Two Become One

Eph. 2:11-22

Good morning, we are continuing in our series on the book of Ephesians which is titled “… Therefore …”  As we noted in our recent series from Acts, Paul spent more than two years in Ephesus, and from there, the gospel had gone out to the entire province of Asia to a million people or more.

Roughly 5 years later, Paul was in prison in Rome, and wrote a letter to the Ephesian believers.  “This letter powerfully explains our blessings in Christ as a result of the gospel and tells us how we should *therefore* live.”  And so, we are going verse by verse through this tremendously encouraging book.

Today’s passage begins with the word “therefore,” so I was curious how many therefores there are in the bible.  If you will bear with me, I even made a graphic of what I learned.

First, there are 442 verses with the word therefores in the whole bible.  Of that, 279 are found in the Old Testament and 163 in the New Testament.  If you take the four gospels and the book of Acts together, there are just 52 therefores in those longer books.  That leaves 111 verses in the New Testament Letters including Revelation.  Ephesians by itself has seven occurrences, and the first one is here in Ephesians chapter 2.  There is one in chapter 3.  The other 5 are all packed into the second half of the letter.  You’ll have to wait till the new year to hear about those (or you can just read ahead 😊).

Now, there are more than 600,000 words in the Bible.  If you take all those verses and separate them out by which part of the bible they come from, you do find out that compared to other books there are a whole lot of therefores in Ephesians, about 5 times as many occurrences per word as the bible in average.  One time per every 350 words of Ephesians, there is a therefore.

Ephesians gives us a lot to think about, and it builds on itself and the amazing truth of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.  Therefore, let’s pray and get into today’s passage.

Lord, we thank You for all the work that You have done on our behalf that we therefore can have confidence in You and Your saving power.  Teach us from these verses in Ephesians 2 today.  We need You and Your truth.  Renew our minds we pray in Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Okay, Ephesians 2, verse 1 …

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (which is done in the body by human hands) – remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. – Eph. 2:11-12

I didn’t talk about the title for today’s specific message, but it’s “Two Become One.”  If you noticed the title beforehand, maybe you were thinking about marriage, but it’s clear that the two are not a man and woman here, but rather two groups of people, Jews and Gentiles.

Acts 19 tells of Paul’s stay in Ephesus.  As was his custom, he went to the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews first.  He did this for the first three months of his more than two year stay.  Among the Ephesian believers, there would have been far more Gentiles than Jews.

I spent a lot of time talking about “therefore,” so what is the therefore there for at the beginning of verse 11?  As Brian shared last week, the first part of chapter 2 talks about how we were dead in our transgressions.  Then, it goes on to say that we are saved by Christ out of that.

Here, this is called to our minds again.  We, gentiles, were separate from Christ.  What does it mean that we are separate from Christ?  We had no citizenship in Israel.  We were not part of the family of God.  We were foreigners.  Essentially, we were stateless with respect to the kingdom of heaven.  As such, we were without hope and without God.  But now …

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For, He Himself is our peace. –  Eph. 2:13-14

I didn’t want to skip over these words too quickly.  This is good news.  We who were once far away have been brought near.  We have been brought into God’s people.  How?  We are brought near by the blood of Christ.  Jesus’ sacrifice of His own life has made a way for us.  Jesus is our peace.

When you walk with the Lord and you have His word and you sing His praise, you have peace.  Maybe not perfectly, maybe not all the time, but you have a refuge, a shelter, a rock to hold onto in the storm.

The people at the time Paul wrote Ephesians often lived in fear of the next thing that could happen.  Their false gods were wicked; they were capricious doing whatever selfish thing they could think of.  The people only thought of gods as ones to appease.  You wanted to try and stay on their good side as much as possible.

What about today?  We are living in a time when people are more anxious than ever before.  People do not have peace.  There are lots of ways that people try to find peace, but apart from Christ there is no real lasting peace.

We tend to focus on this internal peace that we have in Christ and the peace we have with God, but Jesus’ impact is even greater.  The peace he brings is not just to individuals, but it is between individuals as well.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. –  Eph. 2:13-15

I realize that a lot of time has passed since the Berlin Wall was torn down, but I have this picture, video really, in my mind of the wall being pushed over by bulldozers and other places by people.  The wall was toppled and fell toward the west, and the people on the east could escape.

What Jesus has done in making the two peoples one, he has broken down the wall from both sides.  Another way to translate the word destroyed is to say the barrier was dissolved.  He has removed the barrier in every aspect.  He has removed the hostility.  He has set aside the law.  He did not abolish the law.  He fulfilled the law. (Matthew 5:17) He did it with His own flesh.  Jesus was the sacrifice which removed the obligations of the law, its commands and regulations.  It’s amazing, wonderful.  What is the result, or why did he do it?

His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. –  Eph. 2:15-16

This is a huge vision!  In Christ, there is one new humanity, one body, one person, one man, unified.

Think about what the world is like both then and now.  There is conflict between peoples wherever you look.  Hard-heartedness, bitterness, conflict and war.  

It pains me to say it, but even within the church of Christ, there is division.  Why must it be this way?  I think Paul explains this later in Ephesians.  I’m thinking of verses like Ephesians 4:2, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”  God didn’t inspire Paul to write that we should be humble and gentle when we feel like it or when we don’t have our dander stirred up.  It says to be completely humble.  We are to interact with one another with all humility.  

And then, I think about Ephesians 5:21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  Paul writes this command to submit before he writes about different roles within a household.  Before different God-ordained roles, we are told to submit to one another.  If we love our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we have reverence for our Lord Jesus Christ, then we will submit to one another.

And when we fail, because we will, we need to apologize and ask forgiveness.  Thereby, we will allow unity to be restored within the body of Christ.  Dissension or disunity is an act of the flesh spoken against in Galatians 5 (v.20).  We should not have hostility toward one another.  This has been put to death in Christ as Ephesians 2:16 tells us.  He has reconciled both groups together.  If we hold on to hostility toward another believer, if we are not believing the best about a brother (I Corinthians 13:7), that’s a problem.  Philippians 2:3 tells us that we should consider others better than ourselves, count them more significant, more important.  If our attitude toward a brother puts them down and raises us up, that’s not okay.  We are clearly not walking in the Spirit.

We have to follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.  For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. –  Eph. 2:17-18

Paul is speaking to both the Jews and Gentiles here.  The Gentiles were the ones far away from God, spiritual foreigners, remember.  The Jews were the ones who were near because they had the promises of God.  They had the Old Testament, the covenants.  But, the message to both is the same.  It is a message of peace, a message of reconciliation.

Both groups, Jews and Gentiles, have access to God the Father through Jesus Christ.  We have access to God the Father through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.  What?!  If we’re used to hearing this truth, it’s easy for it to slip past us as ordinary.  We have access to the Father.  The King of the Universe is friendly toward us.  I know this is the third time I’ve looked ahead in Ephesians, but chapter 3 tells us that this access allows us to come freely to the Father with confidence. (v. 12)

I can tell you that the last couple of years have been tough for me on the personal friend front.  Two of my long-time friends from work left to take other jobs.  When I say long-time, I mean one was 10 years of daily interaction.  The other has been a friend for 24 years.  I don’t hear from either of them unless I initiate.  One of those doesn’t reply with any words, just links to things that are on his mind.  A third friend has moved on to other responsibilities within our plant.  We still talk fairly often, but we’re not “besties.”  I have conversations with other friends, and I feel like I listen well.  I try to interact.  To be honest and to my own shame, I think I’m a better listener to my friends than to my wife.  After trying to be there for them, they might ask me how I’m doing.  I start to tell them, but I feel like I usually get cut off.  Nothing harsh, I just feel that they don’t have time for me because something else is more important.  I don’t have free and confident access to the people I think are my closest friends.

That’s not the situation that we have with God our Father.  He is always there for us.  We can come to Him any time.  There is nothing more important to Him.  He is ready willing and able to talk to us.  He has given us His word to hear from Him.  He has filled us with His Spirit to guarantee that He is there for us.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. –  Eph. 2:19-20

Thinking about being a foreigner and stranger reminded me of something I experienced years ago.  There have been many times where I felt like a stranger in a foreign country that I was visiting.  But, the most out of place I’ve ever felt was actually in Los Angeles.  I had to go there on a business trip, and while I was getting my rental car, the guy at the counter looked at my driver’s license and says, “Hey, you’re Farmer John.”  And I respond, “Excuse me.”  At this point, he notes from my license that I’m from South Carolina and guesses that I’ve never heard of Farmer John sausage.  Well, it turns out that Farmer John is the Jimmy Dean of California.  Up until 2021 if you bought a hot dog at a Dodgers game or the Staples Center, it was a Farmer John hot dog.

It also turns out that there was a huge Farmer John packaging plant adjacent to Los Angeles in a city called Vernon.  Vernon’s city motto is “Exclusively Industrial.”  The city has a population of 328, and many of these are employees of the city.  The 10 acre Farmer John plant had about 2000 employees and was completely painted with murals starting back in 1957.  So, I think, “Man, I’ve got to see this.”  So, when I visited, it was so big, I had to drive around the whole thing.  Then I stopped and got out and walked around taking pictures mostly with my jaw on the ground.  The guy who started the murals worked on it for 11 years, and then after he died another man continued for years.  It is really something to see, not so much something to smell.  

I walked around a corner, and I’m right next to the main entrance to the plant.  I was wondering to myself if I should show my ID and see if they would let John Farmer in to see Farmer John.  Right at that moment was shift change, and I go from being the only person on the street to standing in the middle of a crowd of several hundred people, and except for me everyone is going in the same direction, away from the plant.  There was this dynamic that they all had a similar purpose.  They were all moving the same way.  They knew each other.  They didn’t know me.  They were dressed for work in a meat packing plant.  I was dressed business casual.  At first, I was moving sort of against them, or at least not along with them.  As it became more of a wall of people, I just kind of got swept along with the crowd and then started making my way back to my car.  And for that 5 or 10 minutes, I felt like a complete outsider.  I was an alien.  And I guess because of the suddenness and unexpectedness of it, it really stuck with me.

Another aspect of difference was that I was the only Caucasian that I could see in that crowd.  There were about an equal share of people of Asian descent, Hispanic descent, and African descent.  Fast forward a few years from this event, and I’m telling the story I told you to some friends at work including a dear brother in Christ who is of Indian-descent but is actually from Trinidad and Tobago.  I get to that part about never feeling like a stranger to that extent, and I say something enlightened like, “I’m the only white guy in this HUGE crowd.”  I look at my friend.  He doesn’t say anything and doesn’t betray anything to the others listening.  But, in about a half a second, I realized while I didn’t see him as a stranger, he had had that feeling of being a stranger a whole lot more times that I had.  And in fact, I had just made him feel like a stranger and foreigner in the way I told that story.  Ugh.  I think it doubly hurt him because I was his friend.  And I couldn’t see the danger because he was my friend.  He’s moved away, first to Europe and now eastern North Carolina, but I have a reminder in my calendar, and I try to keep in contact with him each year.  Why do I tell that story?

We are no longer foreigners and strangers to one another in the body of Christ.  (I Peter 1:1 tells us that as believers we are strangers in the world though.)  We have a common citizenship.  We are fellow citizens.  We have a place for eternity with God’s people.  Not only that, we are members of His household.  We are part of God’s family.

Paul turns his metaphor here and begins to look at the body of Christ as a building.  Our place is much higher up or farther out in the construction than when Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus.  Even then, he wrote of how new believers are added into the construction built on a foundation of the apostles and prophets who rest upon the chief cornerstone, Christ Jesus.

We sang that song earlier, “In Christ Alone.”  He is our cornerstone, our solid ground.  He is firm through the fiercest drought and storm.  If we do not build our spiritual house of Jesus Christ, then we will not stand.  Why?  Because …

In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. - Eph. 2:21-22 

It reminds me a little of Colossians 1:17 in how Jesus holds everything together, the whole universe.  More importantly, Jesus joins together the whole body of Christ as a holy temple in the Lord.  Not only is Jesus the foundation.  He is also the mortar that joins us all together.

This earth and its heavens are passing away, but the family of God is forever.  And Jesus is right there making sure we are built together and not apart.  And that, brothers and sisters, is good news!

It’s interesting how messages come together sometimes.  I thought that before the end, I would have come to the conflict between Israel and Hamas since this entire passage is about the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles.  I hope it is plain to you all what the answer is for peace in the Middle East.  The answer is the that peace is only possible if they would accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We know from scripture that not all of them will, but some will, and we must continue to pray for the gospel to go forth and for people to come to Christ.  The answer to the peace of Israel on both sides.  It is for both Israel and her enemies to acknowledge and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Sadly, neither side has been looking to the Lord certainly not at the leadership level.  Again, I encourage you to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and the salvation of her people both Jew and Gentile.

And, may we continue to love one another, pray for one another, submit to one another, in Christ because we are held together in Him and by Him and through Him.

Therefore … in light of what Christ has done for us.  Let us continue to be built together as a dwelling in which God lives.

Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you not only save us as individuals, but you save us as a people together.  Unify our hearts as a body of believers who love one another, believe the best, and encourage and build one another up.  I ask this in Jesus’ Name, Amen.