hear God's word, Ephesians chapter two, beginning with verse 11. Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from 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 both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And he came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near, for through him we both have access by one spirit to the Father. Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Amen. We'll end our reading there at the end of Ephesians chapter two. Let's once again ask for God to help us in prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, We pray that today we would know that Christ is our peace, that we would enter more fully into the peace of Christ than we have before, that we would live in the peace of Christ with regard to others as well. Lord, blessed are the peacemakers, said the Lord Jesus. And we pray that you would help us to inherit that blessing, to qualify for it. We pray also that you would help us to see how Christ has become our peace, that we would understand the truth behind this and draw great comfort from it, as well as receive direction in how to live it out in our day-to-day lives. In Jesus' name, we ask these things, amen. You may remember from previous sermons that sometimes Paul speaks inclusively. He says, we, and he means himself and the Ephesians and all believers. But sometimes Paul contrasts a little bit. Sometimes he means himself, those who first trusted in Christ, which in how things worked out in the history of redemption, was first Jewish believers. And then he sees the Ephesians as coming in a little bit later, and of course as coming in with a different background. Well, here, when Paul is talking about how Christ is our peace, the division, the difference between Jew and Gentile is very present in his mind. It was a very important subject for the early church. It was a cause of some tension and conflict, and it was something that had to be sorted through, figured out, and fully addressed. Now, the biblical writers, Paul especially, did such a tremendous job with that that we don't have exactly the same problem anymore. That doesn't mean that these passages are irrelevant to us. But remember this big reality as we come into this passage. For centuries, the people of God had been distinguished by the law, by the practices enjoined in the law, and specifically by a whole set of ritual ordinances things that ordinary people could do that the people of God could not do. And those divisions were not all of them moral. They didn't all have to do with righteous conduct that pleases God. Many of them had the point simply of making the people of God distinctive, of marking out the boundaries between the people of God and the world. Well, in Christ, those temporary things came to an end. But if you had been practicing something for hundreds of years, obviously not you individually, right, but you as the inheritor, as the descendant of those who had gone before, if you had been practicing something for hundreds of years as part of your service to God, and now there's other people coming in, you're expected to worship and fellowship with other people, and they're not practicing those things, you understand why that would be difficult. You understand why you would need to be taught about that more than once. You understand how that could easily lead to conflict, to misunderstandings, and how that could even lead to false solutions, like saying, well, we'll admit a two-track Christianity. There will be good Christians, and then there will be mediocre Christians. There's not supposed to be such a thing as mediocre Christians. So this was a big subject. and Paul addresses it multiple times because it came up again and again. That's the background to our passage. Now, another thing we need to notice about our passage is repetition. There's a lot of repetition, and that's why we read more than the verses that we have to deal with. For instance, the concept of peace is repeated. Christ himself is our peace. In verse 14, at the end of verse 15, he has made peace. And in verse 17, he came and preached peace. Or again, the idea of oneness is there again and again. He has made both one, verse 14. He's created in himself one new man. He's reconciled them both to God in one body. through the cross and we both have access by one spirit to the Father. So you see that this idea, these ideas of peace and of oneness are emphasized pretty heavily and you also get the opposite of peace. You have enmity, hostility referenced a couple of times as well. Paul's introduction to everything he wants to say here, the summary of it is, Christ is our peace. That's pretty simple, and who's going to disagree with that? But what does that actually mean? What does that look like? How does that get spelled out in what follows? Well, that's where we need to spend the remainder of our time this morning. Christ is our peace. Now, before we get into specifics, just stop for a moment and ask the question, if Christ is our peace, then what will be the situation apart from Christ, without Christ? If we don't know Christ, if we neglect Christ, if we minimize Christ, what would we expect to have happen? Well, if Christ is our peace, and then we leave him out of the picture in one way or another, to some degree or another, What would you expect to have happen? You would expect there to be less peace. In other words, you would expect there to be more of the opposite of peace, more war, more conflict, more hostility. Christ is our peace. And in the Bible, peace is more than the absence of conflict. It definitely includes that. but it's more than that. It's the positive good of rest. It means something that is flourishing. It's a very central concept. I mean, there's a reason that the letters begin with grace unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a reason that peace is one of the ingredients of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, Paul would tell the Romans. So this idea of peace, in our minds, it shouldn't be a pale thing, you know, a very undramatic, unexciting life. Now, of course, if you've been experiencing a lot of drama, peace sounds pretty good. But peace is not just the absence of conflict and drama. There's a wonderful positive quality to it. It enables flourishing. It's not boring. It's beautiful. And that is what we have in Christ. Christ is our peace. Now, I think we can break this down in three main ways, and then the big challenge is to see how those things all fit together. Paul says, he himself is our peace, who has made both one. So the first way that Christ is our peace is Christ is our peace with one another. Of course, in context, the both is Jew and Gentile. And that, of course, remains true until today. We'll talk about that in a moment. But we can apply it as well to ourselves. We come from somewhat different backgrounds. At least we come from different families, at least somewhat different families. There's a variety of experience. There's a variety of outlook. There's diversity in this congregation. Well, are we one in Christ or not? Christ has made both one. If Christ overcame this enormous division, this God-created division between Jew and Gentile, are we really going to think that God can't overcome smaller divisions? Divisions that maybe we've made up ourselves or that have been imposed on us by culture, by the world in one way or another? Well, if Christ can overcome the division of Jew and Gentile which God himself instituted, which was fenced around by the law, I think we can take it for granted that Christ can overcome smaller divisions, divisions that have much less real basis. Christ is our peace with one another. And that, of course, has practical implications, doesn't it? If Christ is our peace, and yet I harbor enmity against somebody in this congregation. There's somebody I don't like, and it's, you know, maybe we had a bad interaction or something, you understand the coming and going of emotions, but I let that become my settled approach. I wasn't just frustrated, you know, for five minutes, but now it's like, oh, that person always gets on my nerves. Am I really acting like Christ is our peace? Am I embodying that in my treatment of others? Well, even if I'm outwardly polite, even if I just, you know, I don't really go out of my way to say hello. I'm not actively rude, but I don't really care to talk with them. Even if that's as far as it goes, to some extent that is a failure to live as though Christ is our peace. I ought to be growing in love for everyone in the congregation. I ought to see their good points more clearly. And even if, as I get to know them better, I see their bad points more clearly too, that shouldn't prevent me from growing in love for them. And it shouldn't prevent me from living in peace with them. We don't believe in peace at any costs. It is worthwhile to have conflict about the truth. It is worthwhile to have conflict when somebody is not living up to the law of God, when it's clear that there's a pattern of repeated failure to obey the law. That's a good situation to have some conflict. But the conflict in those situations is not for the sake of enmity, it's not to destroy the person, it's to fight against the flesh so that the person themselves will come back in more fully to the fellowship of Christ and of the church. I have to have conflict against myself for my sin, right? And you all have to do the same thing. Well, we're living together once in a while, you'll have to have conflict against my sin and I'll have to have conflict against your sin. I don't think that's incompatible with what I'm saying if we keep in mind that that's what we're doing, that that's the purpose. So we don't want a pretend piece where we can't talk about hard things. We don't want a pretend piece where we can't say, you know, that's wrong. That's not the kind of peace we're looking for, but we are looking for a peace where we understand that we have one another's best interests at heart, that Christ who unites us is bigger than other matters, where we're agreed on supreme loyalty to Christ. One of the things that strikes me more and more about this chapter of Ephesians as I read through it multiple times in preparation for the sermons, is just how Christ-centered it is. Christ is our peace. Christ is our peace with one another. That's already true. We need to believe that it's true, and then we need to live it out. We need to put that into practice. But we're not responsible for creating the peace. Christ has already done that. We're not starting from scratch. In other words, we're building on a foundation that he has already given us. Now, in specific terms of this period in the history of redemption, Paul has in mind the Jews and the Gentiles. How did God unite them? How did God bring about peace there? Well, look at what it goes on to say in verse 14. Christ has broken down the middle wall of separation. This is a figurative expression, right? There is not a physical wall. However, many commentators have seen an allusion to the structure of the temple. In the temple in Jerusalem, you had the court of the Gentiles. Anybody could go in there. And in Herod's temple, the one that was still around when Paul wrote, you had a wall about four and a half feet high, and that wall divided the court of the Gentiles from the court of Israel. And there were warning signs posted on that wall that warned Gentiles that if they went past that wall, if they went through one of the entrances or climbed over or whatever, that they would be responsible for their own death and that their own death would surely follow. That was one of the reasons that people got upset at Paul in the book of Acts. They said that he had taken Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, and brought him into the temple, that Paul had violated that middle wall of separation. Well, Paul may have that middle wall of separation in mind. We don't know that people in Ephesus would have known all about that wall, so he may not have intended them to get the reference. But he's saying there was something, there was a boundary that divided Jews and Gentiles. And that boundary was the law. But it's not God's law, it's not the moral law, it's not the Ten Commandments that divides Jews and Gentiles. Paul specifies the law of commandments. Law is a very flexible term. Sometimes the law is just a way to refer to the whole Old Testament. Well, he doesn't mean that. So he specifies the law of commandments. But even that is not good enough because there are commandments, of course, that are for everybody, like the Ten Commandments. So he specifies a little bit more. The law of commandments contained in ordinances. In other words, what Paul has in mind chiefly here is what we call the ceremonial law. The ritual law that had to do with purity and impurity that dictated whether even a Jewish person could enter the temple precincts or not. You know, they had to keep certain conditions in order to be able to participate in the public worship of God. Well, obviously that created a huge barrier between them and everyone else. In Christ, that barrier has been done away. We can look at the ceremonial law and we can learn some lessons from it. We can learn a little bit about holiness. We can learn a little bit about some other subjects. But we no longer refuse to eat shellfish or things of that nature because those were always meant to be temporary. To illustrate this point, you know, before a baby is born, they're attached to a placenta. Well, the placenta is an extremely important organ. You can't have a healthy baby without it. But once the baby is born, the placenta has served its purpose. You don't wanna keep the baby attached to that, and in fact, the placenta is not going to continue to function. Well, it was like that with these laws. They were set up, they were binding while they were set up, but they were meant to expire, they were meant to be temporary. They served a purpose, and then they're done. Well, obviously, if somebody tried to skip breathing and eating for themselves and instead tried to live off of their placenta, that's gonna become toxic. That's not gonna work. Well, in the same way, the attempt to maintain the distinctive rituals would ultimately become toxic. It would turn into something poisonous and destructive. Not because it was bad for its time, but because its time has ended with the Lord Jesus Christ. So the law, the ritual law, doesn't bind the Gentiles any longer. Really, the Jews should give up practicing it because the meaning is found in Christ. So as long as they cling to that, they're clinging to something instead of Christ. And, of course, we can also say that Christ is our peace with the law in the sense that now the law does not condemn us because he's fulfilled it perfectly in our behalf. God's law has nothing against us, not because we've kept it perfectly, but because Christ has kept it perfectly. And, of course, when we use the law in that sense, we're no longer talking about the ceremonies. There we are talking about The Ten Commandments, we're talking about the summary, love God and love your neighbor. Well, we haven't done that perfectly, and yet the law finds nothing to condemn. We're at peace with God's law in Christ. The law can still point out when we're not living up to it, but when it points that out, it doesn't condemn us, it just reminds us, it encourages us, it calls us to new obedience. So this law of commandments contained in ordinances basically was the middle wall of partition. And that middle wall of partition created hostility. You can read writings from the Romans at the time of the New Testament. And they say horrible things about the Jews. And of course, you can look at the Jews and you can hear them giving thanks that they were not born Gentiles. There's enmity, and it was a two-way street. There was enmity in both directions. But now Christ has come. That all needs to stop. We need to be done with that. And here let me say, and try to say quickly, In our society, we are once again seeing a certain amount of anti-Semitism. There is no place for anti-Semitism within the church. This can be a little bit of a complicated discussion because not everything that gets labeled anti-Semitism really qualifies for that. But let me just lay it out very, very simply. There's not two kinds of Christians. There's not Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. If we think that way, we've basically diminished the importance of Christ. Christ is so important that when we belong to Christ, everything else is minor. Now, are there still other distinctions between Jews and Gentiles in a political way or in other areas? Sure. Culturally, sure. Does that mean that we have to have separate churches? No, it does not. Should we? No, we should not. Jewish people living in Shafter should come to Ebenezer Reformed Church. And if we started a church in Israel, I certainly hope we wouldn't try to advertise it. Well, this is for Gentiles. This is for Germans. This is... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. None of that. None of that. Now, we're applying it to Jew and Gentile. We're talking about this because this is what's in the passage. There's other political divisions, there's other cultural divisions, there's other kinds of divisions in our society. It doesn't matter who that other person is. If they belong to Jesus, that is absolutely bigger than any other fact about them. That's the most important thing. And this just illustrates the point, right? When we allow culture, when we allow race, when we allow other things to push Jesus out of the way a little bit, well, then you are gonna get more conflict, aren't you? Because Christ is our peace. We can live in peace with one another when Christ is central in our hearts, when that is the most important thing. Does this call us to repentance? Well, maybe to some extent it does. Does this call us to continue to love everyone who names the name of Christ? For that to be the most important thing that we see about other people? Yes, it does. Now, there might still be one misunderstanding, so let me quickly prevent that. You hear me saying that belonging to Christ is the most important thing about other people. Does that mean that you're free to be a racist jerk to people who are not Christians? No, no. You still have this same commandment. You have the example. God is no respecter of persons. In every nation, the one who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to God. We don't have different scales, different weights and measures for people depending on their background. And the command to love your neighbor as yourself doesn't say love your neighbor who's just like you. In fact, the parable of the Good Samaritan highlights that love of neighbor crosses other boundaries. If it's genuine, it crosses other boundaries. So even with unbelievers, you don't get to Be weird about things like that. But with believers, what joins you, what unites you is bigger than anything that separates you. May God help us to live as those who have Christ as their peace. Now, how does all of this work? How did Christ accomplish this tremendous feat? Well, look at verse 16. Why are we united? Why are we one? Because Christ reconciled us both to God. What does that mean? It means that Jew and Gentile, it means that everybody was alienated from God. Paul had already pointed that out earlier in the chapter, right? So when Christ reconciles us to God, that was the big one. In order to do that, of course, Christ had to deal with the claims of the law. But because we're reconciled to God, because we've been brought near by the blood of Christ, because we have access by one spirit unto the Father, because that relationship of hostility towards God has been replaced by a relationship of friendship with God, Well, now all sorts of things are possible that never used to be. Now the ceremonial law has expired. Now the moral law has no claim against us, no ability to condemn. Now those other divisions have been abolished. You see, this is the foundation. This is the center. You've been reconciled to God by the cross of Christ, by Christ's sacrifice in your behalf because His death was a propitiation because it satisfied the wrath of God. Because his death was an expiation, because it took away your guilt, therefore his death is a reconciliation. It puts an end to the hostility. On God's side toward us, God viewed us as Looking at us as a judge, God had every reason to condemn us, so that's a certain amount of hostility. And of course, on our side, we feared God, we hated God, we were like Adam and Eve, we hid from God. Well, Christ has changed all of that. And because Christ has changed our relationship to God, of course he changes our relationships to one another, even the relationship of Jew and Gentile, where the specific problem of the ceremonial law he has abolished. Well, we're going to come back to this passage. We clearly have not gone all the way through it. There clearly is more to say. But I hope this morning you see that Christ is your peace. You're not, or you don't have to be in conflict with God any longer through Christ. Peace has been made with God. You don't have to be afraid of the law any longer. You don't have to worry about how it condemns you. Christ has made your peace with that. And when you look around at brothers and sisters from all countries, from all nationalities, from all cultures and backgrounds, You don't have to focus on the things that distinguish us from one another. You can focus on Christ and you can live at peace with one another. Oh, may God grant us, may the God of peace grant us to walk in peace always, amen.