The Newness of the Church in God’s Plan

Transcript

GR 2316
5/16/21
The Newness of the Church in God’s Plan
Ephesians 2:11-18
Gil Rugh

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2. We’re reminded in Ephesians 2 that God is doing something unique in the world in our day, something that had not been done before. Remember Jesus as He was finishing up His time on earth, He talked with His disciples and He said I will build My church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it. And the disciples didn’t understand what He meant by that. Quite frankly, after His death and resurrection, the church begins in Acts chapter 2, and Peter preaches the first sermon, but he doesn’t understand the remarkable thing that God is doing. In fact, it won’t be until Acts chapter 10 that it begins to come together for the apostle Peter. The uniqueness of what God is doing as a result of the death and resurrection of Christ in building the church, and it won’t be fully realized until Paul writes a letter like the letter to the Ephesians. He says, I want to reveal to you new material that had not before been revealed through all Old Testament history, through the gospels that God has now revealed it to me, and apostle, and to other apostles and prophets.

So that’s where we are in the letter to the Ephesians. It’s basically about the church that Christ is now building, who is included in that, and how you are included in that. We noted the serious condition of man apart from God, the fallen condition of every human being, in the first three verses of chapter 2. Basically, we can summarize it by saying we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We were cut off from God and had no relationship with Him. Then in verses 4 to 10, God, who is rich in mercy, intervened on our behalf. We ended with summarizing that salvation with four points, and we have a slide on that to put up. First thing, remember, the source is God. For by grace you’ve been saved through faith. It’s the gift of God in verse 8. It’s God who intervened in verse 4. The source of our salvation is God.

The basis is grace. “For by grace you have been saved.” That was said at the end of verse 5, and it’s repeated at the beginning of verse 8. You’re saved by grace because the means is faith. You’re saved by grace through faith. It’s simple. It’s clear. It’s amazing how much confusion… Well, we join a church. We get baptized. We take the sacraments. You’re saved by grace through faith because God is the Author of salvation. Our works cannot be included. We noted that it’s “by grace” “through faith,” verse 9, “Not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

But the result of our salvation is works. If you confuse the order, you are cursed. That’s what Paul wrote in the letter to the Galatians. Even if an angel from heaven reverses the order, that angel is cursed to hell. This is serious material. It’s serious truth. The result of our salvation is works. Most religious people think they’re going to be saved by their works, their religious works. Getting baptized, joining a church, taking communion, or other that they call sacraments, means of grace. Which really, we corrupt grace by making a work necessary to access grace. You cannot change what God has said. He is the Author of salvation, the only salvation there is. There are counterfeits offered. Now, works are important. We are not saved by works, verse 9. But “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” We don’t minimize the place of works and the importance of works. But they are results of having been saved. Once you move it up as a necessity for being saved, you have corrupted it. You’re back into what we call the “Galatian heresy” because Paul writes so clearly and strongly about it in his letter to the Galatians. The result of our salvation is a changed life.

We are “created in Christ Jesus,” verse 10, “for good works.” Created in Christ Jesus for good works. If you have not been created in Christ Jesus, made new by faith in His death and resurrection, the works you do are not acceptable to God. He’s looking for those whose heart has been changed, those who have been created new in Christ. Now, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things have passed away; new things have come because there’s a new life, a new person. He makes us new on the inside. Out of that will come a new life. If there are no new works, nothing of the character of God now being produced in a life, you do back up. If God’s intention when He created us was that He planned for us to live new lives; and new deeds, new works, are not there, you have to back up. Did you ever believe? Because there’s no one who’s saved whose life has not changed. The gospel, the message of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, then faith in Him that brings salvation. Romans 1:16 and 17 say the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Now to stop after the first three points and say I know I’ve trusted Christ. My life is maybe a mess and it’s not what it should be, but I know I’ve trusted Christ. How do you know? Well, I feel it. The Hindu feels he’s alright too. Everybody else who’s in any way religious feels they’re okay. We talked last Sunday night about how feelings are supposedly truth for our day. Well, you want to hear my truth and then you tell me your truth? Those kinds of conversations are beyond foolishness. Incidentally, the word often used for that is the word we get the word moron from. It’s just stupidity. It’s beyond foolishness in that sense. It’s moronic. So there it is. That’s the package, and it’s all there. Those that God saves by faith will produce works. He prepared them, the end of verse 10, “beforehand so that we would walk in them.” It’s how you conduct your life, and particularly, we get to Ephesians chapter 4, as I’ve mentioned, I therefore, verse 1, “the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling” you’ve received. So God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them and you will. That doesn’t mean you’ll never sin, but your life will be changed.

Now what he’s going to do with verse 11 is pull together the impact of this. That’s the salvation. What does that mean for us today? He’s going to say God is doing something new in building the church that He had not done before. It’s was new entity. Racial divisions have been prominent since God divided the languages and the people into different nationalities in the book of Genesis, chapter 10. The great divide, as we talk about religion, is between Jew and Gentile. Old Testament is a Jewish book. From Genesis chapter 12, and you could really bump back into chapter 11 because of the genealogy, but basically from chapter 12 all the way through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament, it’s all about Israel. It’s all about the Jews. It’s Jewish. The Old Testament is a Jewish book. It’s about God’s workings and plans for the nation Israel. He divided the world into nations in Genesis 10. In chapter 12 He picked out one man whose descendants would form the one nation out of all the nations that would exist, that would belong to Him. Amos chapter 3 verse 2, God says “you only,” addressing Israel, “have I chosen out of all the nations of the world.” Israel is unique. God is going to do a new work. His work is not going to focus on just the Jews. It’s going to include the Gentiles. But it’s a work because the Old Testament talked about how Gentiles could be saved. They converted to Judaism. There are some of those individuals in the Old Testament. They’re rare, but they’re there. God is the God of Israel. There are many gods in the world, but the God of Israel is the only true living God, the only God who is God. So salvation was found in the Jews. In the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the earthly life of Christ, remember when Jesus sent out His disciples, what did He tell them? Do not go to any Gentile cities. Do not go to the Samaritans. The Samaritans were mixed-blood Jews, Jews who had intermarried and developed their own religious system. Don’t go there. You only go to the house of Israel. That’s pretty exclusive. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah; He came to offer the Jewish kingdom prophesied in the Old Testament. That created a divide. There was a divide.

God chose Israel to belong to Him. He did things that were going to mark them off and keep them separate from the rest of the world, the rest of the nations. Remember when they went down into Egypt and Joseph’s family joined him in Egypt, there were about 70 people. Remember the Jews at that time were shepherds, and the Egyptians thought of shepherds as lower-class people. They didn’t do that. That was hired out, so to speak. So, the descendants, the family of Jacob was put in the land of Goshen. They kept the sheep for the Egyptians and so on. 70 people… 400 years go by, and they turned into 2,000,000. Now we have a true nation, the nation Israel. What had happened? They had been kept separate and distinct in Egypt. They come out as their own people. They don’t come out as people who have lost their identity and just have been absorbed within the Egyptians. No, they’ve been kept separate by God, and He’s going to go on. They’ll be marked. Circumcision, which we’re going to talk about. The He gives the Law, which we’re going to talk about.

All of this was to further separate Israel as a nation distinct and separate from the other nations of the earth. There’s application. God’s intention is for the church of Jesus Christ to be separate, but it’s not a nation. It’s a unique entity. Sometimes we think we ought to blend in more with the world. It’s never been God’s intention that His people blend in with the world. That’s true for the nation Israel, and that’s true for the church. That’s one of the things we find that can be a problem. It was a problem in New Testament times. Here’s what Paul is going to deal with, beginning in verse 11. This will come down into chapter 3 as well. The church is something unique, never been done before. It does not replace Israel, but it is distinct from Israel. It includes Jews, but it is not Jewish. It includes Gentiles, but it is not Gentile in that sense because nationalities don’t play a role. We don’t divide on the basis of that. This is what Paul had in mind when he wrote in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave or free. Those kind of external distinctions don’t play a role in the church that God is building. That doesn’t mean we lose distinct identity. That doesn’t mean a male is not a male and a female is not a female. That doesn’t mean there are no nationalities. But in Christ and in the church, those do not play a role.

Look at Ephesians 2:11. “Therefore remember.” How many times did God tell us, just remember? Remember. Remember. “Remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh.” It’d be enough to say they’re Gentiles, but he says Gentiles in the flesh because he’s going to talk about physical things. He’s going to talk about circumcision in the flesh in verse 11 because these kind of things drew lines of separation. “You were Gentiles in the flesh.” He called them Gentiles in the flesh because the Gentiles were not circumcised. That marked the Jews off as special. It was a strongly divisive issue. Josephus, the Jew became involved with the Romans but he wrote history that is so helpful and important for us because it was written during New Testament times. He remarks about the hatred that existed going both ways. Jews hated the Gentiles. They’re uncircumcised. Remember the Old Testament, the uncircumcised Philistines. There’s a disdain in that because they’re cut off from God and the covenant God has established with the Jews. And for the Gentiles, there was a hatred toward the Jews. Why? The Gentiles are polytheistic. You know, they had temples to different gods and goddesses. The problem with the Jews was they wouldn’t add their God to the pantheon of gods. They were exclusive and our God and our way to God and our high priest and our priesthood and our sacrifices, and then we are circumcised to show we belong to God in a way that no other nation does. The animosity of it was strong in New Testament times and is strong down to today. It doesn’t take much to have a breakout of anti-Semitism does it? Paul’s talking about it here.

“Formerly you, Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘Uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘Circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands.” Every baby Jewish boy, at eight days was to be circumcised. For the Gentiles, for those were not circumcised, you were cut off. Why? Circumcision is the sign of God’s covenant with Israel. We’re going to go back and look at that. Now what happened here, and you have the external emphases, is that the external, physical circumcision was to be a sign of a heart that had been changed by God. The sin of the heart, the inner person, had been removed. Circumcision was to be a physical sign of that. The problem is Israel made the physical sign what was needed. They lost sight of the condition of the heart. So Paul stresses this here. “Which is performed in the flesh by human hands.” Reminder, the Jews looked down on the Gentiles, and the Gentiles in a sense are cut off from a relationship with God, but the Jews are no better off.

Come to Jeremiah chapter 4. Then we’ll have to go to Genesis. Jeremiah and the fourth chapter. Israel is apart from God. As you’re aware, God is going to bring the judgement of the Babylonians on the nation Israel, and they’re going to go into captivity. This is the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was already taken into captivity sometime earlier by the Assyrians, but the southern kingdom didn’t learn anything. They persisted in their rebellion. So, chapter 4 verse 1 opens up. “’If you will return, O Israel,’ declares the Lord, ‘then you should return to Me.’” You come down to verse 4. “’Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of your heart.’” That’s the problem. They were spiritually unchanged, but going through the physical motions and thinking that physical circumcision guaranteed them access to God. Not so different from Catholics and Protestants today. What do they do? They baptize their babies or children. What’s that supposed to do besides get them wet? Get them into God’s heaven. Bring them into a relationship with God. You didn’t get that from the Bible. They’re just as confused as the Jews.

Come back to Genesis chapter 15. Genesis chapter 15. Here’s a great statement regarding Abraham. Abraham and Sarah. God has made promises. He’s established a covenant, promised a covenant, in Genesis chapter 12. He repeated it in chapter 13 and he repeats it in chapter 15. A covenant with Abraham. But Abraham and Sarah have no children, and they’re not young anymore. But, He promises Abram. Verse 4. He tells them, takes them out. He says you’re going to have an heir. “’One who will come forth from your own body,’” the end of verse four, “’he shall be your heir.’” God takes him outside and shows him all the stars. You know what it’s like. They didn’t have city lights in those days so you know when you go out in the country when it’s dark and there are no other light sources around, you look up and you’re just dumbfounded how many stars there are up there. He has Abraham come out and look and He says, count the stars. No, I’m not going to get that done tonight. So that’s what your descendants are going to be like. Note the next statement. Genesis 15:6, “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” That becomes a foundational verse in Scripture because it clearly states what? Believe and be declared righteous. He believed God; God declared him righteous. Could it be any clear?

Now time goes by. Come over to chapter 17. God is ready to confirm that covenant and formally establish it with Abraham. He’s promised it, but now He’s going to cut the covenant with Abraham. Abraham’s 99 years old. There are some things that have gone on, and he tried to help God out. So did Sarah, and Abraham fathered a son, Ishmael, with a slave girl, Hagar. That was Sarah’s agreement. She thought it was a good idea, and that would have been considered Abraham and Sarah’s son. He could fulfill the promise. God said no. Remember God said it would be a child of you and Sarah. So He changes Abram’s name to Abraham, verse 5. Verse 7 of Genesis 17, “’I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you…and everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants.’” Note this is just the Jews. This is where the exclusiveness is established and is maintained. They are an exclusive people, and you'll note it’s everlasting. God’s going to move in and do something in the church that is different, but it cannot cancel what God has told Abraham. It’d be true of him and his physical descendants. “’I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of’” Canaan and so on. Verse 10, “’This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant.’” So this is where circumcision was established for the Jews. It served a unique role. It would establish Abraham’s descendants through Isaac as covenant people. His son Ishmael would be circumcised, but the covenant line won’t come through him. But, he is connected to Abraham. The sign of the covenant is circumcision. Now, Ishmael will be thirteen years old when he’s circumcised, as the chapter goes on. Well, his conception and birth was recorded in chapter 16. Abraham was declared righteous by faith in chapter 15. So, at least some 15 years have elapsed between God declaring Abraham righteous by faith and then Abraham being circumcised. This is the argument Paul uses.

Come over to the New Testament, Romans chapter 4. This is why, if you were with us in Romans 4, it helps it all fit together. Romans 3:30 establishes a basic foundational principle. Chapter 3 verse 30, “Since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised by faith is one.” There is only one God, so there can only be one way of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike. It is by faith. Justified, to declare righteous. The God who justifies is one, so there can only be one way of salvation for a Jew and one way for a Gentile. He said it’s through faith. Well, how are we going to prove that? Particularly, the Jews who though circumcision was our guarantee, well, he takes them in chapter 4 to where we just have been. Chapter 4 opens up, “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found?” They were physical descendants, as Jews, of Abraham. “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.” He’s boasting about his own accomplishment. We just studied in Ephesians 2:9 that it’s not by works so that no one should boast, including Abraham. “For what does the Scripture say?” Verse 3, “’Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” Now if you’re going to be declared righteous on the basis of your works, no one, verse 4, “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor.” You go to work a 40-hour week and work your head off, and you get a paycheck, and you may think you deserve more, but your boss, if he says I’m gracious, I’m going to do you a favor, here’s a check… That’s not a favor. I worked for that. I worked hard for that. Well, that’s something you could boast about. I worked hard and I got a reward. I was paid. But that’s not how it worked with Abraham. Verse 9. When was Abraham declared righteous by faith? Well, as we have our Bibles, it was chapter 15 of Genesis. Paul asked the question in verse 10. The end of verse 9 says, “’Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.’” That’s in chapter 15. “How then was it credited? While he was uncircumcised, or uncircumcised?” In case you’re not familiar with Genesis, “Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised.” He was declared righteous by faith. He simply showed people that he had become righteous by faith by obeying God when God said to get circumcised. This is a passage I often go to, I’ve shared before, when I’ve been talking with people who believe baptism is necessary for salvation. In this day, they’d probably agree. Yes, the Jews were wrong; circumcision wasn’t necessary. Then my next question—since there’s only one God, chapter 3 verse 30, there can’t be two ways of salvation. How was Abraham saved? Before he was circumcised or after? Well, before. It’s by faith. Well, you’re telling me baptism’s necessary for salvation. Tell me when Abraham was baptized. Before Genesis 15 or after? I was talking with a couple of pastors from a denomination that believes baptism is essential. Well, Abraham, I don’t think he was ever baptized. What are you doing sitting here telling me that baptism’s necessary for salvation? You’re telling me there are two Gods: One who declared Abraham righteous by faith and another’s going to declare you righteous by your baptism. Why would we be confused on this?

So when you come back to Ephesians… I haven’t forgotten we’re studying Ephesians. All this is in the background of what he’s saying. Remember, you Gentiles in the flesh are called “Uncircumcision.” You were uncircumcised. The Gentiles didn’t practice it. Remember, verse 12. We have it in italics but it’s picked up from that verse 11. He continues that. Remember what it meant that you weren’t circumcised. You’re cut off from everything God had promised the Jews. Five things here he mentions. I didn’t originally come up with them; I just read verse 12. Here we go. “You were at that time separate from Christ.” We’ll note them and then we’ll come back. Number two, you were “excluded from the commonwealth of Israel.” Number three, you were “strangers to the covenants of promise.” Number four, you were “having no hope.” Hopeless people. And number five, you were “without God in the world.” I want to remind you, Gentiles, of what you were. You were uncircumcised. You know what it means to be uncircumcised. You’re cut off from everything God had promised to the physical descendants, physical and spiritual descendants of Abraham. What were they? “You were separate from Christ.” Through the Old Testament, and we referenced it, and through the gospels. Remember when Jesus came what did John the Baptist introduce Him as? The King of Israel. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! The King is here! What were the promises of all the Old Testament prophets? The Messiah will come. When he says the word Christ, you were separate from Christ, that’s a word that means an anointed one. It’s the word for the Messiah. It’s not a name, but it’s a title. He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. All the promises were to the Jews. Some Gentiles could get in, but you had to join the Jews. So they were cut off from Christ and the promises to the Jews related to their King. You Gentiles, you outsiders, you get in but as what we’d say second-class citizens at best. There’s not going to be a big crowd because it’s promised to the Jews. The Messiah is Jewish.

You were “excluded from the commonwealth of Israel.” You were outside that nation that God chose. What did He say when He sent the Jewish nation into the land of Canaan? Kill every man, woman, and child. We’re not just going to absorb them into Israel. They’re the enemy! They’re the outsiders. They’re not included, and Gentiles… Paul writes to the Ephesians. That’s where you were as a Gentile. All you have is the Old Testament and the gospels. Gentiles are outsiders. They’re far away. They’re strangers to the covenants of promise.

All the covenants promised started with Abraham. We saw it confirmed. The covenant was formally established in Genesis 17. It was promised beginning in chapter 12 of Genesis. A reminder. Put up that slide if you would on the Abrahamic Covenant, and the covenant promises that go with that. We did this before in more detail in another study, but we’re just going to look at this part of it. The Abrahamic Covenant had three parts: land, seed, and blessing. The land is elaborated under the Palestinian Covenant there. We call it the Palestinian Covenant, which is a misnomer as a name. It’s really the Land Covenant, but that’s sort of become used. Palestinian, obviously, is used much later. But, it’s the land. That’s in Deuteronomy chapter 29 and 30 if you want to read about the development. It was promised. How many times in Genesis did God tell Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the land is yours? Walk on the land. Every place your physical feet touch is going to be yours. It wasn’t promised to the other nationalities. That’s unique. It’s theirs.

A seed, and that becomes focused in the Davidic Covenant. 2 Samuel 7, the covenant with David, who would be the king. The descendants of Abraham, his physical descendants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as we’ve mentioned. Abraham has other children, not just Ishmael through Hagar, but through his second wife Keturah, Genesis 25. He fathers other sons, other children. Daughters, probably, but broadly sons. But the line of promise comes from the son of promise. It has to be Abraham then Isaac. Remember God told him you and Sarah will have a son, Isaac. That will be the line of covenant promise.

And then blessing, the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31. I just picked out the key passages here. That’s what was provided in the death and resurrection of Christ. If you read Jeremiah 31, it’s basically focused on the Jews and what God’s going to do for them. So, this is what’s talked about. You get into some reformed writers, and they’ll say we’re talking about the covenant of grace here. It can’t be talking about the covenant of grace. One thing, there is no such thing mentioned in the Bible as the covenant of grace. That ought to be one clue. Another clue is we’ve been saved by grace, so you can’t say that the covenant of grace is cut off. So, these are the covenants we’re talking about. It’s just what the Bible talks about. Let the Bible explain itself.

Alright, they didn’t have any part in this. Gentiles could always be saved by converting. We have examples. As we study the book of Joshua, we’ll see Rahab the prostitute, who is a believer in the land of Canaan. That can happen, but it has to come through faith in the God of Israel and identifying it with it, which she does. She cuts off herself from her own people, at risk, humanly speaking, for identifying with the nation that’s coming to wipe them out. And what will this mean if the find out all this? So don’t get confused. Yeah, Gentiles could be saved. There were people like that. Ruth the Moabitess and others, but that’s it. We can name these isolated incidences, but it’s the Jews. That’s what he means here when he says you were cut off and strangers of the covenant of promise. They weren’t included. It’s a Jewish operation, if you will.

“Having no hope.” Where are you going to go? You had no hope. You were out there on your own, creating your own worship system and all, but salvation was going to come through Israel, ultimately through the Jewish Messiah. But who could offer the sacrifices under the authority of the priests, who had to be Jewish and a certain line of Jewish? What did the Gentiles do out there? They were without God in the world. They had a lot of gods that they worshiped, but they were without God in the world. Then he goes on. “But now,” verse 13. Come back if you’re not in Ephesians 2. “But now.” We saw up in verse 4, “But God.” “But now.” The intervention of God. “But now in Christ Jesus.” And so many times here, and it’s going to come up again and again through the rest of this chapter. Remember it was in Christ. You have to have a relationship with Him. That’s now the new sphere in which you live and operate. It’s the life of God is now the life in you. You’re partakers of the divine nature. The English word often used is abiding in Him. We’re dwelling and living in Him. That living relationship with Him. “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” And again, it’s by the blood of Christ. Remember that expression, the blood of Christ, the blood does not just symbolize death, but it symbolizes the sacrificial death, often a violent death. We use it that way today. In war we talk about bloodshed, but when someone dies of old age and natural consequence, we don’t say oh yeah, their blood was shed. It’s a different terminology and carries a context of violence and sacrifice in the Old Testament context. By the sacrifice of Christ, the blood of Christ.

“You who formerly were far off.” The Jews were lost because of unbelief, but they were near to God in the sense they have, as Paul said in Romans 10, what advantage does the Jew have? Well, they have many advantages. They have the word of God. They had the sacrificial system. All these things, so they were in the context. It’s like a young person raised in this church and a Christian family. There are lots of opportunities and he’s a lot closer to God in the sense of hearing about Him, learning about Him, and knowing what is required of him than somebody in a part of the world that’s never seen a Bible. So that picture. The Gentiles are outsiders. If they wanted to know what God had said, they had to get it through a Jewish source. You know, the prophets are Jews. They primarily had a ministry to Jews, with exception like Jonah, but let’s just leave it there. But it usually has a context of how it impacts Israel. It’s all about Israel. The Gentiles are way out here. You have to start at point zero. The Jews had been raised with the Old Testament Scriptures, and that was a great advantage. Gentiles are a lot farther away. You start with the Gentiles, and they have a lot more to catch up on. Paul was an unsaved Jew, but he knew a lot about the Scriptures. These Gentiles are coming in and they have to start. They knew a lot about the worship of Diana or another one of the pagan gods or goddesses, so that’s the point.

The Gentiles were formerly far off, but in Christ and His sacrifice, He’s provided for the Gentiles to come right up to the front. “For He Himself is our peace, who made both.” Now he’s not talking about peace here between God and the person. That’s foundational, but he’s carrying it beyond that. “He made both,” and we have the word groups there, “into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.” What God’s intention was in Christ was that He would create a new group. He doesn’t make Gentiles Jews. The church is not the new Israel, nor is Israel now Gentile. The racial distinctions are not here. This is something new and different. So important.

You know, part of what has happened, back in the early church history, particularly in the fourth century and some of you have studied this, and you had some changing of how the Scripture was being interpreted, and they began to spiritualize parts of it, not taking it literally. You end up with a kingdom that is not a physical earthly kingdom focused in the Jews, and that kind of corrupted handling of the word of God. It made its way down in the Catholic church. We call it amillennialism. No literal, earthly millennium. No literal, earthly kingdom. The kingdom is in existence now. With the Roman Catholic church, you have it modeled after the Old Testament priesthood with the pope being the physical representative of Christ on the earth. He’s the high priest of the church. Then you have a priesthood arranged under him, and their catechism says it’s patterned after the Old Testament priestly system.

You get those kinds of things going on, but here, what Christ is doing is He’s making something new. He’s bringing Jews and He’s bringing Gentiles together, and He’s making something new with the peace that He brought. He’s breaking a barrier. The intention was to keep the Jews separated from all other people. It was the Mosaic Law in particular. Circumcision connected with the covenant with Abraham and the descendants of Abraham, of course. You get the Law and it goes together. Males were to be circumcised, and then all the Jews are circumcised when the Law’s given. That becomes their governing constitution for the nation in all aspects, political, moral, and religious. It’s the Mosaic Law. He “broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh,” His death on the cross. God had to become man. The Son of God became Son of man. So He’s both Son of God and Son of Man because He had to physically give His body on the cross. He abolished, katarge?. He cancelled, rendered inoperative the Law, the Law of commandments, ordinances.

As long as you had the Mosaic Law there and the governing principles, Gentiles will be outsiders. Your way to God is through Israel. It has to be by faith, but by faith in what? Faith in the word that God gave. Who did He give the word to? Israel. Starting with Genesis, who was the human author? Moses. He was a Jew. This is a Jewish book. The Mosaic Law cut them off. You don’t eat Gentile food. Remember Daniel went to the land of Babylon, and he didn’t want to eat the king’s meat. Remember Peter? Even in Acts chapter 10, God lowers a sheet down with all kinds of animals that the Gentiles would eat but were unclean for the Jews. What did Peter say? God says sit down and eat. What does Peter tell God? No, I don’t eat unclean food. I’m a Jew. I’ve never done that. Three times, then what did God say? I make the rules here. Don’t you call unclean what I call clean. Whoops. Adjust your thinking, Peter. And then Peter goes to the house of Cornelius, and he tells him what? I’d have never come to your house because I thought of you as a dirty, unclean Gentile. It would have made me unclean to be in your house and eat with you, but I came because God gave me special revelation to come. Then when the other apostles in Jerusalem hear that Peter went and ate with Gentiles, they call him on the carpet. We’re about to have discipline here. What are you doing at the house of a Gentile? Now you’ve defiled yourself. Well, God gave me special revelation. And you know what the Jews say? Something amazing’s happening. God’s saving Gentiles. It wasn’t amazing God would save Jews. Of course, we’re a savable people. I mean, we’re Abraham’s descendants. So even believing Jews had to realize God is doing something totally new. That’s what he’s talking about here.

The Mosaic Law is done. We studied this in Romans 9, 10, and 11, in our study we just concluded. Romans chapter 7, what does God saw about the Law? You died to the Law. The Law’s no longer operative as far as you’re concerned. It’s no longer in effect. That’s what we’re told here. He abolished it, rendered it inoperative. The book of Galatians, the whole book is about this. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things in the Law that are carried over and repeated in the New Testament. We live in the New Testament under the Law of Christ. Those things, like moral things, some of those are carried over and some are not. This is important because part of the distinction between reformed people and nonreformed and the evangelical church is losing its way on this rapidly, more rapidly than you might be aware. But, we’re blurring these things. The Mosaic Law, oh, well, we don’t observe the ceremonial things, but we’ll keep the moral aspects, like the Ten Commandments. We have moved one of the ten a little bit because the Sabbath is no longer Saturday; it’s Sunday. But we don’t even keep the Sabbath on Sunday. Now, when I was a new Christian and my family were new believers, they were being told you have to keep Sunday on the Sabbath, so I wasn’t allowed to ride my bicycle. We didn’t do fun things and laugh too much because we’re going to be serious on the Sabbath. All I could do was sit on the step and envy, another sin, the kids that were riding their bikes. But it was a misuse. Sunday’s not the Sabbath. Some of you drove further to get here to church than you could have done under Sabbath regulations. We’d have had to stone you! That’s not a good church growth principle. What happened to the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath in the Old Testament? The Sabbath law said you don’t do that. You know what the people did? They took him out and stoned him to death. Maybe he said look, I’m going to observe it on Sunday, the first day of the week. Do you mind? Yes, we mind. The Law is the law. James puts it, if you break one point of the Law, you break it all. So be careful of those who say well, the moral aspects of the Law. I was reading one commentator and he said it’s really impossible to try to sort out and distinguish the moral parts of the Law. Is observing a moral part of the Law if you’re going to get executed for not observing it? That’s pretty strong. It has the same penalty as immorality.

So the Law is done. Certain things that were specified in the Law are repeated, and we do obey those not because we are obeying the Mosaic Law, but because they’re given to us under the new law of Christ. That’s not different than James. A country can be taken over and get a new constitution, but there may be some things in the new constitution that were in the old one. We’re doing them because they’re part of the new one, not because they’re part of the old one. The book of Hebrews argues this. We’re under the New Covenant. The old covenant is done. It’s over. It served its purpose. It was only until Christ.

Okay, what’s He going to do in verse 15? He’s going to “make the two into one new man.” And this is the only issue because you only have Israel and then you have non-Israel. God’s going to put them all together in one new entity, not a continuation of the old entity. That’s where those who say the church is the new Israel… That’s not so. He doesn’t say now you’re all going to be Gentiles. Now, Gentiles can be part of spiritual Israel. He’s saying I’m going to make those two into something that is a third, a new entity that did not exist before. It’s a new man. “Thus establishing peace.” Why? “And might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” So here, not only has the enmity between the Gentile and God been dealt with, but also the enmity between the Jew and the Gentile’s been dealt with. We become something new. That doesn’t mean you’re no longer nationally a Jew. Paul says he was a Jew. He claimed that. I’m a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin. I was of the Pharisees. But in the church, this is Galatians 3:28, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. It doesn’t lose some distinctions, but as far as spiritual connection, we’re equal. That’s why we don’t start a church for blacks, a church for whites, and church for yellow, and church for red, or a church for browns so that all the different people can have their own place where they’re comfortable. We learn that in Christ, we’re comfortable with each other because He made us one. That’s why confusion… It’s embarrassing what went on. I have some theologians who wrote theologies in the 1800s and they’re reprinted today, and what they said about racial things is embarrassing. It’s not a problem with Scripture. It’s a problem with misuse and mishandling.

God wanted to bring those who were far near. That’s verse 17, to summarize it, because we’re going to end here. Then in verse 18 you have all three members of the triune God involved in our salvation, again. “For through Him,” Christ, “we both have our access in one Spirit,” the Holy Spirit, “to the Father,” God the Father. So again here, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as we saw in chapter 1, all involved in our salvation. What are they doing? They’re bringing us all together, so we don’t want to start a church in the poor part of town so the poor people have a place to go to church. James tells us the rich and the poor ought to be in the same church because those kinds of distinctions are not what’s important. We are all on the same ground, if you will. God gives us different responsibilities and so on within that, but that doesn’t change the fact spiritually we are equals. Though we’re not the same in all the responsibilities, we ought not to be divided over these spiritual things. It was God’s intention Israel was a physical nation. They were set apart. They were to be a spiritual nation first, but physically manifesting they belong to God. We are a spiritual people. We’re to manifest our godly character in the world, but note. This does not resolve the racial tension that exists. This doesn’t say now Jews and Gentiles ought to be getting along. Only in Christ. This doesn’t resolve anything outside of Christ. That doesn’t justify things that people will do because they hate the Jews. But, true believers don’t hate the Jews. They love them. We are in the same body corporately overall in the universal Church, and then the local church is a local, physical manifestation of the universal Church. So no, we don’t hate races. We realize Christ died for the world, but the racial divide can only be resolved… We want to be careful. You use a passage like this and say we ought to be working for reconciliation in the world. Well, every error has some truth. The truth is when we bring the message of Christ. That reconciles people to God and to one another. Outside of Christ, it’s going nowhere. So the issue becomes being in Christ.

Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for Your word. Lord, for what You are doing in our day. How important it is to understand the uniqueness of the church in this day and the importance of the gospel that You have graciously reached our and offered to those who were so far away. We are here as living testimonies of that great grace, Gentiles who have been saved by grace through faith. Lord, to live lives that are transformed, manifesting Your character in all we do. I pray that we would be faithful. Thank you for that saving grace. Pray that we would be testimonies of it where we are in this day and the days before us, that others may hear the message and be drawn by the Spirit to Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.