But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 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
Ephesians 2:13-14

Introduction

I have often wondered what it would be like without the church. I think it would be a lonely world, a place where friendships are rooted on circumstances (work, common interests, social status, ‘what’s-in-it for me’ utilitarianism, etc.) rather than the depths of an inexhaustible God. And it would be very lonely, especially during times of trial and pain, where there is ultimately no hope at all.

And so I am so thankful for the church, and this church in particular. Thank you all for serving Sammy and Jane this past week and the weeks to come. Your hearts for them reminded me about how great God is to bring people of all ilk and of different experiences and backgrounds together, for the sake of the Gospel, so that we might care for one another.

And this is what Paul had in mind in Ephesians 2:13-14. He envisioned a place where what defines us is not the culture we bring to the church, but the new culture we create as a result of our transformation in view of the Gospel. Christ has ‘broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility,” and by doing so, He has created not only a new way of thinking, but also a new social identity that transcends culture, socio-economic class, political affiliation, intellectual prowess, wellness.

And so how does this happen? How does a group of people come together who for all intents and purposes should not get along, who have different perspectives on life, different worldviews, different cultures, and yet, not only simply get along, but also are willing to give their lives for one another, who are closer with one another than even their own flesh-and-blood families? The answer is found in verses 13-14. First, they realize their new identity as the church and second, they realize that this new identity is only possible through Christ.

New Identity as the Church

So first, we are able to come together and overcome all sorts of barriers only when we realize our new identity as a church. Paul writes in verse 13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” In other words, we cannot truly understand this new identity until we begin to wrestle with the fact that we were once ‘far off’ from God. Earlier in verse 12, Paul describes it this way, that we were once ‘alienated’ and had ‘no hope and without God in the world.’ Remember, Paul is writing this letter to the Ephesian church, a church of Gentiles (non-Jews) who were culturally different than Jews. Not only were they different, they were outsiders who didn’t belong to the people of God. Thus, some Jews in these churches looked down on Gentiles. In fact, the prejudice was so great that the early church neglected to care for Gentile widows, simply because they were culturally different (Acts 6:1).

The Jews were wrong in their legalistic demands on Gentiles. But the Gentiles also had to understand that they were nothing themselves, that they were once outside of God’s promises, and therefore, it was God’s sheer grace that allowed them to enter into His family. Thus, the church was defined by distinctive social markers based on ethnicity, family history, and social status. How did this happen to a church that was founded on the gospel?
They had forgotten how far off they really were from God and what it took for them to be brought near. If we are defined by the reputation we claim outside the church and bring that into the church, we will rob the church of its power. What defines the people in the church is not where you went to college or whether you even went to college. We should not be more impressed by a person’s job than we are by a person’s faith and trust in Christ. We should not be fawning more over a person’s nice car than over a person kindness and gentle spirit because of her trust in Christ. We tend to think the world infiltrates the church if people smoke, go to clubs, play cards, and listen to secular music. But my friends, those are mere symptoms. We don’t have to do any of those things and we can still more worldly by the way we think of others, and the way we worship ourselves.

If you go to a gym, you’ll notice wherever there are weights, there are mirrors. Because there is no better time to look at yourself than when you have just lifted and see how temporarily inflated you are. And just like our own egos, we come crashing back to earth about 5 minutes later when the muscles return back to original form(less). But boy do people take advantage of that mirror. One person tells the story of a late night talk show host who had a bodybuilder as a guest. The host asked the weightlifter to show off his muscles to the audience. As the man flexed his muscles with a huge grin, the host asked, “What do you use those muscles for?” the bodybuilder didn’t give an answer but remained silent. The host asked again, and still no response. He just continued to show off with a grin. But the answer was clear. Those muscles sole purpose was to glorify himself. And my friends, the more we live in this world, the more we are taught to glorify ourselves, to make ourselves look even better than we really are. And when we forget we were once far off, we not only live for our own glory, but we bring that into the church.

So it should not surprise us when the church disintegrates in fights and petty rivalries. When a church is cluttered with gossip and backbiting and bickering, it should make sense. That’s what happens when people bring the world into the church, when self-glory and personal reputation are at the forefront of one’s heart and when external circumstances (how many friends I have, ‘Is this person mad at me?’ ‘I don’t feel like I’m appreciated’) take over the Body.

So if the problem is that we forgot we were once far off, then the solution is obvious, we must remember the cost of what it took to bring us near. And according to verse 13, that cost was ‘the blood of Christ.’ What can overcome every sin of every sinner? Surely, it cannot be our good works. But how we rely upon them to save us. We do this when we are quick to judge the ‘real sinners’ versus our itty, bitty sins. No, it took God sending His Son to die on the cross on our behalf. I received a card from Jane this week and she said in that card that through Luther’s death, she and Sammy were able to have an inkling of what God the Father felt when He watched His own Son die. What an insight in the midst of turmoil and grieving! Very few can even get a glimpse of the same pain as our Father had on that day 2000 years ago. To bring us near, cost His Son’s blood because good works are too paltry and can never overcome sin. And so, we must see the cross and the shedding of our Savior’s blood as the only means by which we can truly have new life and a new identity in Christ. Only the cross can make that which was once dirty, now clean.

Dr. Lloyd Jones is absolutely right when he says:

I do not care what your sins are. They can be very respectable or they can be heinous, vile, foul, filthy. It does not matter, thank God…Though you be the vilest man or woman ever known, and though you may until this moment have lived your life in the gutters and the brothels of sin in every shape and form,…if you believe that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and he died there on the cross, for your sins and to bear your punishment. If you believe that, and thank him for it, and rely utterly only upon him and what he has done,…all your sins are blotted out completely, as if you had never sinned in your life, and his righteousness is put on you and God sees you perfect in His Son. That is the message of the cross. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross, 36)

Christians, it is at the cross that we must begin to see ourselves. Would Wellspring be a church that would welcome a former murderer like Paul, a promiscuous woman like Mary Magdalene, a cheating, traitor crook like Matthew, a brutal prison guard like the Phillippian jailer, a hated oppressor like the centurion Cornelius? Or do we think that their sins are far too great compared to our respectable sins? Such thinking not only destroys unity, but it fails to see that we ourselves nailed Jesus to that cross. Without realizing that we were brought nearby this cost, we won’t know then how to unite the church under the banner of Christ who is our peace.
Oh, but when we remember that cost, our lives are never the same both here and eternally. We will live as the church, as a transformed people. One person who never forgot who he was and saw such transformation was former NBA star and Washington center Manute Bol. He died this past week at the age of 47. What most people know about Manute was the fact that he was the tallest NBA player ever at 7’7”. What most people didn’t know was that he was a Sudanese Christian who was fervent about his faith in Christ. In an SI article, he said, “God guided me to America and gave me a good job. But he also gave me a heart so I would look back.” And he never did forget God or where God had brought him. He gave most of his money that he earned in the NBA, nearly $6 million to aid Sudanese refugees. One person commented on his heart as an NBA player: “Most NBA cats go broke on cars, jewelry & groupies. Manute Bol went broke building hospitals.” In Jon Shields’ article for the Wall Street Journal on Manute Bol, he writes:

When his fortune dried up, Bol raised more money for charity by doing what most athletes would find humiliating: He turned himself into a humorous spectacle. Bol was hired, for example, as a horse jockey, hockey player and celebrity boxer. Some Americans simply found amusement in the absurdity of him on a horse or skates. And who could deny the comic potential of Bol boxing William “the Refrigerator” Perry, the 335-pound former defensive linemen of the Chicago Bears? Bol agreed to be a clown.

But he was not willing to be mocked for his own personal gain as so many reality-television stars are. Bol let himself be ridiculed on behalf of suffering strangers in the Sudan; he was a fool for Christ. During his final years, Bol suffered more than mere mockery in the service of others. While he was doing relief work in the Sudan, he contracted a painful skin disease that ultimately contributed to his death. Manute Bol could not do such things unless he remembered that he was brought near. And like Manute, the church stands out in this world, makes a difference, only when we also remember that Christ paid such a cost for us, of course, we will even be willing be fools for Christ, let alone serve the Body of Christ and love it with such joy.

New Identity as a Church Through Christ

Verse 14 then, gives us a glorious picture of the church: “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” The church was filled with strife and division based on not only cultural divisions, but religious ones as well. The Jews simply believed they were more righteous than their Gentile brothers because of the law. The Gentiles perhaps believed they were more righteous than the Jews because of their freedom apart from the law. But again, when Jesus Christ’s blood is considered, and when we remember that we are adopted as sons and daughters simply out of God’s grace, only then can there be truly peace. Only then is the dividing wall broken down.

You see, when we sinned against God and when we lost sight of the cross and what it had accomplished for us, again, we become like the bodybuilder. We can’t help keep our eyes of ourselves to our own detriment. We become easily irritated. People bother our sense of personal space and comforts. We become self-pitying. People just don’t understand, and God doesn’t understand, what I’m going through. We become selfish with our time, our energy. We’re so consumed with consumerism and prosperity that makes me look good that we fail to consider how we can bless others with resources God has given us to glorify Him. We begin to see friendships as self-serving. And so when they fail us and disappoint us, which they will do if they’re human and when we’re human, rather than seeking forgiveness or quickly forgiving others lest we be hypocrites, we cast them off in search of ‘real friends.’ We become so fixated with ourselves that we become asphyxiated by ourselves.

Oh but when we know the peace that comes only through Christ and His work on the cross, we are changed forever. And look at the result of this peace according to verse 14, he has ‘made us both one’ and the dividing wall is broken down. In other words, those who live like they are saved, who actually are gracious to others because they’ve been shown immeasurable grace, who are hospitable even at a cost, who refuse to speak ill of someone before others regardless of what she has done, who will accept a person into his fellowship regardless of his past, his physical appearance, his status in life, even her past mistakes and wrongs, is the picture of a broken dividing wall. The biblical church is the church that is so enraptured by the goodness and glory of Christ, that we simply don’t care about anything but Christ. He defines us and He defines our relationships. And this my friends, destroys that dividing wall.

At this past Together for the Gospel, Thabiti Anyabwile made this important statement: “The church should be multi-ethnic, but not multi-cultural.” In other words, all of us bring different cultural backgrounds to the church. I don’t just mean our ethnic culture, but everything that shapes us to be us. We bring Western, American culture. We bring the culture of how we dress, how we speak, what we’re interested in. We determine what is normal and what is abnormal for personality. But the church is not composed of a bunch of different cultures trying to meld together. Thabiti goes on to make this analogy. Think of the Pro Bowl in football (the All-Star game). In the Pro Bowl, the AFC wears the red jerseys and the NFC wears the blue jerseys. It shows they are on the same team and yet, they were the helmets of their real team. They don’t play hard for their pro bowl team though because they don’t want to get injured. But for their real team, they’ll sacrifice their bodies for the team. Sadly, too often Christians are like these football players. We are more committed and willing to sacrifice even our lives for our cultures, than we are committed to give our lives for Christ and His people. And so we bring this mentality into the church. The church is not about multiculturalism. No, we lay down all of our cultures to form a new culture, the culture of Christ and His Gospel. Everything is secondary to that end. But yes, we are multi-ethnic. I am Korean. I still like Korean food. I can understand Korean (barely). And I appreciate my background. I am also 40 years old, married, a pastor, love the Yankees, enjoy soccer, cycling, playing games. But all of these, while they are part of my life, they are not my core identity. I am first a child of God bought by the blood of the Lamb. And thus, I am a new creation with a new culture, the Gospel culture and a wonderful place called the church. I need you in my life. And when I meet you, the people of God, you and I create a new culture, the culture of heaven where God is glorified and I am most satisfied in Him.

Conclusion

My friends, this must be the church. We are one because of the blood of Christ. Our divisions must melt away. If they do not, it is because we have forgotten what it was like to be far off. We should be the most welcoming people possible, not because we’re on some ‘greeting team’ or ‘newcomers team,’ but because we are saved. We should be quick to fend off gossip and dissension because we love Christ. This week was a trying week for Sammy and Jane and for others. We should be overflowing with care and sympathy not because we feel pity for them, but because we were once far off but now brought near. We should reach out to those whose life experiences and ethnicity and culture and moral values are different from us not because we have to do our Christian duty, but because we too were once aliens and strangers, welcomed home by a loving Father. May today be the day the dividing wall comes down forever. If you have never trusted in Christ, but want to experience this new culture, please come and talk to me or one of the Leadership Team, and they would love to talk to you about the One who makes this new identity an eternally joyous reality.