’s read the Scripture and dig in together. Verse 11, it picks up, 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, don’t miss this, church.
Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ. You were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, last week I got really excited about these 2 words that said, but God, but God being rich in mercy. Now we’ve got a but now. In Christ Jesus, you were once— you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For He Himself is our peace. Now that’s something. He is our peace. Okay. 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 2, 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. He preached peace to both, for through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens. Great news, church. You are no longer strangers.
You are fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God. Did you know that? Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. This is God’s Word.
Amen. Boy, this ought to pump you up. It really should. What Paul is doing here is not meant to really even point to particular sins or anything today. There are times where he does that, and there are times we need to wrestle with that.
Today he’s trying— he’s calling us to remember this wonderful thing that Christ has done and calling us All right, so be one. You’re a family now, act like it. You’re one in Christ Jesus. So let’s dig into this. The first reality of this peace we have with God in Christ Jesus is that we have been brought near by Christ’s blood.
We have been brought near. Paul says several times to start off his note today, his text today, he says, remember. In fact, this is in the kind of active verb form that would mean keep remembering. Keep remembering. We are, we are definitely a forgetful people, aren’t we?
I know I am. Sometimes I forget the mundane stuff, but sometimes I forget the really important stuff like who I am in Christ. I said this to our men over the last weekend, and I just keep reflecting on this over and over again, this idea that the thing I need to remember more than anything is not what I need to do at work tomorrow and not, not Not what I have to do this week and all the calendar stuff. That’s important, but what I need to remember more than anything is that I am a son of God, that I am one of his kids, and that he loves me so much that he died for me. And I gotta admit to you, church, I forget that sometimes in the way that I think and the way I operate.
I must, I must be forgetting because otherwise it makes no sense that I would get so discouraged, that I would get so frustrated, If I called to mind often that, wait a minute, I have an eternal destination. I am a son of King Jesus. What am I getting so unkept about, so uptight about? That’s something I struggle with. Perhaps you don’t.
I bet you do. He says, remember, keep remembering, continually call it to mind because we are forgetful people and we forget very important things. Here he calls to mind something for the Gentile believers, and that’s who most of us are in the room. He says, hey, we used to call you names. You might not have caught that in the Scripture.
Paul, I think, is trying to say this carefully. He says, hey, we used to call you the uncircumcision, those of us who were called the circumcision. Now, I don’t know what all the details of that were, but I got a feeling it was derogatory. You know, we used to make fun of you guys. We used to call y’all out as being far from God because you wouldn’t even do the physical covenantal act of walking with God.
This thing we were called to do by our father Abraham. And Paul is twisting this a little bit though. He’s saying, hey, you— we used to call you out for this, but let me remind you. Notice what he says. This is a thing that was made in the flesh by hands.
He is already starting to kind of decouple this idea and saying, hey, this was a thing that used to mark the people of God, but it was always something physical, something we did with our hands. It didn’t necessarily mean heart change. This is something Paul talks about in a lot of his letters, especially Galatians. Here he’s reminding them, he’s saying, hey, this is a way we used to make fun of you, but now I want you to hear this: you’re no longer separated from Christ. I want you to remember this right now.
And he gives us 5 expressions of what used to separate us. He says, separated, alienated, strangers to the promise, no hope, without God in the world. This is where we were, friends. Some of you have come in today and you have not yet said yes to Jesus. The hard news is this is where you are at the moment.
The invitation is you don’t have to remain there. The invitation is God has done something incredible so that now you can be brought near by the sacrifice of Jesus. There’s a dramatic shift that happens from verse 12 to 13. He says, but now, now in Christ Jesus, let me talk to you now about how you were brought near by the blood. This wonderful thing, not by religious effort, Hey, look, we used to make fun of you because you wouldn’t take this covenantal step physically, but let me just say, that’s no longer how it works.
What has happened now is that the Son of God has died for you. What has happened now is that you have access, you’ve been brought near because of faith and not physical act. Now, the faith will move you into physical action, but the action itself, as we talked about last week, is not what sets you free. It is evidence that you have been set free. It’s a huge difference there, and several times in the Scriptures it speaks to this thing that Christ has done, this answer to our fundamental problem.
Read Isaiah 59 with me. It says, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. This is where we all come into this world. This is how we are.
This is how some of you are presently, but the great news is you’ve been brought near when receiving the sacrifice of Christ. Look what Hebrews, the writer, says in chapter 10. He says, therefore, brothers, we have confidence now to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us Draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. We have a new life.
We have experienced a change in the way that we live. We have all gone from prodigal to promise. Isn’t that wonderful? And we are a forgetful people. We forget this all the time.
We may wake up tomorrow and go, oh, I got a hard day ahead of me. Do you ever wake up in the morning and go, man, I’d like to just skip today? Just me? Man, I’m messed up, but hang on, I didn’t know I was alone in this. You never wake up and just go, I’d like to skip the whole week.
You never say that? Like, let me just fast forward to Friday night. Never happens to you? Happens to me. But what if I woke up tomorrow and said, all right, Lord, today is what you have purposed in front of me.
This is an opportunity for me to live as a son, as a daughter of King Jesus. What would that look like today? Let’s— how about this, Lord? Can we talk all day? How about you and I?
How about me and you? How about we talk all day? How about on the way to work today, I’m gonna listen to some tunes, but if I start feeling like talking to you, I’m gonna turn them down and we’re gonna talk. What would it look like for me to just hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, walk with King Jesus tomorrow? This is what has happened.
He says, I’ve brought you near, not just because I want to save you, but because I want to be a part of what I’ve created. I’m the kind of God who not only creates in goodness and mercy, but I also participate, and I want to come side by side. It reminds me of this story that is so famous, so famous, you know the details, so many of you know it. In fact, I found that most people have heard of the prodigal son, right? I mentioned that word prodigal a minute ago.
I read a book some time ago from Tim Keller called The Prodigal God. It’s a fantastic book, but his argument in that book is the strangest part of that story is not the son’s behavior, the strangest part is the father’s behavior. Most of us in the room, if we had a child run off and just completely say, you know what, Dad? I just want everything that you have to give me financially. I don’t want to be a part of your life.
Essentially, the way he operates with his dad is he says, I wish that you were dead. Because I just want the inheritance. And the father somehow, in his mercy, says, here, have it and go live your life. You know, there’s no angst there, it doesn’t seem. And the son goes and blows it and screws it up.
And as he’s in the lowest place in his life, he realizes it would be better to just be a slave of my father. Let me go home and hopefully he’ll let me just be a servant. Here’s where this father is different than any human you’ll ever meet. He comes running towards the son as the son approaches, and the son is trying to get the words out of his mouth, hey, just let me be a servant. Please just let me in your house because I’m over here eating pig slop.
I don’t want to do that anymore. And the father runs and hugs him and says, I won’t hear that. Put the robe back on him. Put the ring back on his finger. My son was dead and he’s back.
Church, hopefully when you hear that story, when you read that story, you see yourself in the prodigal. I hope you see that, because that’s who all of us are when we come into this life. And we all worship a Heavenly Father, a Savior named Jesus, who is like this father in this story. There’s nothing we can do to be brought near. In every, in every stretch of the word, we should run up to him and say, I would be happy just to be your servant.
And that’s not what he does. He runs, he hugs, He puts a robe on and an insignia and He says, you’re my son, you’re my daughter.
I pray today, if you get nothing else today, that you’d walk out of here knowing, I’ve got some issues perhaps, maybe stuff’s going wrong at home or at work, maybe I’m sick, maybe there’s some, probably some significant things going on in your life, but I hope that you might leave today and hear the words of Paul, you have been reconciled to God. He has brought you near, not as just a servant, not as just someone who barely gets into the kingdom, but as a son, as a daughter, as a prince, princess of King Jesus. That should encourage you.
You should wake up tomorrow and reflect on that. Paul says several times, he says, remember, keep remembering, because you are a forgetful people. Yeah, we are. Do you feel far away from God today? Don’t forget, your spiritual condition with Christ is not primarily about how you get everything right.
It is based on this wonderful thing that Christ has done. Remember, our former separation should produce in us not a pride. It should produce a humility. There was nothing I could do, and yet He still ran towards me. It should produce a gratitude.
It should produce a worship.
Stop trying to earn it. Receive it and then live it out. So, that’s number one. We’ve been brought near. Second reality is that we have been reconciled through Christ’s cross.
This is an extension now of what He’s begun. So, He’s brought us near and He’s doing something really— there’s a lot of theological terms happening here that are important. That I want to just briefly help you understand. Paul is now saying not only did He bring you near, but He’s reconciled you. This means He has made you right.
He has brought you a peace that isn’t in something you’ve done but is in Himself. He says He is our peace. Now church, I could spend a lot of time just talking about the idea that you’re trying to find peace in a lot of different ways. You’re trying to find it in relationships. You’re even at times trying to find it in, maybe I’ll find peace by just reading and reading and reading the Word of God, and it could be there, but let’s make sure that even in the very disciplines of the Holy Spirit that we might say, Lord, here’s what I know that I need.
I need Jesus. I don’t just need more knowledge. I don’t just need a little bit more time in this. I need to come face to face with you. I need to know you, see you, hear you, because you say peace is in you, not just in the activity of Christianity, it’s in Christ.
Now I know that sounds confusing, but there is a subtle difference there. There’s many of us that have spent hour upon hour trying to grow in knowledge, and that’s valuable, friend. I’m not saying there’s no value, there’s incredible value. But it better move this great distance from here to here. This is the longest distance on planet Earth, I don’t know if you knew.
It doesn’t look far, but I can tell you, at least from my experience, I can know things here, but then not experience them in passion and in my heart, in my emotion. I can say, I know Christ is King, but will I live it? I can know that Christ has saved me, I mean, I can really believe it in my mind, But do I act it out? Do I experience it? Or do tomorrow, do I feel doubtful and fearful and discouraged?
It’s because this distance is a long ways. I got to be praying, Lord, help me to move that distance. He says we’ve been reconciled. We have a peace now. This word peace in the Greek is the closest word.
In the Greek, it’s the word eirene. It’s the closest thing we have to the Hebrew term Shalom. I bet most of you have heard that word, shalom. The idea of shalom is something very rich in Jewish thought. It’s not— it’s definitely not the absence of conflict, although it could include that.
It’s more the idea of a wholeness, a completeness, a harmony, that somehow your life has harmony, that when I come home, me and my wife and my kids have a we have a similar, a parallel perspective on what we’re trying to accomplish, that in my family we have a shared mission. There’s a harmony. There’s a harmony in the way that I operate at work, the way that I operate with the Lord. I have a sense of peace, unity, shalom, and this, a right relationship. And Paul says you’ve been given this in a powerful way.
So here’s a couple of things theologically that are happening here. I know this might feel deep, but I want to unpack it with you for just a second. He starts in verse 14 by saying that he broke down the dividing wall. The dividing wall. Now there’s a dividing wall in a sense of hostility between the Jewish people at this time and the Gentile people.
That is, the covenantal people of God from the Old Testament are needing to learn to now adopt these Gentile believers into Their family, not blood necessarily, but the family of God. And there’s a wall at this point as to what all they need to do to make that happen. And Paul is here writing, and as he does in many other places, the Holy Spirit has now inspired him to say, hey, both of you have everything necessary to be in the family of God, because everything that’s necessary is faith in the blood of Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection. That is all that’s necessary to be family. I could rattle off a lot of fun stuff here.
I thought of so many things to say here this week because even in the modern day as a church, we create dividing walls, strange things. And I don’t think it’s really true at our church. If it becomes true, you need to tell me after service because this is not the kind of thing we’re trying to do. There’s all kinds of dividing walls, what you wear, can be a dividing wall. How you worship.
You see somebody over here doing this and you look at him like, what’s the hand— what’s he doing with his hands? That one’s too loud. That one’s too soft. That one’s— we don’t like how dark it is in the room, Jonathan. I didn’t design this building.
By God’s grace, we bought it. I’m very thankful for it, but we didn’t design it. Oh, there’s so many dividing walls. Oh, you need to talk to so-and-so, they keep coming in here and smelling terrible. Smells!
You’d be surprised what people tell me. What do you want me to do about how they smell?
I guess people want me to tell people to shower. I don’t know what they’re asking me to do. Here’s what I know to be a fact here: there’s dividing walls between the people of God in the first century, there was in the second, there was in the third, there is in the 21st. We come with all kinds of crazy reasons divide. And Paul here, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is saying the only thing that matters is that you both believe in the cross of Christ.
Do you? Then, then we’re on Team Jesus, and we have way too much in common to be creating walls. And there’s way too great a war for us to be fighting battles amongst ourselves. We do this crazy thing in church where we think we’re having a playground experience. We’re not on the playground, my friends.
We are on the battlefield and we need to get on the same team and certainly not divide over silly things. Now, there’s some things we need to call out and rebuke. We don’t, we don’t have any interest in allowing people to live in brokenness and sin, but we want to build a trust with them that we can say, hey, this alcoholism, this way you treat your spouse, this way you’re parenting, this way you’re dealing with your finances, this thing you’re doing is unhealthy and not Christlike. We want to build that kind of trust so we can call one another out. That is called discipleship, accountability, but it’s not the dividing wall Paul is talking about.
He may even envision, and I think a lot of scholars agree, he might be envisioning this wall that literally blocks the Gentiles from coming in to worship with the Jews. Pop up this image for me, if you will, Thomas. This is a Greek inscription that they’ve uncovered there that literally says it used to be on the wall between the Gentiles and the the Jews, and it says, no foreigner shall enter through the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible for his subsequent death. Subsequent seems a strange place.
Subsequent death. You come through here and we very well might kill you. Okay, wow. So literally a dividing wall is perhaps what Paul is saying here. He’s saying it’s time to tear that down.
It’s time that that no longer applies. There’s no longer a separation by race. There’s no longer a separation by culture. Something powerful going on here, something we still struggle with, I think, as the American church. This still remains one of the most segregated hours in America.
And we struggle with it here, but we’re trying. We’re trying to have an open door for all people of all race, of all age, of all creed, of— doesn’t matter how you dress. We literally say, come as you are.
We tag something to that, and be changed, but not by outward appearance and stuff like that. No, by— but by the love of Jesus. This is huge. Have you been reconciled? The second thing he says is Now I’ve, in verse 15, I’ve created a new man from 2 men.
This is the idea of, I’ve put you guys together. Christ no longer sees Jew/Gentile, He just sees the church. Christian/non-Christian, that’s what He sees. And He has a dream and a hope and a way that He wants His church to move so that more from this category of non-Christian would come into the house of God. This is His goal.
We’ve been reconciled, both groups, both vertically and horizontally. You can pop up this image for me. What has happened here is He’s telling us, look, I have fixed the vertical relationship. I have tore down the wall of hostility by dying. He says, I killed hostility, and the way I killed it was by my death.
So now we can come before the holy God and say, the reason I come here is because of Jesus. The reason I can approach your throne, the reason I can pray like I can pray, the reason that I know that God loves me and he has a plan for me is the blood of Jesus, my vertical relationship. Has been reconciled. Now he says, and guess what else? I’m tearing down these walls now too, so that you might see each other through the eyes of Christ.
See each other as, all right, you are brothers in Christ or you are not. And if you are not, then our desire is to bring you in. We don’t want you to be separate. We want to include you. We want you to come on.
Both groups have been given equal access to the Father. So those are the 4 really powerful theological things. He’s broken down the wall. He’s created a new man. He’s reconciled both groups and He has allowed both groups access, equal access, to the Father.
In Colossians, Paul writes, chapter 1, he says, through Him God reconciled everything to Himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood and the cross. So now because of that, we are not only reconciled, we have been made reconcilers. Now church, let me just say, I think a lot of believers have missed this step. Perhaps a lot of you in the room are amening, hallelujah, we are reconciled.
You’re like, I believe that part, I like it. Have you now adopted your new role as reconcilers? So now I move past I’ve been reconciled to now I actually am starting to reconcile not only my relationships, but others’ relationships with God. He says we are ambassadors now of reconciliation, offering this to others. Notice what we see in 2 Corinthians chapter 5: Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message— hear it— committed the message of reconciliation to us.
So how is God reconciling other men and women to Himself? Through you.
Nowhere in there does it say, hey, pastors and ministers and evangelists, all who have been reconciled have now been given the ministry of reconciliation. That’s you, my friend.
Have you adopted your new role? You’ve been reconciled in Christ. Now reconcile others.
This this idea of the wall falling—the most powerful illustration that I thought of this week—I was just a boy when I saw these news articles going down in 1989. Some of you know exactly where I’m going already, just with the date. But there was this famous scene where where President Reagan goes over and. Into Europe and says, I think Gorbachev, right? Gorbachev, tear down the wall, you know, tear this wall down.
And it was all over the news. And sometime later, 1989, that Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany fell. And for years, for like 30 years, people had been trying to bust through there because the side of Germany that had been taken over by the Allies, by especially, I mean, the American-British Allies was doing far better.
There are a lot of reasons for that. That’s not the intent of my sermon today, but that side of Germany was succeeding and the other side was in great peril. Poverty, starvation, there was problems over on the other side where communism was in charge. And so, people were constantly trying to get across the wall. People were getting shot trying to get across.
So this wall falling was an amazing thing. Now, why it’s so incredible to think about that as we think about this is those 2 people, the only thing that separated them was a goofy wall. They were both— guess what they both were? Germans. Guess what else?
They looked alike. Guess what else? Before 1960-whatever, when it first came up, before then, they were neighbors.
But then government said, let’s put a wall up. Governments decided to oppress people. Now, the way this kind of compares to where we’ve been and now we aren’t as a result of the cross of Christ is where we were prior to Christ is we were oppressed by sin. A wall had gone up. And what happens when the cross shows up?
What happens when Christ dies and rises again and now calls us to be one? What has happened? Is the wall has been destroyed. Now there is freedom, just like there was then in Germany. Now there’s reunification.
The oppression is over. Now, does that mean we experience that? There are times where we experience a stuckness in sin, oppression, if you will. But in reality, what Christ has actually done is He has defeated those things and is sanctifying us if we will yield to Him. The wall’s been destroyed.
The Christ is now— the cross of Christ has become our symbol. He’s our peace. He’s broke down the wall. Now let’s move to the third reality. If you hadn’t gotten anything yet, I hope you get something now.
I’ll give you one more bite, something else to chew on. The third reality is we are being built together into Christ’s temple. You might be fine so far. You’re like, I like that I’ve been brought near. I like that Christ has reconciled me.
I’m working on this being an ambassador of reconciliation. Now He finishes by saying, hey, so now guess what I’m doing? I’m making you one church. Guess what I’m doing now? I’m building My dwelling place among you.
Notice the words here as He finishes this chapter, chapter 2. He says, you are no longer strangers, instead you’re fellow citizens. You got your citizenship under King Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven. Ha! Yes!
You are in the household of God. It’s even better. Not only do you belong to the kingdom, you belong to the family. Oh, it’s great to be an American. I would imagine it’s even greater to be like one of Trump’s kids, you know.
You’re thinking maybe not, but at least from one perspective, from a wealth perspective or an ease, I think their life has probably got some ease. There’s some hardness to it too, but you see what I’m saying? They’re moving not just from, hey, citizenship into the kingdom, but also you are in the family of the King. That means everything that He has is yours. And now He’s creating, it says in verses 21 on, He is joining together this temple, this dwelling place.
This idea of joined together is that He is framing it. He’s putting the parts of the building. This is a a construction site, if you will, in which he says Christ is the cornerstone. The cornerstone being this thing that many of you know— this is the thing that you align everything else on. You get like the biggest, most beautiful, most perfect stone.
The builders would go, okay, what do we have that’s enormous and straight and flat? We’re going to make that the cornerstone. This is what Jesus says to us. This is what it means to be a Christ follower, is not just that he is reconciled and he is saved, it’s that we align ourselves on him. And he’s saying, hey, and the 2 walls going up now, it’s different than you expected.
It’s not just you. I got the nations in the wall now. I’m asking that all nations who would choose me and walk with me, all are being built up. I grew up famously hearing, because for so long our church was portable, and we were portable for a little while here in Rocky Mount, but in Wilson we were portable for so long, I grew up hearing this phrase over and over and over. Some of you know what I’m about to say.
The church is not the steeple, it’s the people. And we used to do these little fun little symbols like, you remember this one? It’s like you do it like this, and this is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors and here’s the people. You know, I’ll show you later. I know you want to know it.
The church isn’t— it isn’t the steeple, it’s the people. That saying was true. It’s true. These buildings are wonderful opportunities that perhaps we can use them to the glory of God, but what makes the church is its people, and he is making us his temple. In 1 Corinthians 3, it says, do you not know that you are God’s temple, that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
You are the temple of God. Christians becoming the living stones. 1 Peter says, chapter 2, it says, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men in the sight of God, chosen and precious. That’s him. You yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
So in this final note, now he’s saying, he’s making an argument. Not only has he reconciled you to himself, he’s reconciled you to others, and he’s not done there. He’s called you to be a family that grows together.
One of the hardest things about being a church— it just is. You want to know the hardest part about being a church? Getting along. It’s the hardest thing about being a family, isn’t it? The hardest thing about being a family is getting along.
Paul’s calling us further. The Holy Spirit is calling us further. Not just get along, be reconciled, but grow together, work together, build something together, because Christ in you is maturing and building something. He has a desire. What does that look like?
That we would reach more, that we would become better disciples, that as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another, that we would grow in our faith. That we would look more like Jesus tomorrow than we do today. And part of the way we’re going to get there is by rubbing shoulders and saying, hey, I did what you did before. It didn’t go so well. Learn from me.
Walk beside me. I’ve got some ideas. And we just continue to grow together until we have reached whatever pinnacle Christ desires before He comes again or takes us home. We’re a construction site. Most of you have probably seen a construction site.
I shouldn’t say most, I’m sure all of you have. You go through and you see all kinds of stuff. When they first get started, it’s a hot mess, you know? There’s stuff laying everywhere, lumber, bricks, pipes, wires, dozens of pieces of things that don’t make any sense, and if you don’t know what it is, it just looks like a hot mess. But the builders, the architects, the contractors, they know where it’s all going.
They’re in the place of God in this illustration. He knows, He’s the architect, He’s got the blueprint, He’s the cornerstone in fact. He knows where it’s being laid, He knows exactly. When you see all those pieces on a construction site and you see them independently, it just looks like a mess. And if that’s the way we view one another as the church, if we just look at this as a construction site that all these pieces, I don’t know how they fit, then we might look at each other really wrong.
We might miss the joy of growing together in Christ Jesus. Guess what the Bible teaches, not just here but in many places? That we all have separate functions, but we are one body. It talks about this in spiritual gifts. It talks about this in other places.
Some are the body, or some are the foot, some are the arms, but Christ is the head, you know? And we get frustrated about this sometimes, like we’d rather be the the mouth. We’d rather be the bicep. Some of you are the big toe, and that’s okay. That’s okay.
You ever tried to run without your big toe? It’s awful. I’ve broken toes before. I can tell you, them suckers are important. Some of you are the toe.
Maybe I am. I want to be the big toe if I’m going to be a toe.
This is the nature of what Christ is saying here. Of what Paul is writing. We are living stones, we are being built together. Let’s embrace one another, let’s grow together. Being a Christ follower is not separation from His people, but reconciliation as family.
Let’s live as members of God’s household, and don’t just settle for merely attending a church. Don’t just settle for that, because that’s not what he’s speaking to. He’s not speaking to isolated Christians who show up once a week. He’s talking about a family who calls each other, checks on each other, grows together, gets in true discipleship. So as we close now, I want to remind you of what the Word has said today.
By Christ’s blood, we have been brought near. By Christ’s cross, we’ve been reconciled not just to Him, but to one another. And in Christ Jesus, we are becoming Christ’s temple. His dwelling place. All this is possible because Jesus says He Himself is our peace.
He’s our peace. So friend, if you’re in the room today and you’ve not yet received that peace, I pray you would be reconciled to God today, that you don’t have to wait till tomorrow. You don’t have to wait till you’ve done enough good, because it won’t be enough. Have peace with Christ today. He’s done it by the blood of the cross, by the blood he spilled on the cross.
Your response is simply, I believe, I receive. Now Christ, make me yours. And believer in the room, that’s a lot of you, are you living at peace?
If not, what would it look like to begin to ask God, ask his Son, hey, I want this peace. I want, I want you because you say you are peace. What would it look like to know you, to walk with you, to hear your voice? What would it look like to rub shoulders with other believers if that’s not what I’m doing and get in community with one another? Let’s continue now in prayer, church.
Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you. We thank you for your grace and your mercy that so much of this text we just read is the joy we have in Christ Jesus, that we were far, we were separated, we were alienated, we were strangers, we had no hope. All of that is true spiritually, and some of us experienced that. Some of us came to Christ much later in life, and we remember what it felt like to be hopeless, to be estranged from you.
Lord, we thank you first and foremost. We are grateful for You, what You did, for sending Your Son Jesus that we could be free, that we could be reunited and reconciled. Lord, thank You.
We worship You for that. If nothing more today, we show our gratitude. We are reminded this morning of all that You’ve done. To that person who’s come in today, Lord, that this isn’t a reminder, it’s an invitation. It’s all right.
What am I going to do with this? Dear friend, if that’s you, I pray that you would move towards the Lord. He has brought you near. He has done all that is necessary to pull you close. Would you now draw near in prayer?
Would you respond to his invitation? It can look like this, a simple prayer. And I’m going to give you an opportunity to pray a confession of faith today. Would you pray with me simply this? Jesus, I believe today that you died on the cross for me, that the sacrifice you made there was enough to pay for my sin and my guilt and my shame and my brokenness.
It was more than enough. I believe that today. And God, I believe you raised Christ Jesus from the dead. And the cross and the resurrection give me hope, not only that You conquered sin for me, but also that You have eternal life for me that begins now, not just when I die, but now. God, I’m asking now, would You guide me in Your mercy and in Your grace?
Help me to experience this reconciliation. Today, I’m with my mouth, I’m believing. In my mind, I’m understanding. Would you help me to, in my heart and in my deepest, in my deepest place, Lord, would you help me to know that I’m reconciled? Help me to experience it.
Help me to live it out. And God, help me to begin to be an ambassador of reconciliation for others. Help me to know what that means. Put someone around me, Lord, that can disciple me. And guide me in my new faith.
Dear friend, welcome to the family of God, and truly that’s what this message is about. We are the family of God. We should love each other like a good family does. We should care for one another like a good family does, and we have a family mission. God, would you help us to endeavor to walk that mission out, that we would have that shalom, that harmony of a family that is trying to reach others for Christ and trying to grow together into His image.
Would You do all this in Christ Jesus’ name? Amen.
We live in a world that longs for peace, yet seems unable to find it. Nations are at war. Families are divided. Friendships are broken. Even in our own hearts, we struggle with anxiety, guilt, and unrest. We want peace in our world, peace in our relationships, and peace within ourselves.
Yet, no matter how hard we try, lasting peace seems just beyond our reach.
Why is peace so difficult to find? The Bible tells us that our greatest problem is not political, relational, or emotional. It's spiritual. Sin has separated us from God, and that separation has affected every other relationship in our lives. We cannot have true and lasting peace until we first have peace with God. And that's a peace we cannot achieve through our own efforts. We need a Savior.
That's the good news of today's passage. Paul reminds us that Jesus didn't merely come to teach us how to find peace. Paul doesn't say that Christ merely gives us peace, although He certainly does. He says that Christ IS our peace! That's a powerful distinction. Peace isn't merely the absence of conflict. It's the presence of Christ!
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he called the Gentile believers to remember how Christ had brought them from separation to reconciliation with God and His people.
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