We Are the New Humanity (Ephesians 2:15-22)
Introduction
Events of this past week have demonstrated without argument that our world is divided. Whenever something tragic happens, and we see so clearly the tangible effects of sin, the commentary on both sides of any issue always is something to the effect of, “Something needs to change. Something is wrong.” But nobody can seem to name what that something is. But we can. And the Bible does. The Bible has answers. Sin is the problem. Sin is the something that needs to change.
When sin is in the heart, it creates enmity between each one of us and God. Paul says in Romans 8:7, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.” Paul does not refer to a unique category of sinners, but to the state of every sinner. Every person, by nature and by choice, sets their minds on fleshly things, and therefore every person, by nature and by choice, is hostile to God.
But that hostility toward God always manifests itself in relationships between people. Titus 3:3 says it perfectly: “For we ourselves also once were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another.” The church has its one anothers, but so does the world, and the one anothers of the world are filled with hatred. And therefore, as Romans 1:28f says, “They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” Sin destroys relationships, breaks apart households, corrodes societies, incurs wars, prompts murders. Sin is acid thrown in humanity’s face.
Thus, the perfect, whole, harmonious humanity which was intended at the beginning has been disfigured. The innocent Adam and his wife were at peace, such that when he sees her for the first time he exclaims, “At last!” And they are one, unified, nothing between them, naked and unashamed, rejoicing in communion with their maker as they walked in perfect fellowship with one another. When they invite sin into the world, it then divides them with shame and fig leaves, hiding and conviction, death and provision of the skins of an animal, and ultimately separation in death as the gravity of sin drags their bodies back to the dust from which they were made. Sin destroys relationships.
But the forgiveness of sin heals them. Forgiveness heals our relationship with God. On the basis of Christ’s righteousness, and through the instrument of faith alone, God freely and justly forgives sinners of their offences against him, bringing them into a right relationship with him. 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And so we are “reconciled to God,” at peace with him, having all our accounts settled, having our hearts changed, and the hostility towards him cut out of us.
And if this vertical relationship has been healed, this also means that the horizontal relationships have been healed as well. If God joins us to Christ, then he also joins us to his body. In the terms of Ephesians, if we are each individually his “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,” then we also corporately are being “joined together” growing into a holy temple for the Lord, a dwelling place for his name.
One of the most powerful witnesses of the church is its unity. As our nation grows more and more divided, the church must stay unified, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). Why? Not only because of Jesus Christ’s saving work to join us together, but also because of our witness to that nation. What a contrast they should see between the world and us! They should walk into this room and see a people at peace with each other. They should hear a symphony of unity in the glad fellowship of the saints. They should feel the radiant warmth of the new humanity in its glad-hearted singing. They should smell the sweet aroma of wholeness as they see a body of peacemakers who keep short accounts with one another. The unity of the church matters, because in us, and in our unity, the world observes something of what the new world will be like. Not only do we individually become miniature models of our future perfect selves, but we also corporately as a church become a ship in a bottle—a small to-scale replica of the coming human society which will flourish in the new heavens and the new earth.
And that is the point of 2:11-22. God in Christ has taken a broken and fractured and divided humanity and has brought them together in himself. He has created “one new man” (2:15) and thereby made peace among us in himself.
As we looked at last time, he has done this by breaking down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. If you were not with us last time, the basic idea is this: God had divinely instituted a division in humanity between his chosen people Israel and the rest of the nations, called the Gentiles. And he divided humanity by giving the Israelites the law, which was “a law of commandments expressed in ordinances,” a code of what to do and what not to do given in authoritative pronouncements. Thus, while Gentiles could be saved by grace through faith, they could only be included with access to God by leaving their own nation and joining themselves in some way to Israel. “Access” to God was confined through one nation: the sons of Jacob. And therefore, as it says in 2:12, “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.”
But, Paul asserts, we Gentiles who were once far off from God and without access to him have now been brought near to God and have full inclusion in his people through the death of Jesus Christ. How is this possible? Because Christ is the peace of his people. He is the head of that new humanity, and to be united to him, to be “in him” is to be part of that new, united humanity, whether Jew or Gentile. And Jew and Gentile can be united in peace because the very cause of their hostility—the law—has been decommissioned, nullified. He laid the old world in the grave in his death, with all of its divisions and distinctions and fallenness, and brought a new world to life in his resurrection, with all of its unity and peace and reconciliation.
Paul has already asserted this peace, and then begun to explain it. So, we pick up where we left off and see first the Purposes of Peace in 2:15-16, and second the Results of peace in 2:17-18, and third the Effects of peace 2:19-22. And Paul teaches us these things so that we might understand who and what we are as a church. And all of this heightens our view of the church and drives us not only towards peaceful interaction with our brothers and sisters, but service in the cause of Christ.
I. The Purposes of Peace (2:15-16)
First, Paul teaches us the Purposes of this peace in Christ: “…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through he cross, thereby killing the hostility.” As you can see, there are two purposes: to create a unified humanity and to reconcile that humanity to himself as one unified whole. Christ has decommissioned the law so that there would be nothing standing in the way to him creating a unified humanity out of the divided humanity that existed.
God has created the two into one, making peace. The church is the creation of God. Creation is laden with significance. In the immediate context, the same word has already been used in 2:10. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” But it is not a creation from scratch, out of nothing. It is a recreation, a complete renovation of the individual. The dead soul now lives. The disobedient soul now obeys. The disfigured image of God now displays the beauty of God through its recreation.
This is also the case with more than just individuals. In the same way that we have been recreated in Christ, so also humanity has been recreated in Christ. That is to say, the old, divided humanity has been reforged into a single unified humanity in an act of recreation. In the same way that each of us individually is a new creation, all of us together are a new creation.
And we need to know that. We are a brand-new creation of God. All of us used to be divided, separated, scattered individuals, but now we are created into one new unified humanity in Jesus. It is much like the metal-worker who goes about a junk yard, picking up various pieces of metal from completely different pieces of technology—the door of a car, the elements in a toaster, the body of a computer. And he brings those various pieces of metal back to his shop and he throws all of those pieces into a furnace, melts them down, mixes them together, and casts them into the shape of something brand new. That metal is one piece of metal now. And so also in the church. God has gathered us up from the nations, melted us down, and cast us in the mold of Christ, and we are now one, unified humanity in a new shape.
And the effect is that peace has been made: “so making peace.” Peace replaces hostility. Where there was once hatred and division and divinely instituted separation, now there is peace and unity and divinely instituted joining. And so our former differences are of no effect!
The second, God has reconciled that new humanity to himself, killing the hostility. And here you have the vertical dimension. God not only desires to individually reconcile us to himself. He desires to corporately reconcile us to himself. He desires not just that Justin has a right relationship with him on a one-to-one basis, but also that Shepherd Bible Church would have a right relationships with him all together. And thus, he not only reconciles each one of us to himself, and he doesn’t just reconcile each one of us to one another. He also reconciles us all together as a unified humanity to himself through the blood of Christ.
We need to note here that both Jew and Gentile needed to be reconciled to God through the cross. Even if the Jews possessed a great privilege, they did not necessarily possess reconciliation. And thus the Jews were in just as much of a bind as the Gentiles. So he reconciles Jews to himself, and he reconciles Gentiles to himself, and thereby he reconciles a body to himself, a new man. So also, there is no people group today who possessed the inside track with God. Not a single person is without the need of being reconciled to God. But also, one cannot be reconciled to God apart from the one body of Christ.
From this comes the age-old saying, “You cannot have God for your Father without also having the Church for your Mother.” In case you think that’s a Roman Catholic position, I tapped into that vein of thought in John Calvin—a more staunch opposer of the Catholic Church there rarely has been. We don’t mean that you can’t be saved apart from the church. We are simply saying that God desires not just to reconcile each sinner to himself, but one body to himself. And we cannot be reconciled to the head without also being reconciled to the other members of the body.
This is one of the reasons we take church membership so seriously. Because it is through membership that you say, “I belong in that one body. I belong to the new humanity. I am reconciled to Jesus Christ and therefore desire to identify myself with his church.” That’s also what is being said in baptism and the Lord’s supper. That’s what we say when we gather on the first day of the week to sing and pray and preach and give and fellowship and observe the Lord’s Supper. And that is what Paul means when he says that God desires to reconcile them both—Jew and Gentile—in one body to God through the cross. To be reconciled to God through the cross is to be in one body. And the result is that the hostility between mankind and God is ended. The head of the creation is unified in Christ. God’s purpose of uniting all things in Christ is still right on track.
II. The Result of Peace (2:17-18)
Second, Paul teaches us the Result of this peace: “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” The result of the peace which Christ has accomplished is access to the Father through Christ by the Spirit.
Where did that peace come from? It came from, as Paul says, Christ’s preaching of peace to those who were far and those who were near. Now, we need to think a little bit about what Paul means by that. What does it mean that Christ peached peace to those who were far—in context, meaning the Gentiles—and those who were near—the Jews. It could mean that he preached the gospel during his earthly ministry. But this is difficult because he never preached unity between Jew and Gentile in his earthly ministry. Nor did he strictly preach to the nations, even if he did evangelize Gentiles in the nation of Israel. In fact, on a number of occasions, he strictly warned his disciples not to go to the Gentiles, but only to the lost sheep of Israel.
I think a much more likely explanation is that Christ preached peace to those far and near in the sense that peace between Jew and Gentile was his ultimate goal, and he was present preaching that peace in his Apostles and Prophets. Even as he himself commissioned his disciples: “Go and make disciples of all nations”—i.e., of the Gentiles. He formerly had promised them in Luke 12:12 that, “The Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” He promised them that “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
In fact, this is confirmed by Paul’s own flow of thought in the coming verses. The church is built on the foundation of the “apostles and prophets” and Christ is the cornerstone. He says in 3:5 that he has “revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” what is the mystery of God. And that Paul, an Apostle, was given the “grace” (3:8) “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
Which means that we know about this peace between Jew and Gentile, this new humanity which God has created in Christ, through the ministry of the Apostles and Prophets. And we will get to the importance of this in a bit. But here, suffice it to say a few things. 1) Jesus Christ speaks in his word, and nowhere else. 2) Jesus Christ speaks in his word, and he is the one speaking. 3) When we are faithful to that word, Jesus Christ continues to speak through us.
But what is the result of this preaching? Answer: access. That was the basic problem to begin with. The Gentiles did not have access to God apart from Israel. Even still, they could not enter the temple, and especially not the holy place. They were “far away.” But now, because the law has be set aside, and because Jew and Gentile are now one in Christ Jesus through faith, the Gentiles as well as the Jews have access to God.
More specifically, they have access in “one Spirit.” The Spirit is who creates the body of Christ. He is what makes the difference between a dead humanity and a living humanity. In the same way that you have breath, and that breath makes you alive, so also the Church has the Spirit—the breath of God—and he makes the Church live. Thus, everywhere that the body is mentioned, the Spirit is also mentioned.
But it also reinforces another point: that the body of Christ is one. There is one life in the body, not many different lives. There is one life force, one breath, one empowering and moving force, who is the Spirit. Which means that the same spirit was in the Jew and the Gentile. And the same Spirit that is in me is in you. Which means that we are all united in a common life, much like a body. And much like a family—a family in which peace is the dominating reality. And it is a family not only in which we have peace with our siblings and parents, but also a family in which we may freely go to the Father whenever we want. In the old order, under the law, there was only one guy who could enter one time a year under very strict parameters and gain access to the Father. But now the curtain is torn and access is given freely to all those who approach him by faith.
So, we have seen the purposes of peace: to create a new humanity and reconcile that corporate body to himself and make pace. We have seen the results of this peace: access to God in a new family. Now, we bring things to their goal. What is this peace designed to do? What does it do in us? What effects does it have?
III. The Effects of Peace (2:19-22)
Third, Paul would teach us the effects of peace: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
What are the effects of peace in the church? There are essentially four:
1. We are now included, and we have new relationships with one another.
The first effect is that Christ has brought us from that old state of separation, alienation and exclusion into a new state of union, reconciliation and inclusion. In other words, our lives are now defined by a whole new set and quality of relationships. We used to be “strangers”—travelers or visitors in another country—and “aliens”—permanent residents in a country that is not your own. This mirrors the language of verse 12, where we were “strangers” to the covenants of promise.
But now, we are “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Again, we used to be alienated from “citizenship” (2:12) and “without God.” But now all of that has been turned around.
My best friend in college was a Canadian citizen. He never was a citizen of the US. We always teased him about it. But I remember when he finally applied for dual citizenship and had the opportunity to go in and see him sworn in as a citizen of the United States. Did he completely lose his identity or his former affiliations or history? No. Did he never go back to visit Canada? No. But in that moment, he became not just a resident of the United States, but a citizen of the united states. And with that came all the rights and privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. And once we were very much the same way. We were resident aliens. Visitors. Able to look into God’s work, but unable to say that we were a part of it. But now we are part of that work, fellow citizens together with the saints of all the ages, and especially with the saints in the church.
And we are also members of God’s household. The word “household” refers to people who are related by kinship or circumstances and form a closely knit group.” We are those who belong to God’s household, those who are knit together into a family with Christ our elder brother and God our Father, with all the rights and privileges that come with being part of a family. Very much like a child who is adopted by a wealthy king, so also we have been adopted into God’s family, his household, and have a new set of closely knit relationships with each other.
2. We are founded upon the teaching of Christ through his apostles and prophets.
If we really are part of something new, something different than before, something which is neither Jewish nor Gentile, and something which is no longer defined by the OT law code, then you need a new set of instructions. What do we do in this new church thing? How do we live out the new humanity? What does the new humanity think and teach and believe and do? Thus, one of the implications of a new humanity coming into being is that you need new revelation. Which is exactly what God has given the church during this NT age through the Apostles and Prophets, and preeminently in Christ.
The Apostles and Prophets refer to New Testament Apostles and Prophets. The Prophets are not the OT prophets because, if Paul did mean that, he would likely have put them in chronological order, putting prophets before apostles. Be even more clearly, he clarifies exactly who he means in 3:5: the mystery of Christ “was not made known to the sons of men in other generations [the OT generations] as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” The Apostles and Prophets are set in direct contrast to the “men of other generations.” So, these are the New Testament Apostles—the 12, minus Judas, plus Matthias, plus Paul—who were the foundational, highest constituted human authority in the church. They gave inspired, foundational, absolutely authoritative instruction to the church. And these are the New Testament Prophets—the numerous men and women spread throughout the churches of the first century until the New Testament Scriptures came into being who spoke to the specific situations of specific churches.
Now, we here at Shepherd Bible Church believe in what’s called “Cessationism,” which is just a fancy term for the idea that there are certain spiritual offices, and certain miraculous abilities that came along with them, which Jesus Christ no longer gives to the church. Put simply, God does not give Apostles to the church anymore, and correspondingly he no longer gives the gifts which are “signs of the apostles.” And, in the same way, he no longer gives prophets to the church anymore, and the corresponding gifts that he would give them to authenticate their prophetic minsitries of new revelation. You needed that at the beginning of the church. The NT hadn’t been written yet, and so you needed direction of specific things, right now. But as the NT was written and as the church grew into a more mature state, and as the NT was copied and disseminated across the known world, these offices and gifts died out. This verse is one of the most important verses in demonstrating that. Why? Because the Apostles and Prophets are called the “foundation” of the church. And you only lay a foundation one time, the same way that you only lay a cornerstone one time. They were foundational offices and gifts. And so, once the foundation was laid, there’s no need for another foundation.
So if someone walks up to me and says, “I’m an Apostle!” I say, “Oh really?” And I take them to this verse. Or if someone says, “I have a word from God for you!” I say, “Oh really? What verse does it come from?” Don’t be fooled by high-minded and pious sounding people who pretend to speak from the Lord to you but don’t know anything about Scripture or how to handle it correctly! Paul says that those people speak, “without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim 1:7). In fact, those people who pretend to speak for God are in reality those who threaten the unity and stability of the church precisely because they are those windy souls who are the source of the “wind of doctrine, human cunning, and craftiness in deceitful schemes” which Paul warns us about in Ephesian 4:14. They are wolves in suits and ties.
This is why pastors are so important! The ongoing, ordinary office for teaching in the church are pastors. They shepherd the flock by teaching the flock the word of God. Do you want to know what God says? Your pastor should tell you by explaining the meaning of the word of God to you. So don’t go to youtube. Be wary of online preachers! They know nothing about you, and you know nothing about them! Apostles and prophets have not been given to you in the present day, but pastors have been. And, more specifically, your pastors in your church—these pastors in this church—have been divinely constituted by God for that purpose in your life.
3. We are skillfully joined together by God into a growing temple across the world.
Upon that foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, is built a structure called the church. And Paul says that structure is being “joined together.” Now that word is very important and refers to something which is “joined together to form a coherent entity.” This is what a contractor does to that big pile of wood on the edge of a construction lot. This is what an artist does to all the random colors of paint upon a canvas. They take all of the independent parts, all of the disjointed pieces, and then skillfully, perfectly, fit them together to form a coherent whole—to build a house or paint a picture.
And that’s what God is doing in the church. We’ve even seen it already. He is taking various people, and he is joining them together into a coherent unity. He gathered many of us from Eden Baptist. He is gathering others of us from other churches and walks of life. He is gathering others of us through baptism. And so we see the master craftsmanship of the Lord at work in the church.
1 Peter 2:4-5 paints a beautiful picture of this. “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” We are a spiritual building, and each of us is a stone used in the construction of that building. And as each of us comes to faith in the Lord Jesus, he takes us and builds us up into a spiritual house.
To put it in a different way, 1 Corinthains 12:11 says that all the members of the body of Christ are “empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” And then again later, when thinking through the metaphor of the human body, Paul says again, “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose” (1 Cor 12:18). In the same way that God has skillfully knit your physical body together, he also has knit his spiritual body together.
Which means that every single one of you has a purpose. Every board, beam, nail and screw in a house serves a purpose. Some of those purposes are more obvious than others. Some of them are structural and you never see them. Some of them are decorative and could never hold the structure of the house, but they make the house look appealing and beautiful. Other parts have a specific function of bringing cold or hot water, electricity, or heat. Still other parts would be destroyed if they came in contact with any of those things. But you need every one for a functioning house.
And so also with the body of Christ. He has “joined together” his church, not only Jew and Gentile, but every individual member into a coherent whole. And it is a peculiar building because Paul says it “grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” And this is shocking! Not only do we have access to God the Father apart from the temple. We are the temple. And so God’s work across the whole earth, among all the nations, is to build for himself a temple for his presence.
4. We are bound for completion as the permanent dwelling place of God, even in our local church.
But it is not just the universal church, but also the local church which is an expression of this. Look carefully at Paul’s words. 2:22— “In him you also.” Who is the “you”? The Ephesian church. It can’t be the Gentiles. He’s already established that the two are one! It has to be the local Ephesian church.
Which is a very important thought for us today. Just like God is building his universal church over all of the world and since the beginning of the church in Acts 2, so also is he building each and every individual church as a miniature model of the whole. He will build not just the church in general, but also our church in particular into the dwelling place we need to be for his sake. And we can take great confidence in that. There’s great insecurity that can come from being a church plant. It’s easy to feel like we need to convince people to come and join us as members. But, when we feel that way, we have begun to believe that we fit the church together. Do we really have the wisdom to know whether or not this person or that person can be “fit together with us”? No. But God does. And so we can trust the Lord as he moves in the consciences of individuals to be compelled to join with us in our participation in the gospel. We simply serve, and leave the rest to God. He is building his church. And he is building this church. And we can trust him.
Conclusion
So Paul has masterfully walked us through the unity of the church. We were once far off, and now we have been brought near. All that once divided us is now decommissioned and no longer in effect. We are one in Christ, and therefore one with each other. We are a new humanity, reconciled with one another and with God. We have access to God. And we are therefore being built into a temple to the Lord by his skillful hands.
Therefore, let us walk in such a way which is worthy of this unity. Let us be humble and gentle. Let us count the desires and preferences of one another above our own. Let us be yielding and patient. Let us bear with one anothers sins and faults, foibles and annoyances. Let us love one another with an earnest, outstretched love. And let us eagerly maintain the unity for which Christ died.