Hi BFMC family,

One of the challenges of preaching is deciding what not to say! A passage like Ephesians 2:11–20 contains far more than we can explore on a Sunday morning. Paul (the author of the letter to the Ephesians) is drawing on Israel’s Scriptures, the story of Jews and Gentiles, and the cosmic implications of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. So here are three deeper cuts I wanted to draw your attention to from the passage. I’ll be offering some prayer prompts as well!

1. There may be an Ephesian sitting behind Paul’s “dividing wall.”

We talked Sunday about the boundary in the Jerusalem temple that separated Gentiles from the inner courts. But there is an interesting connection between that boundary and the Ephesian church. In Acts 21, Paul is nearly killed because he is falsely accused of bringing a Gentile beyond that boundary. Luke gives us the Gentile’s name: Trophimus the Ephesian.

That makes Ephesians 2:14 especially powerful. Paul tells a church in Ephesus that Christ has destroyed “the dividing wall of hostility.” Some of the people hearing this letter may have known Trophimus personally. Trophimus himself may even have heard the letter being read aloud. And then Paul by the end of the chapter that people like Trophimus have become the temple. The man whose presence in the wrong part of the temple nearly got Paul killed is now part of the dwelling place of God. I love that reversal!

2. “One new humanity” is creation language.

Paul says that Christ’s purpose was “to create in himself one new humanity out of the two” (v. 15). That word “create” matters. Paul describes reconciliation as an act of creation–Jesus is bringing into existence something that wasn’t there before.

Look at where this new humanity exists– “in himself.” Jesus isn’t standing between Jews and Gentiles negotiating a ceasefire. He himself becomes the place where their new shared identity is found. Jews don’t become Gentiles, and Gentiles don’t become Jews. Both are incorporated into Christ. The church, then, is more than a collection of individuals who happen to believe the same things. It is evidence that God’s new creation has already begun. Whenever people who would not naturally belong together become one in Christ, we get a glimpse of where God is taking the world.

3. The people who were far from God become the place where God lives.

Paul begins the passage with distance: “You who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 13). That language echoes Isaiah 57, where God announces “peace” to those who are “far and near.” Paul returns to it in verse 17 when he says that Christ “preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”

But by the end of the passage, the direction has changed. Paul is no longer describing people coming near to God. He describes God coming to dwell among them. Former strangers become members of God’s household, then stones in God’s temple, until Paul finally says that they are “being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

That’s another extraordinary reversal. The passage begins with people who are “without God in the world.” It ends with those same people becoming the place where God dwells. And Paul says we are being built together. The temple isn’t just me; it is us. Christ takes people who were once far from God—and often far from one another—and fits us together, stone by stone, into the place where God chooses to make his presence known.

That’s what the church is becoming.

Pray This Week

As you pray this week, spend some time with these questions:
* Where are there still dividing walls in my own heart? Ask the Spirit to show you people you instinctively keep at a distance, and pray for the grace to see them through the reconciling work of Christ.
* Where is the Lord creating something new among us? Pray for this church to increasingly become a community where people who might never otherwise belong together discover a deeper identity in Christ.
* How can we be a dwelling place for God’s presence? Pray that God would shape us together into the kind of church where people who feel far from God encounter his presence, his peace, and a place to belong.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Ben