Ephesians 2:11-22. In the first two verses of todays reading we meet two different groups of people. One is described using the word “gentile” and the other “Israel”. Israel was a guy in the Old Testament who was originally named Jacob (See “What’s in a Name” for more about that). Israel had twelve sons who had children who had children who had children… Well you get the idea, eventually he had a lot of descendants. The descendants of those twelve sons made up the twelve tribes of Israel, sometimes called Israel and by the time the New Testament was written often called Jews. Those descendants, Israel or the Jews, were chosen by God, as a group, to help the word understand the sin problem (see “A Tale of Two Trees”). They were given a set of rules that were both moral and political. They were to be a nation with God as their king that helped the world understand God’s holiness, love, justice, and other aspects of his character. They failed miserably to do that job. But that showed the world another fact that they needed to know, we all have failed in our relationship with God; we have all sinned (missed God’s goal for us by being disobedient and disrespectful to God). There is one other very important part of the story of the nation of Israel. Israel was the grandson of a guy named Abraham. In Genesis 22:18 God repeated a promise he had made to Abraham in Genesis 12, that in one of his descendants the nations of the earth would be blessed. That word means that something good would come for the whole world. There were other parts of the promise that involved a homeland for his descendants and plans about his descendants as a group being an example to the world (Genesis 18:18-19). In the Bible promises like that are sometimes called covenants, it’s like a contract.   In Genesis 17:7-11 God is talking to Abraham about the contract and he tells Abraham that he is to perform a surgical procedure on all of the boys that are a part of his family, including slaves, the procedure is called “circumcision”. The procedure was to be done to all of his descendants forever as a way of identifying who was part of the promise of contract.

The second group is called gentiles. The Greek word (the New Testament was written mostly in Greek) translated “gentiles” is “ethnos”, we get our word ethnic from it. It points to different groups that are different from each other, here it means every one who isn’t a descendant of Israel; everyone who is not a Jew.

In Ephesians 2:11 Paul is talking to gentile believers in the church there in Ephesus. He points out that Jews (the “so-called Circumcision”) would call the gentiles “Uncircumcision”. So the Jews would make a point that these people were not part of the group to whom God had made promises. That’s really too bad since God clearly told Abraham that the promise would benefit everyone.   It’s important to see that Paul is also making kind of a bid deal about “the flesh” and “human hands”. Remember back in Ephesians 2:3 when he talked about the desires of the flesh and how those desires didn’t line up with God’s plan for us. The idea of flesh and hands here is more about human ideas and plans than about God’s plans. But the promise of God to Abraham was a real promise and the nation of Israel had a real part that they could have done to help the world understand God. And gentiles were not a part of that nation.

Notice, by the way, that verse 11 starts out with Paul telling his gentile readers to remember something from before; he is looking back. In verse 12 he continues looking back and tells the gentiles four things about their difference from the Jews. First they were separated from Christ. That word “Christ” means “chosen one”. There is a similar word in Hebrew (the language the Old Testament was written in) “messiah”. As the history of the nation of Israel unfolded more information about the messiah appeared in the various writings that eventually were gathered together and make up the Old Testament. In the New Testament Jesus (the Christ) is identified as the messiah from the Old Testament. In Galatians 3:16 Paul tells the churches that the promise to Abraham about one particular descendant blessing the whole world was about Jesus.

As the history of the Jewish people unfolded they grew to be a large group while living in Egypt. Eventually they became unwelcome there and were enslaved. God chose a Jew named Moses to be their leader and lead them out of Egypt and to the homeland God had promised. God also gave Moses moral and political rules for the new nation (called a commonwealth in some translations of Ephesians). It was to be a kingdom with God as their king, a good and prosperous nation and an example to the nations. As I said above it didn’t go smoothly though but God was working for the good of the world through it all. The second thing Paul points out to his gentile readers is that they were not part of that kingdom, so promises specific to the kingdom would not apply to them. Interestingly in the rules that God gave to Moses there was a provision for outsiders to become a part of the group (Exodus 12:48). It is clear from the name calling in verse 11 that most Jews were missing that point.

Third, not only are they “aliens”, but they are strangers to the contract God had made. Here it is probably talking about all the details contained in the rules Moses had received. As a result of all of this they were separated from Christ and without God. They were hopeless. If you have read “A Tale of Two Trees” you know that there are people in the world today that are in the same boat, they have a hint of God and of the broken relationship we have with him but they don’t know where the answer is, they need to hear about Jesus. Because of this many of their religious traditions have a feeling of hopelessness or insecurity just like Paul is talking about here.

Verse 13 doesn’t leave the gentile readers out in the cold for very long, that was then, but now they do have Jesus. The death of Jesus (blood) has brought us back near to God. In verse 14 Paul tells the gentile believers that Jesus has made peace between them and the Jews. The Jews had grown up isolated, they had kept all the promises private, applying them only to themselves. In verse 15 we see that all the rules that God gave to Moses, rules that were supposed to help everyone understand our broken relationship with God and how it would eventually be fixed, had become a wall rather than the path they were supposed to be. According to verse 15 the death of Jesus made the rules inactive. The point here isn’t that the Law of Moses doesn’t still teach us things about living for God the point is that Jesus is, and always has been, the only path back to God. The rules were designed to help the Jews, and the rest of the world, see what was needed to fix our relationship with God, the messiah, the seed of Abraham, was always the ultimate answer. The Jewish people, mistakenly, thought the rules were the answer and were for them alone. Some of the Jews recognized Jesus as the messiah and as the ultimate answer but their culture influenced them to still cling to the rules. Some wanted to continue to exclude gentiles while others wanted the gentile to trust Jesus and follow the rules. Paul says that Jesus has take all that away, the rules as a path to God are gone and there should be peace between the Jewish wanted to follow Jesus and the gentile who wanted to follow him to, we are now all the same group.

Verses 16-18 continue these thoughts. In verse 15 Paul called the group “one new man” and in verse 16 he says we are one body. In chapter 4 he will return to that picture. In verse 17 Paul quotes Isaiah 57:19. In the days of Isaiah ten of the tribes of Israel had defected, they were following their own set of religious rules and had set up their own kingdom. In 722 BC they were captured by the Assyrian empire and the people were scattered through out that empire. In the mean time the other two tribes, who sort of continued to follow the rules given to Moses, managed to hold on to their kingdom (though at one point is was only because an angel destroyed 183,000 Assyrian soldiers camped outside of Jerusalem). That second kingdom though was beginning to turn away from God too, however and would be conquered about 130 years later. But the promises of God to Abraham and the Israelites are a sure thing and Isaiah’s words from God contain both warnings and assurance that God will eventually give them the promised king and kingdom. The words in Isaiah are probably words of hope to both the scattered 10 tribes (those far off) and the two tribes (those near) but Paul applies it to the gentiles who had been “far off” because they had less information about God and his plan and the Jews who had all the Old Testament and were “nearer” to God at least in terms of what they knew. Now they both were at the door with the key to relate to God, the Holy Spirit.

In verses 19 Paul tells them they are all citizens of the same kingdom, we are all “saints” together; believers who had been gentiles and those who had been Jews.. The idea of the word translated “saints” is of being dedicated or committed to God. 2 Thessalonians 1:10 uses the word for believers in Jesus.

Verse 20-22 use a different picture to help us understand our relationship to God and each other. The picture actually starts at the end of verse 19 where we are told that we are part of God’s household. That idea connects to the citizens of the same kingdom idea on verse 19 and even back verse 18 where we are told that we can go and talk to God, who is called our “father” in that verse. We are part of God’s household, members of not just his kingdom but his family. All that household talk must have made Paul think of the next picture, one of a building. According to verse 20 this one man, this new group that God is building is like a house. The foundation of the house is the teaching of the “apostles and prophets”.   The word “apostle” means “sent ones” and in this case is not talking just about the original 12 followers of Jesus but any of several people who came and told the people of Ephesus about Jesus, including Paul himself. The word “prophet” means “a person who speaks before”. Most people think of a prophet as some one who foretells the future but mostly in the Bible prophets were people who brought just the right message at just the right time, often times warnings of physical and spiritual danger. Although most people think of certain people in the Old Testament as prophets there are prophets in the New Testament too. Later Paul will mentions prophets again as people who were helping the believers live for God. Bible experts have different opinions about whether these are Old Testament Prophets or New Testament ones, but we know that they helped the believers in Ephesus believe in Jesus.

The next part of the house is another part of the foundation, the cornerstone. When you build a building you start at a corner. You pick the spot for the corner of the building and you make a line from the corner along one side of where you want the building to be. This can be a line you draw or, especially when you are building the foundation, a string stretched our or now even a laser line. Then you make another line perpendicular to the first.   Often these lines will not only be straight and “square” to each other but also level. From these two lines all other lines in the building are measured. How straight, square, and level your building turns out depends on these two lines from that corner. In ancient days they would use a stone that was very “square” and straight to layout the first two lines. I don’t know if they “sighted” down the stone or stretched strings along it or what but if it was off the whole building would be out of wack. The building reflected the quality and accuracy of the corner stone.   In this new group, the church, the cornerstone is Jesus and in him the “whole building is being fitted together”. The word translated “fitted or built together” is interesting. There is a word in Greek that means “fit together or join” and Paul uses that word but he compounds it with a prefix that mean “with”. He seems to have made us the word himself. What he is saying is we are being “fit together with each other”. There seems to be an emphasis on the parts fitting together very well. In verse 22 he does a similar thing but with a word that means to build, but again he adds the prefix that means with. What we see is an emphasis on both the parts and the quality of this building. It has a perfect cornerstone and the parts are being put together with great care. But each part is being carefully made too. Jesus is the standard both for the parts and for the building. And for good reason this building is a temple, a place to honor God. And even the honor is defined by Jesus, the lord. In verse 22 we see that this is a place for God to live, in His spirit (See “Three or One?”).

It is amazing how much time and effort God has put and is putting into the group of people that we call the church. Sometimes we think of that word “church” and think of a particular building somewhere, or maybe even a group of churches of denomination. And sometimes it is used in the New Testament for a particular group of believers in a particular place. The word “church” means “called out ones”, like a team chose on a playground. And this team has been called out of all people from all time. As we have seen before the call went to every one who has ever existed but only some have stepped out to be on the team. I watched a video the other day where a woman was talking about the great cathedrals in Europe, big giant expensive “Churches” some of which took centuries to build. She commented that the book about them usually listed the builder as “unknown”. And how could a builder be known when the building took more that one lifetime to build. These building were built as acts of love and devotion by people who didn’t care if they were ever recognized. She then went on to say we don’t see cathedrals like that being built anymore because no one wants to make the sacrifice, no one wants to give up a lifetime and get no credit. But there is a cathedral being built, a temple, and God has been building it from since before time began. And he has made great sacrifice to bring it about. Jesus was and is that sacrifice and we are that temple. A temple that will have people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, a temple that will last into all eternity future. A people who love God and are loved by him forever. Give your life and forever to Jesus and become a part today.

Jesus thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for cleaning me up and making me acceptable to God the Father. Thank you for giving me a place in your forever kingdom and for letting me be a part of where and how you are forever honored. Help me honor you today and everyday buy reflecting your perfection. Let me be just were your lines direct me to be. Help the world see you when they look at me. Help others find your place for them too.