In One Body Through the Cross, Part One
Ephesians 2:14-16
This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the morning service on May 24, 2009.
Last week we began working on the section Ephesians 2:11-22. In this section Paul is teaching the church at Ephesus about the unity of believers found in Jesus Christ. He is focusing specifically on the gap between Jews and Gentiles that is bridged in Christ. As we worked through verses 11-13 we applied his teachings about Jews and Gentiles to the difference that exists between believers and unbelievers.
In today’s passage we will focus more on the nature of the divide between Jews and Gentiles and how the divide is closed by Jesus. There is a lot to be unpacked in this text and we will not be able to sink our teeth into all of it today. We will focus on verses 14-16 and next time we will tackle verses 14-19, picking up with what we have to leave off today and moving forward from there. Today we are looking at what has created the division between Jews and Gentiles. Next time we will see the new relation between Jews and Gentiles in the church and what this means for the people of God.
Ephesians 2:14-16
In verses 14-15 Paul speaks of the dividing wall of hostility which is the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. What was he talking about, and what created this dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles?
The divide begins as early as the book of Genesis when God sets apart a people for himself. In Genesis 17 God promises Abraham that he will make Abraham’s descendants into a great people. In Genesis 17:7 God says: I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. God made a promise not made to any other people on earth. The promise is repeated in Deuteronomy 14:2: For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. Much later in their history, Isaiah 43:1 reads: But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Out of all the people on earth God chose one man to be his own. From that man came many nations but only one of those nations was set aside to be God’s chosen people. They were small, weak, unimpressive, chosen for God’s purposes, not because of their merit. God’s choosing them set them apart from the rest of the world. Even if nothing else had taken place there would be this division between the Jews and all others.
But something else did take place. In his relationship with Israel God established certain agreements or covenants with them. These covenants placed various requirements on Israel, guiding the life and worship of the community. Some of the requirements dealt with moral issues, others with ceremonial issues. Altogether they set the standard of behavior expected of all who belonged to the people of God.
No one could live in relationship with God unless these laws were carefully followed. Those outside of Israel had to join with Israel, including adoption of the whole law, in order to be among the people of God. In essence, a Gentile had to go through a process of becoming a Jew before his worship would be acceptable to God.
I mentioned that the law dealt with both moral and ceremonial issues. Briefly, the moral aspect of the law included regulations on life and behavior that generally apply to all humanity. No one was supposed to murder or lie or covet or commit adultery or perform other violations like these. But only the Jews had these codified as laws from God. On the other hand the ceremonial law was limited to just the Jews. Only they were expected – or even permitted – to carry out the sacrifices and ceremonies spelled out in the Mosaic law.
These two aspects of the law, the moral and the ceremonial, cannot really be divided. Together they are the law that was given to Jews but was not given to Gentiles. All humanity stand under God’s intentions for his creation. He has certain commands that apply to all people. For the Jews these commands fall under the covenantal law. For the rest of humanity they are as Paul describes in Romans 2:15: They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts… God has not left anyone without knowledge of how he expects his creation to behave. His will of decree has been made known to all.
So the Jews have the covenantal law given by God, a law which includes moral commands for all humanity and ceremonial commands just for God’s chosen people. This law stands between the Jews and the rest of humanity, creating a divide that outwardly shows which are the people of God.
The condition of the Gentiles is found in Ephesians 2:12: 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. We looked at this last time. Israel lives in tension with the rest of the world, the world was cut off from all the promises of God unless they joined with the people of Israel.
This created tension, enmity, hostility between Jews and Gentiles. The law itself was a wall separating the people, causing division. It is as the text says a dividing wall of hostility or enmity. Some commentators – and at least one paraphrase Bible – have said the division was caused by people, not by God. But it was God who set things up this way. It was God who made Israel distinct and gave them the law that divided them from the Gentiles. And in the minds of the Jews, things would always be this way.
Despite the expectations of the Jews, along the way something changed. Something happened that opens up entry into the people of God so that Gentiles can come in. Paul points us to this in Ephesians 3:4-6, which we saw in part earlier. Here it is in full: When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
The mystery, present in the Old Testament, is that God would open the doors to himself so that Gentiles would be welcome among his people. By the time Paul comes around the mystery has been made reality so that Paul can say the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body. What happened? What caused this change? And what does it mean for Israel?
Back in our passage, in Ephesians 2:14-15, Paul says that Jesus has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.
This wall of the law, these decrees with their many commands, is somehow abolished by Jesus. Now, be careful with the word abolished. It can be misleading if you understand it the wrong way. The text literally reads that Jesus made powerless the law. He did not make the law cease to exist. He did not lift it. He fulfilled it. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them…” In Matthew he uses a word that means destroy. In Ephesians the word Paul uses means make powerless. Jesus did not come to destroy the law but he did come to remove its power.
The only way he could do this was by fulfilling the law himself. He did what no human being had ever or would ever be able to do. He lived and died without sin, in perfect obedience to the covenantal law God had established with the Jews. With the law fulfilled there was now the possibility that we would not have to fulfill it, that somehow his merit, his righteousness, would be given to us as well.
But this would only happen for those who are in Christ. You might remember that several weeks ago in Ephesians we noticed that Paul is very interested in helping believers see how important it is for them to be in Christ. Over and over in this letter Paul talks about the need to be in Christ. Last week, in verse 13, Paul shows that in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Only by being in Christ is that wall, the law, made powerless. The kind of unity brought by Christ is not automatically applied to all people, as he writes in Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The unity takes place only in Christ Jesus. Human beings come together only in him.
There is another unity that can only take place in Christ. In verse 14 Paul says that Jesus has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. This describes the incarnate Son of God, God in the flesh, perfectly fulfilling the covenantal law. As we said, Jesus fulfilled the law so that those in Jesus have the law fulfilled for them, it is no longer a wall dividing those people who are in Christ. In verse 16 Paul tells us about another unifying work of Jesus, that he would reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, so making peace.
Without Jesus there is hostility between man and God. There is conflict. We wage war against him and he stands in just and good judgment over us. But through Jesus there is peace and reconciliation. He brings all those who are in him, both Jews and Gentiles, as one unified body, and gives us to his Father in Heaven. He can only do this by making powerless the wall that stands between man and God. That wall is our sin. In today’s verses Paul does not say much about sin. He has already addressed our being dead in sin in Ephesians 2:1-10. There we saw that in Christ we receive the kindness of God. But while he is on the subject of unity he wants us to once again see that unity with God, reconciliation with God, comes only in Christ. Jesus is the only way to find peace and unity with others, he is the only way to have peace and unity with God.
One of Paul’s big points in this passage is that Jews and Gentiles are brought together in one body. Some have described this as a third race of humanity – there are Jews, there are Gentiles, now there is a new class known as Christian which is neither Jew nor Gentile. It is what Paul describes in verse 15: that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace… This has major implications for how we understand the relationship of Israel and the church. The topic is so big that I’ve decided not to address it today but we will come back to it next time as we look at this new people of God.
What I want to leave you with this morning is the comfort and assurance that the divisions in fallen humanity can be mended in Jesus Christ and the division between man and God can also be mended in Christ. For those who are in Christ there is no disunity, there is no divide. We do not yet see this in full. We still deal with sin and pride and we struggle against one another. But we have hope and trust that in Heaven this promise will see its full expression and all the people of God will dwell in perfect unity and harmony.
All of this has been done by Jesus Christ and through his cross. The law fulfilled, himself the sacrifice that carries our sins, the judgment of God paid for in his blood. If you want to know peace then you need to know Jesus. There is no other way.