Sermon on Unity - Ephesians Chapter 2

All right, this is Ephesians chapter 2. These are the words of God. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we are dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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 were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and 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 also you are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

These are the words of God. God's word is always timely.

I don't recommend it, but oftentimes I will just randomly flip to a page and start reading. Not something wrong with that really, but it's not really effective.

But I'm always amazed though how relevant God's words always are. It doesn't matter what book you turn to, it doesn't matter what verse you read, they're so relevant to our lives today.

And the reason of course is we understand that though the words of the scripture were written by men, it was done so as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. And so God knows how to make words penetrate our very souls.

The words of God explain to us what we're really like deep down. The word of God knows us better than we know ourselves.

And one of the things about the word of God is that there's no safe space with the word of God. God tells you straight.

He tells you what you're like, and he offers you the solutions that will change you.

Of course, Ephesians 2 is no exception to this. What a relevant passage to everything that we face today.

The first half of the chapter, it gives us the real lowdown about what we are without Christ.

Look, any Christian who's honest with themselves, we read the first half of this chapter and we know that the

Holy Spirit has got our numbers so bad. God knows us so well.

He knows how futile our minds are intimately. He knows. He says, he knows that we're, we're dead in our trespasses and in sins, and this is not just morally broken, right?

It's not just morally broken. It's not just that we're victims of these oppressive systems.

It's not like we're slightly missing the mark. No, the scripture says we are dead with a capital D. I've added the capital

D dead in trespasses and sins.

This is not a time to mince words. The scripture never mints his words,

Paul Paul writes here, we're dead in our trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the

Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

This describes our lives before Christ. It tells us why we acted the way we did, how we acted, and basically what it says is you acted according to the spirit of the devil.

Again, this is not a subject that we should mince words. We shouldn't soften our speech here. This is reality.

He goes on, he says, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

And we were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, children of wrath.

That's how Paul describes the unregenerate man. He's not kidding. Paul is not kidding.

He's not negotiating here. He's not beating around the bush and neither should we. He says, we once walked, we were once children of wrath and everybody else who's an unbeliever is currently a child of wrath.

And then verse four starts with the best word in the Bible. But, but God, is there a sweeter phrase in all of scripture, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace. I love that phrase too.

Immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us. I know that's right because I know the depths of my own depravity and I know what the condition of my soul was before I came to know the

Lord. I know the things that I longed for. I know the things that I worked for.

And I think sometimes that when he says following the Prince of the power of the air, that seems like an understatement.

Not only was I following, but I was chasing, I was running after that way. And so that's the thing.

This is the gospel, right? Ephesians chapter two, that starts off with a presentation of the gospel.

It's unadulterated. It's right there. This is why we gather on Sundays. This is why we sing songs to God.

This is why we love because even when we were dead in our trespasses, following Satan himself,

God made us alive with Christ by grace. Not because we decided to clean up our acts.

Nothing like that. It says, while we were dead in our trespasses, it goes on. Verse eight says, by grace, you have been saved through faith.

And this is not of your own doing. It's the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

So this is just straight up, you know, basic foundational, amazing gospel.

And then Paul goes on, he gives us the gospel and he goes on to tell us what the purpose of this gospel is.

Our sins and trespasses were removed from us, but not just because God just decided he had mercy on them.

No big deal. And they could just kind of go on along their merry way. No, no. He says in verse 10, the purpose of this, he says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And so this is what

I want to talk about over the next couple of weeks. What the purpose, the goal of the gospel, the purpose of it, the end of the gospel.

That's what I want to talk about because Christ could have just saved us and kind of let us do whatever, or he could have just left us where we were futile, dead in our sins.

He could have done that, but now, but instead he decided to make us alive, save us from our sins.

And he gave us good works to walk in. He gave us a mission. And so that's what we do now.

We walk in the good works that Christ prepared beforehand specifically for us.

And so no longer will we walk according to the, the, the, the world, the spirit of the world, as it said in the beginning of the chapter, as we, how we used to walk.

Now we walk in good works. That's what verse 10 tells us. And so we all know this is again, basic stuff.

I don't have to explain this, but I will, because it's so awesome. We're not saved as the result of good works, but we're saved in order to walk in good works.

So our lives as Christians should be at least about finding what the good works are that we're supposed to walk in and to walk in them.

Because this is why we were saved in the first place. And so Paul in the rest of Ephesians decides to explain what those good works are.

This is a great book. This is a great book in the Bible. What Paul emphasizes in Ephesians, because he could have talked about a lot of things.

He could have talked about, you know, the fruit of the spirit and various types of things. But what he decides to focus on when he talks about our good works is unity, unity, unity is a goal of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, some of you might be aware of an ongoing conversation happening in American Christianity surrounding the topic of unity.

Lots of people are talking about ethnic or racial unity, and there are some heavyweights of the faith,

Christian cultural power brokers, if you will, that are coming down on opposite sides of this issue, which is interesting to say the least.

It is a contentious issue. It is an emotional issue. And the way forward will be difficult.

If you followed my Facebook feed or Twitter feed, you know that I'm in the mix on this issue as well. And what

I find fascinating about it is that we do have some clear words, at least in my opinion, we have some clear words from the

Lord on this topic regarding unity and Ephesians is a great book for it. And so I want to talk about this week, the second half of Ephesians chapter two, and next week we'll talk about Ephesians three and four, sort of.

And we're going to see what Paul says about unity. Because there was a very clear, a very real division, and it was an ethnic division during the time that Paul was writing.

Jew and Gentile. Could there be a clearer ethnic distinction? Jew and Gentile.

It was more than an ethnic distinction, but it definitely was that also. But it's way more of a distinction than male or female, way more foundational than rich or poor.

Clearly more divisive than even black and white. Because you see, the Jewish culture was given to them by God, or at least theoretically it was right, so God's law was given to his people.

And it detail, it didn't only detail their morality, it didn't only detail how to know what right from wrong, but it also gave them specific ordinances, specific laws on what to eat, how to dress, how to plant, how to harvest, how to organize their weeks.

You know what I mean? But it also gave them instructions on how to worship and all of these things, how to eat, how to dress, how to plant your garden, things like that.

These were all intentional ways for the Jewish people to separate themselves from the rest of the world.

That's what God intended by it. So when it says don't mix the seeds when you're planting, that was an intentional picture of separating yourself from the pagan lands around.

Now, you might know these laws, these holy days, these sacrifices, even circumcision.

All of these, we kind of categorize as we call them ceremonial laws, right? You might know that phrase.

And like I said, they all worked together to distinguish God's people and their culture from the pagan people and their cultures.

So that distinction was supposed to be very clear. But of course, we know that God's people,

Israel was not always faithful to that, right? They often attempted to mix their God -given culture with the surrounding nations, the spirit of the world.

But even though there was sort of some intermixing of that, there was some unfaithfulness. They tried to even mix worship sometimes, which was what

God really got angry about. But even though there was that kind of mixing, there was still a kind of an air of superiority with the

Jews over the Gentiles because the Jews knew that their culture was given to them by God. And so clearly it's superior, right?

And so they were superior. That's what they thought. Paul alludes to this in verse 11.

Paul says this, he says, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is being the flesh by hand.

So he's trying to remind the Gentiles, remember that the Jews used to think they were superior to you. And when he says circumcision, this is something that I hope you understand.

He doesn't only mean just circumcision, right? Like that's almost like a stand in for just the whole ceremonial law.

So when when he says circumcision, what he means is basically all those laws that separated you from Gentile circumcision was a clear marker, right?

Because if you it was made in the flesh, it was a permanent mark. So it'd be very easy to distinguish a circumcised

Jew from an uncircumcised pagan. So it's an easy shorthand to use. And so the ceremonial law, that's what

Paul's talking about here. All of the sacrifices, the separation, all that stuff that distinguished

God's people from everyone else. And so that's a real division. That's a genuine division. And it was intentional.

God intended it to be a division. It wasn't just as simple as skin color.

You know, I can't even imagine a dumber divider than skin color. It wasn't that simple. It wasn't like just gender or economic status.

This was a serious foundational division. We had God's covenant people. They really were by God set apart and divided from the surrounding nations at a foundational level.

And God did that. And their mission was supposed to be to represent

God on Earth. This is what Deuteronomy 4 says. He's talking about the laws that he gave

Israel. And he says this, he says, he says, see, I have taught you statutes and rules as the

Lord, my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you're entering to take possession of it. Moses says, keep them and do them because that will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples.

When they see your law, when they see your statutes, this is what this is what Moses says the peoples will say about Israel.

They surely this is a great people. What great nation is there that has God so near to it as the

Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him. He says that the nations, the pagan nations will say, what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous is this.

So that's what was supposed to happen, that the Israelites were supposed to represent God and the nations, the pagan nations around them were going to be like, wow, look how great their law works, look how just they are.

God's kingdom is superior to any kingdom around that was supposed to happen.

But of course we know Israel failed that mission. They failed miserably. They did not have a just nation.

They did not keep the law. And so instead of having awe about Israel, the pagan nations, they didn't have all, they, they just mocked them.

Instead of praising Israel, the nations wag their heads in contempt. And yet God's people were still

God's people. They still had covenant promises from God. They still had the promises of blessing and prosperity.

So even though there was all of this, you know, they, they had, they had polluted their worship with worshiping pagan gods.

They had perverted justice at every step of the way, even though all of that, they still had claim to the covenant promises of God and the

Gentiles were still cut off from those covenant promises. So Paul says in verse 12, he says, you were at that time separated from Christ alienated from the

Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise. He says that they have no hope that, well, they had no hope and they were without God in the world.

So you see that despite the failures of Israel, despite the compromises that Israel made with the, with the surrounding world,

God still loved his people because despite our faithlessness, God remains faithful.

That's how it works. And so the division between Jew and Gentile on Paul's day was as real as it had ever been.

The Gentiles had no hope in the world. The Gentiles were without God in the world. And of course, you know, in the old

Testament, they could have converted to, to, to, to Israel. They, you know, they get circumcised and then keep the ceremonial law.

They could have done that. But what they had to do is they had to stop being Gentiles. They had to become Jews in order to lay claim to the blessings.

But again, in verse 13, we have that beautiful word again. He says the

Gentiles were without hope, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far have been brought near by the blood of Christ for here.

This is what we all talk. This is what we all quoted this morning. He says for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

And how does he do that? That's the question. How does Christ bring in the Gentiles and Jews, bring them together to people that could not have been more distinct to two people that could not have been more divided?

How does Christ bring those two people that were more genuinely divided than any two people in history?

How does he make them one? The scripture says he does it in his flesh.

He does it by quote, abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two making peace.

And so this is the, this is the key. This is the key to understanding what Christ was all about, right?

Every, you see that Israel failed to obey God. They failed to do his law and keep the law, but at every point where they did that, every point where they failed,

Christ succeeded. So the nation Israel failed, but Christ, the true

Israel succeeded. And that success, according to the scriptures fulfilled that law.

Christ's success fulfilled that law. Now notice what the scripture says. That's the phrase that it uses.

It says by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, it's a very specific phrase, and it doesn't simply mean the law in general, because we know from the book of Matthew, Christ said he did not come to abolish the law.

And so if it would, if it just said law here, that would be a contradiction, but no, it doesn't say that.

It doesn't simply say the commandments. What it says is something very specific that Christ, uh, success,

Christ's death on the cross abolishes the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Those ordinances, those are the, those are the ceremonial laws.

Those are the ordinances that separated Jew from Gentile. That's what Paul is speaking about here.

One of one example is circumcision. That's what we're talking about here, right? Circumcision was an ordinance that was intended to divide

Jew and Gentile. Christ abolished that. He's referring to things like the diet, right?

The ceremonial diet. I mean, I remember Daniel and his buddies, they, they could only eat certain food. That was, that was true of all of Israel, right?

Well, Christ abolished that. We're talking about the separation of clean and unclean, the ways to dress things like that.

Those are the laws of commandments expressed in ordinances. Those were the laws that divided you and Gentile.

And those were the laws that were broken down in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so by breaking those down, by successfully accomplishing the law of God, fulfilling it, completing it,

Christ makes one new people in place of the two. So making peace as Paul says,

Paul gets more explicit. He goes on, he says 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.

This is gospel again. This is pure, unadulterated, explicit gospel because one of the goals of the gospel is this unity.

One, one people is in place of the two. The unity that we have between Jew and Gentile is a real unity because Christ accomplished it on the cross.

Nothing more needs to be done. Nothing more needs to be done to have unity because Jesus Christ accomplished this unity for his people, the church.

And so I have to emphasize again, because of the conversation that's going on right now, nothing more needs to be done to attain unity because Christ attained this unity for his people.

And so if that applies to a very deep division or very real division like Jew and Gentile, I think we could very easily make the application that it also applies to very artificial divisions like those based on skin color.

For example, skin color is just so shallow, right? So superficial.

So if Christ made from one man, made one man from the two Jew and Gentile, I don't think he has any problem making one man from the two on something as basic as skin color, right?

Like black church, white church, Latino church. These are, these are terms we all throw around kind of casually.

They're common to say things like that. But the reality is that even though we use those terms and we kind of in our mind have this division, this dividing wall that is very artificial.

I think most people who use these terms would say that it's a very artificial terms. We made them up. But all of those churches, despite the external artificial division, have a fundamental, unbreakable unity in Christ.

There is a genuine unity between black churches and white churches that exists right now.

We don't have to do anything to have it. We already have it in Christ. And so don't let, don't let anyone tell you otherwise that there's something, there's these extra things that we need to do to have unity.

No, no, we have it currently. You know how I know? Because verse 17 says this, it says, he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who were near.

For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the father.

Now, again, this is talking about Jew and Gentile, right? But I think it's very easy to apply this across the board.

And here's what it says. It says through Christ, there's only one Christ. I think we all can agree with that.

Through Christ, we have access in one spirit. And I stress the word one again.

We have access in one spirit to the father and there's only one father, right? So there is no black

Christ. There is no Latino Christ. Just trust me on that one. There is it.

There's just one Christ. There's one spirit. There's one father. And it's through Christ in the one spirit that we have access to the one father.

And so the access that I have is the same that the black guy down the street has the same as the white guy down the street has.

It's all the same. And so we have complete, utter unity with the global church because there's only one

Christ through him who we have access in the one spirit to the one father. So don't let anyone try to divide the church like a pizza.

Because there is a fundamental, unbreakable, absolute, wonderful, glorious unity.

And this is part of the mystery and wonder of the gospel. And so if we want to be gospel centered, we think we're gospel centered.

And we better be excited about the unity that we share. We better be preaching about the unity that we share.

Not dividing, not providing legitimacy to these artificial, superficial divisions.

Now, Paul completes this picture. He completes his picture of the one new people, the one new nation.

In verse 19, he says, you're no longer strangers. You're no longer 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 are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

Spirit. See, this is the present reality of the church. Don't let anyone lie to you and tell you otherwise.

You are fellow citizens with every local church around the world. We are members of the household of God with every local church around the world that names the name of Christ.

And this verse 19 actually kind of hints into what we're going to talk about next week, because we have a present reality of unity.

But if you notice in verse 19, I'm sorry, in verse 20, it says that we're being built together, right?

And so sometimes that this is why these terms are popular, black church, white church. It doesn't seem like on the surface that we have the unity, but we do because we know that Christ got it for us.

But yet we're still being built up. Yeah, I love how I love how Trinitarian this all is, too.

He talks about it, talks about the Father, talks about the Spirit, how the Spirit is the one that that is building us together, talks about Christ being the cornerstone.

It's all very Trinitarian. This is why we have unity with churches, all churches who are

Trinitarian. And so for me personally, this is why my Facebook feed has looked the way it does.

This is why my YouTube channel looks the way it does, because I'm zealous to establish and preach this fact of unity.

I'm fired up about this fact of unity, and I don't, I refuse to allow anyone to try to act like there is no unity or to try to disrupt it.

And so we all know, obviously, that no one can break apart the unity we have in Christ, right?

Like something that God puts together, you know, someone else can't come along and pull apart, right? That doesn't, it doesn't work that way.

So our unity isn't in jeopardy just because a few people think they can sow seeds of division. Yet there are still people trying to divide.

And so we have to deal with that fact in our everyday church life. And so it's kind of like salvation, right?

Like we know we were saved at the cross. We know we were saved by Jesus Christ, and that's perfect. And that is something that nobody can take away from us.

But at the same time, Paul tells us we have to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.

And it's like the same thing with unity. We have this unity. It's foundational. Christ accomplished it perfectly.

But that doesn't mean that in the here and now we don't have to make some efforts. So you can't add to our unity, but we can absolutely manifest it more clearly.

And that's what we're going to talk about next week because Paul doesn't just leave us in the lurch. He doesn't just say, well, you have this unity.

Good luck. No, he gives us the plan of how we manifest this unity because that's the thing.

Everyone has their own ideas of what a unified church would look like. But what we need to find out is what does

Paul say a unified church looks like? And so that's what we'll talk about next week. But for this week, for today, what

I hope you walk away with is just that you know, no matter what,

I was just reading an article about Nigerian Christians and Muslims in Nigeria are becoming increasingly violent towards them.

And so the thing is, though, that, you know, in the article was talking about the Nigerian church and the Nigerian church. And I just got struck by that because it's like, yes,

I understand what they're trying to say. They're talking about the church in Nigeria. But really, there's just the church. There's no in the scripture that doesn't have these different divine.

It's not like, oh, the Gentile church does this and the Jewish church does that. They did try to have that. But but the

Bible only talks about the one church. And so that's how we should consider that those people across across the ocean that are that are facing violence.

Those are those are our fellow citizens. Those are our household members. And so I want to stress that we have this unity currently, even though we're, you know, a whole ocean away, even though we don't think about people like that very often.

Typically, we have a unity that was accomplished perfectly by Christ. We need to recognize that fact and manifest it more in our lives.