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Sermons

January 11/12, 2014

One New Man

Kenny Stokes | Ephesians 2:11-22

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.—Ephesians 2:11–22

Introduction

Last weekend Pastor Jason mentioned that I would be preaching this weekend as one who has been engaged in our racial harmony efforts at Bethlehem Baptist Church for quite a while. For every ministry calling God gives, he both prepares and equips us sooner or later for the task.

So, I see it as part of God’s preparation for ministry at Bethlehem that God has given me the ethnic heritage that I have. According to the death certificates of my grandparents, I am of 3/4 African heritage, 1/8 Irish, and 1/8 unknown. My dad always said that his unknown grandmother was Native American, and maybe that’s true. I just can’t document it.

As far as citizenship or nationality, I can trace my ancestry back to Virginia in the late 1700s, so I am at least a 7th generation American. And I am a 4th generation Minnesotan tracing back to the late 1800s. My African American ancestors were among the early black families who moved north after the Civil War to find the American dream.

Unlike my father, who grew up in the predominately African American Rhondo neighborhood in St. Paul, I grew up, as did my mother, in a predominately white neighborhood in South Minneapolis.

As a child I felt the constant social pressure for ‘race’ to be THE determiner of my identity. And I could never settle the sense of ‘who am I?’ on the question of ‘race.’ Black kids called me ‘cracker’ because I was white. White kids called me the 'n-word’ because I was black. As a child, I physically defended black friends from whites, and I was physically defended by white friends from blacks. And yet, was I ‘black’ or was I ‘white’? Could I be both—and not break the rules?

Several years ago, I came across this paragraph in a novel revealing the thoughts of a mixed-race young man. It begins to capture the advantage and frustration of one’s inability to settle identity in one color or the other.

We mulattos [mixed-race people, black-white] have felt the push and pull of white and blackness perhaps like no other race, if a race is in fact what we are.  Throughout my life I have glimpsed opportunity and oppression as though I have two sets of eyes, or as though I were in the practice of opening first my left eye, and my right eye, and then my left, watching the world bounce back and forth between two perspectives, never quite synthesizing or settling: African, American, African, American.—Angry Black White Boy

Deep within the human soul there is a drive to settle our identity: Who am I, and where do I belong? One of the core places culture demands that we settle it, and settle it fast, is in terms of race.

Many of you know what I am talking about. Perhaps you are ethnically mixed, adopted, or maybe not. Perhaps you are African American and do well in school and are told that you are becoming white because you excel in academics. Perhaps you are ethnically Korean, speak perfect Minnesotan, and don’t speak Korean at all. Perhaps you were born here and yet get asked with intensity, “Where are you really from?” 

Perhaps, ethnically, the simplicity of color identity doesn't fit. Perhaps you are an ethnic minority who grew up in the majority culture, and you have a constant nagging feeling that you feel ‘white’ on the inside, and that you somehow betrayed your race. Perhaps you are African American, and you hear things like, “How come you don’t talk black?"—as if black were a monolithic thing. Perhaps you are ethnically Latino and awkwardly are asked to declare your race in the US census. What do you put? And think about it, is ‘white’ an adequate description of a Caucasian’s ethnic heritage?

It wasn’t until a few years after God called me to himself and I believed the gospel of Christ that I realized that my seeking my ultimate sense of identity, belonging, and well-being in ‘race’ was idolatrous. It was a seeking after something that only God can give me in Christ, something that ‘race’ could never give me. 

From that time forward, I realized in the core of my being that—no matter if you can or cannot settle your ‘race’—it won’t satisfy your deepest longings, sense of identity, belonging, and well-being.  You’ll still be thirsty and hungry. ‘Race’ is a broken cistern. It’s a cup with a hole in it. In our thirst for identity and belonging, we pick up the ‘race’ cup to take a drink, expecting to be satisfied, but a settled sense of identity and belonging leaks out the bottom before we can drink it. Race fails to settle your need to know who you are and where you belong.

What I know by the mercy of God, is that God is most satisfying and my ultimate sense of significance, belonging, and identity are found not in ‘race’—but in our Savior and Lord, Christ Jesus.

One of the clearest places in the Bible where our identity and oneness in Christ is taught is our text in Ephesians 2. Paul there applies the accomplishments of Christ to the alienation his readers—Gentile believers—had known with God and with the people of God. My aim is that we, Bethlehem, be grounded in this identity and live out this unity in relational ethnic harmony to the glory of Christ.

Two Preliminary Notes on Context

First, note that the recipients are Gentile, non-Jewish, believers in Ephesus. They have had an identity crisis all their own. They came to believe in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, and quickly discovered that generally speaking the Jewish people—even Christians—discriminated against them religiously, socially, and relationally. Not only that, they had their own sinful racism toward the Jewish people to deal with.

So, by inference, it seems fitting to me to draw you in if you have experienced alienation from God and from God’s people in any way for any reason, racial or otherwise. This text is for your restoration to God and the people of God. The text is addressed to the excluded people, the people who have been excluded from God and excluded from the people of God largely because of their ethnicity—their non-Jewishness.

Second, note that our text stresses not merely our reconciliation with God, but also the reconciliation of peoples—Jew and Gentile. What is the difference between the first half of chapter 2 (vv. 1–10) and the second half (vv. 11–22)?

 In the first half, our reconciliation with God is remembered: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. . . . But God, being rich in mercy . . .made us alive together with Christ. . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith . . .we are God’s workmanship in Christ” (vv. 1–10). In the second half, our text, remembers not only our reconciliation to God, but also adds and stresses Christ’s reconciling in reconciling people to one another. 

So Paul begins by asking the Gentile believers to remember their own spiritual journey. You can see the three steps in the progression of reflective thought signified by the phrases "at one time" (verse 11), "but now" (verse 13) and "so then" (verse 19). Those will make up three sections as we walk through the passage.

1. 'At One Time'— Alienated (vv. 11–12)

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”—without the Savior, Messiah King. 
  • “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel”—estranged from God’s chosen kingdom people
  • “and strangers to the covenants of promise”—that is, all God’s precious words and promises were alien to you (cf. Romans 3:2).
  • “having no hope and without God in the world”—hopeless and God-less.

This description of alienation is both (1) alienation from God and separation from Christ, and also, (2) alienation from the people of God. Gentiles even carried the shame of being labeled ‘uncircumcised’ in a derogatory sense (e.g. Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:26).

Believer, for the benefit of your faith remember what you were apart from Christ. You will never rejoice to the heights you might unless you remember what you were, and would still be, apart from Christ. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, when preaching this text, encouraged his London congregation to remember what they were with these words:

If you do not realise what you were before God took hold of you, you will never praise Him as you ought.

So remember your alienation from God and his people, but don’t stay there. Remember also . . .

2. 'But Now'—Reconciled (vv. 13–18)

That was then. This is now.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

How does the death of Christ end the separation and bring us near? Let’s keep reading, in Verse 14:

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

Q: What is the "dividing wall of hostility"?

On the one hand, it is certainly a metaphor useful in describing the separation of Jews and Gentiles religiously, culturally, ceremonially, and ethnically.

Listen to this ancient Jewish ‘Letter of Aristeas’ as illustrative of how the law of Moses separated Jew from Gentile:

[Moses] surrounded us with unbroken palisades (i.e., fences) and iron walls to prevent our mixing with any of the other peoples in any matter, being thus kept pure in body and soul … worshipping the one almighty God’ (139) … so that we should be polluted by none nor be infected with perversions by associating with worthless persons, he has hedged us about on all sides with prescribed purifications in matters of food and drink and touch and hearing and sight.—p. 149.

Another scholar adds a description of the ancient hostility with these words:

The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles, said the Jews, were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made. . . . It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. . . . The barrier between them was absolute. If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death.

And yet, there was a literal sense to the phrase ‘the dividing wall of hostility.” There was an actual wall in Jerusalem at the temple designed to keep Gentiles out. 

I visited the site of the temple in Jerusalem last May. While the temple has been destroyed, the site is there with the Wailing Wall and tours of the ancient walls and such. We did see models of the temple. And in each layout we saw the separation of Gentiles—separated by a wall marking the outer court of the Gentiles running around the temple. The Gentiles could look at the temple but were not allowed to approach the inner courts.

We know that there actually were warning signs written in Greek and Latin. A few have been discovered. One read, "No foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure round the temple. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death."

The Jew-Gentile divide was as great as any religious or racial division we have in America or elsewhere in the world today. In the minds of the Jewish people, from their experience in the Old Covenant, there were only two kinds of people—Jews and Gentiles (or the nations, everybody else). The alienation between Jew and Gentile was pervasive and, at times, violent both ways. Acts 21 tells us that Paul was almost killed because a crowd thought he brought Trophimus in the temple in Ephesus (Acts 21:29).

How is it that Jesus, by his death, has broken down this wall?

First of all, by his death, Christ, according to verse 15a, abolished “the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.” Christ abolished the ceremonial regulations and their accompanying condemnation as a means of separating people from God and separating Jews from Gentiles. With the death of Christ, the only way of salvation for both Jew and Gentile is by the grace of God through faith in Jesus.

Secondly, Christ’s purpose in tearing down the dividing wall by abolishing the ceremonial law of Moses is the creation of a new humanity. 

That he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility (vv. 15–16).

And so Christ is our peace, because in him and by his death, not only do we have peace with God, but also—the point of the text—is that we have been reconciled to one another into “one new man,” made up of Jews and Gentiles, peoples of all nations who are in Christ.

Henceforth, by the design of God and purpose of the death of Christ, there is now only one people of God—one new humanity. This people are marked, not by ceremonial physical circumcision, but by the circumcision of the heart by the Holy Spirit (cf. Philippians 3:3). This people are marked, not by strict food laws, but by the inner presence of the Spirit who has written God’s law on our hearts and who causes us to walk in his ways from the inside out.

3. 'So Then'—Inclusion (vv. 19–22)

The "so then" section celebrates the results of the reconciling work of Christ in verses 19–22. These are words of healing for those who have been excluded. We actually belong and find our identity here in Christ.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

Verse 19 says, we are included together among the people of God as ‘fellow citizens with the saints.’ God is sovereign over all, and Christ is Lord of all. And we are the citizens of his kingdom along with all believers of all time—Jew, Gentile, and people from every tongue and tribe. He is our God and King, and we as his people benefit from his sovereign reign over the universe for the glory of his name and for the good of his citizenshis people.

Verse 19 also says that we not only fellow citizens, but we are also “members of God’s household.” This is an affirmation that we are members of God’s family with God as our Father. We belong to him. Our identity is as his sons and daughters in Christ. 

Then in verse 20, the household metaphor seems to morph into a third image of our inclusion with the people of God; we are like building stones of a new temple of worship,

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.—vv. 20–22

We belong as God’s building blocks in his true spiritual temple, built on the teaching of the apostles and prophets, and the cornerstone of Christ. This is the new true temple that will come down in fulfillment of Revelation 21:3, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” 

Conclusion 

By God’s mercy to us, the satisfaction to the human quest for identity and belonging will only be satisfied in Christ Jesus. This is God’s design. By design, the death of Christ won’t let us settle in our Jewishness, our blackness, our whiteness, or our ethnic heritage as ultimate.

No, our ultimate sense of significance, belonging, and identity are found not in our Jewishness, or ethnicity, or our ‘race, ’nor in any of our accomplishments or failures, but in our Savior and Lord, Christ Jesus.

Oh, how I hope Bethlehem might be a place were divisive ‘us vs. them’ thinking might be replace by unifying ‘we’ thinking. We are one new humanity in Christ. What do I mean? For instance, let's look at music. Let the attitude not be, “Why do we have to sing ‘their’ songs?” Rather, as fellow members of the body, may we look to the interests of others and make their interests our interests. If you could have heard what I heard last night about how meaningful and validating it is when we sing the worship of Christ in Manderin, Spanish, and Hindi, you would join me in seeing those moments as not ‘their’ moments of worship but ‘ours.’

We are one people in Christ. The interests of others in the body of Christ are my interests.

Can you hear me, you who have felt the sting of alienation? You who have felt the pain of rejection? Who who have felt the shame that you don’t belong here and the emptiness of not knowing where you do belong? You who may have felt even excluded by God?

Be reconciled to God in Christ. By his death, he has torn down the wall separating us from God and from one another. By faith in him, your sins are forgiven.

And in Christ, you find that you have a ‘super identity’ with all the people of God. I got that phrase from one of our elders, Rod Takata, when we were trying to describe how our identity in Christ is ultimate and does not obliterate our ethnic heritage but rather gives steadiness and significance to it.

Believer, Christian, here is your identity:

  • You are fellow citizens with the saints of all time.
  • You are fellow members of God’s household. God is your Father, and all believers are his blood bought children. Each of one of us is a dearly loved child of God.
  • You are God’s temple, his spiritual temple being built together with all the saints to be together the place where God lives within each one of us by his Spirit, and we with him forever.
  • You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.—1 Peter 2:9–10

Prayer

Benediction: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20–21)