Complete in Christ: A Single, New Humanity audio
Hello.
Has anyone heard the joke about preachers who use those old-fashioned pulpits? How they stand 'three feet above contradiction'? The joke's almost as sad as what it makes fun of, and because no one here (apart from Louise) has ever heard me preach before, I'm going to try very hard this morning to be like the preachers you're used to at St Thom's and St James'. I'm going to try to be someone who talks with you and not at you. Please let me encourage you to think about what I share today, but also to ask questions after the service if I wasn't as clear as I should've been. You see preaching is a bit different to teaching because people often don't feel comfortable sticking their hands in the air half way through a sermon!
Anyway. I hope we've come to recognise over the past few weeks that Ephesians is a powerful and a practical letter. It's also unique among Paul's letters because it wasn't written to correct a local doctrinal issue or social problem, at least, not directly. Ephesians mixes the language of worship and prayer with deep theology; but in the theology Paul always has very practical ends in view. He wants the Christians to become even closer to Christ, and to each other.
Chris pointed out in his introduction a few weeks ago that this letter incorporates the concepts of the Trinity and being in Christ. George also stressed the importance of the Trinity when he preached a fortnight ago. But I guess I wouldn't be too far off the mark to suggest that although we accept the doctrine of the Trinity with our minds, even if we don't fully understand it; although we confess the doctrine of the Trinity with our mouths, each time we repeat the Creed, perhaps we don't really know how to express it through how we live our lives.
Well, I'm hoping that by the end of the sermon this morning, we might have a clearer idea.
Gracious and heavenly Father we come now to worship you through the preaching and hearing of your Word. Open our hearts through your Spirit to be receptive to your leading; sharpen our minds so that we can grasp your timeless truths; convict our consciences so that our lives might more readily conform to the example left to us by your Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Father of all Creation we pray that you will find our worship through the preaching and hearing of your Word today, pleasing in your sight. May your Spirit soften our hearts and convict our minds to believe; and that in believing our lives will continue to be transformed into the image of your Son, our Lord; our Saviour, Christ Jesus. Amen.
Before we hook in I should point out that the translation you'll read on the screen will probably differ in some places from the version that you're familiar with, or from the one that you're reading in your Bibles this morning. It's my own translation of the Greek text; and it highlights the rhetorical features and links that Paul used to stress key points.
-Introduction-
Last week Chris preached the beating heart of the gospel message:
4 God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love for us 5 he made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in our sins. You are saved by grace! 6 Together with Christ Jesus, God has raised us up and seated us in the heavens, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace, through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
I want to recap a little of what Chris covered because it's important that we're reminded how God's decision to love us led him to extend his mercy to us. This act of mercy has resulted in us being restored to a proper relationship with him, through grace. He's fixed the problem that was caused by sin. And to understand why God did this we need to understand that he's relational in his very essence. The doctrine of the Trinity describes a perfect, sacrificial, and selfless inter-dependence, one that's based on mutual love. And we've become the beneficiaries of this love through being recreated in Christ!
I'd like you all to close your eyes for a moment and imagine a Christian cross.
Has everyone fixed the image in your minds? Good, please open your eyes. The physical cross is made up of two major parts, an upright stake, which in Latin is called a stipes; and a cross-beam, or patibulum. The Roman practice had the stake permanently fixed to the ground at the execution site, and the condemned man was forced to carry the beam across his shoulders through the village or town, tied to it at the elbows and wrists. When he arrived at the place of execution his charge was read out; he was then raised and fixed to the stipes to die. Unusually Jesus was nailed to the patibulum, and that was because the ropes had been cut when he collapsed on the way to Golgotha, when Simon was press-ganged by the soldiers into carrying the beam for him.
Crucifixion was a horrific way to die, but Christ's crucifixion has made possible a marvellous way to live.
Some of you might have been taught to think of the cross in this way, as a bridge between us and God. I've never really heard a good explanation for the hurdle we have to climb over in the middle, so I think there's a better analogy we can use.
Perhaps we should think of our relationship with God as the stipes-it's vertical going from earth to heaven, and its individual between me and him, and between you and him. The patibulum identifies our relationships with each other, and because we're Christians, Jesus is always central. I can relate to you, and you can relate to me because Jesus is the man in the middle, extending his arms outwards, embracing both of us.
Anyone who's lived for longer than five minutes knows that human relationships aren't simple things, and they aren't based on just the individual. They can and should be incredibly rewarding, but they're also invariably complex, they're corporate, they're sometimes difficult and they're often frustrating. But in the Church these horizontal beams, these relational patibuli are just as crucial a part of our salvation as is the vertical stake.
I mentioned earlier that the breach between me and God and between you and God was healed through us becoming the beneficiaries of his love by being re-created in Christ. So let me pose a rhetorical question: do the effects of us being re-created in Christ extend to healing the human divisions too? And why should this be important?
It's important because, “… we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” I wonder if we appreciate the gravity of what it means to be re-created? Genesis teaches that our 'earthy' race was originally created in Adam to be God's image bearers; those of us who now believe in Jesus have subsequently been re-created in Christ, the new Adam. The implication is that we're no longer bound up in lives lived in selfishness, separated from God and from each other; living 'under the sun' as the Preacher so eloquently put it over twenty times in Ecclesiastes. The opposite is true; our perspective should be one that's shaped from above the sun; from lives that have been restored to God and to each other. Our view of existence, our view of relationships, must be one that's seen from our current vantage point 'seated in the heavens'.
So what does it mean for us to live as God's image bearers, re-created in Christ? What does a life that's lived 'above the sun' look like in a practical sense? Let's find out.
11 So then, remember that you were once Gentiles in the flesh. You were mocked as “the uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcised,” an action done to the body by human hands. 12 At that time you were without the Saviour. You were completely excluded from citizenship among God's people. You were foreigners to the covenants of God's promise. You were without hope, and you were without God in the world.
Paul wasn't really in the habit of pulling his punches. The non-Jewish Christians at Ephesus once were pagans, and back then they had no hope. Their Roman citizenship had been their prized possession, but it was utterly worthless, God simply wasn't with them.
Citizenship, belonging to the place that you called 'home', was a big deal in the first century, and it's still a big deal today. Being a citizen of this place or that place provides a person with a sense of security, even a sense of identity. If we think about Australia for a moment, we'll recognise how true this is. People want to live in our country. People are prepared to risk their lives to get here, hoping that one day they won't just be resident aliens, but citizens. It's important. Sadly this sense of identity, this citizenship can become a barrier that excludes people.
13 But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near through his death. 14 For he is our peace. Jesus has made both groups one. In his body he tore down the wall of hostility that kept us apart, 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed through religious rules, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, thereby making peace. 16 And Jesus might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing forever the hostility we previously felt for each other.
Paul recognised that there was a tendency in the Jewish Christians at Ephesus to keep to themselves. They were just as proud of their heritage as were the pagan Ephesians, and just like them, their Jewish 'citizenship' had become a barrier between them and everyone else. Their Jewish citizenship was a cause for division. Clearly they needed to be reminded that there was a horizontal aspect to them being re-created in Christ, and that the horizontal aspect had profound implications on how they were to relate to others.
Are we any different? Sadly, keeping to ourselves is still largely the habit of people who live their lives 'under the sun' today. To varying degrees each and every one of us was once defined by our differences, whether they were cultural, social, racial, political, or economic. Each and every one of us felt most comfortable and most secure in our own 'tribes', with people who looked like us, who lived like us, who behaved and who believed like us.
And yet our passage teaches us something radical: that through Jesus' violent and brutal death on a Roman cross, it became possible for people who were separated to be reconciled. It's now possible for all of us to become something completely new: a people re-created in Christ. Not Adam. Not Cain or Abel, but Christ. And we need to understand that Paul wasn't thinking of just a superficial change here; he didn't have in mind different groups being brought together despite them continuing to be fundamentally different. Paul wasn't promoting the lumping of apples together with pears; what he had in mind was something more like a nashi; neither apple nor pear, neither Jew nor Gentile but Christian.
Did you happen to notice as I read verses 13 through 15 that the very first consequence of Jesus' death that Paul mentioned wasn't the reconciliation of creature with Creator? It was a reconciliation of creature with creature. God's intentional decision to love Jews and Gentiles equally caused him to extend his mercy to both through Christ, and this made it possible for people to live together in a state of relational grace. Relational grace. It's this and this alone that makes it possible for Christians, for us, to express the Trinitarian ideal of a sacrificial inter-dependence based on mutual love in our lives. By bringing people together through the cross, by recreating us in himself, Jesus destroyed for-all-time every basis for racial, social, economic, ideological or religious hatred. There are no longer any grounds for lives lived 'under the sun', for us. We're obliged to see things differently, to live our lives differently, and to always do so from a 'heavenly' perspective.
17 Jesus came and preached peace to you who were far from God, and peace to those of us who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
In these two verses we see the Trinity being outworked in a unity of purpose. God the Son delivered the message of a peace being extended to us by God the Father, and which is realised and energised through God the Spirit. And just as God transcends race by being relational in and of himself we too have been re-created in Christ in order to rise above our differences, to live 'above the sun'.
Every once in a while one of my theology students will grapple with the practicalities of being created in God's image. God's tri-personal, we're clearly not, so what does it mean to be his 'image bearer', today? To be honest there are several answers to this question, and every one of them is probably grounds for a series of sermons. But part of the answer has to do with the fact of God being inter-dependant, selfless and intentionally loving. We express inter-dependence as we learn to place our trust in others within the Church rather than relying on ourselves. The marriage relationship provides an excellent analogy to this aspect of Trinitarian nature, but it's the image of the Church as Christ conceives it, as his Bride, which best represents its true essence. We express selflessness by placing the needs and wants of others before our own. Parents model this ethic with their children, but again, selflessness is at the core of Spirit-gifted and Spirit-enabled Christian ministry within the Church. Each of us exercises our spiritual gift not for the effect that our ministry has on us, but for the benefit that it has on others. Finally, intentional love remains a choice rather than a feeling or an emotion. It's to consciously act in the best interests of those around us, rather than acting in self-interest. I'm confident we'd all recognise that feelings and emotions are fleeting things; they can change with time and with circumstance. But intentional love is enduring. It lasts. It's exactly this sort of love that Jesus Christ has for the Church, and it's this sort of love that we model to each other when we choose to overlook the differences, the things that grate; and when we choose to ignore the offenses, whether intentional or unintentional, real or imagined. But let's not kid ourselves living out this ethic is hard. But with Christ even this is possible. And not only possible, not only desirable, but necessary.
19 You Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are now fellow citizens with God's holy ones, and full members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
In these verses Paul wraps up what it means to be a citizen of God's Kingdom, to be a people re-created in Christ. And he does this by using the familiar analogy of a household. In the first century Roman context households were viewed as the foundation of the nation and the society, just like today. What's fundamentally different between then and now has to do with the issue of inclusion. In Greco-Roman society a household was more than just mum, dad and 2.5 kids. Back then a household was normally multi-generational, and it included slaves and clients. But the slaves and clients were there to serve the family, not to be a part of it; so to be a 'full member' of the household was to be an 'insider' rather than an 'outsider' peeking in. It was to belong, in every sense of the word.
Paul had earlier reflected that Christ had demolished one structure, that 'dividing wall of hostility' between people. But now God's building another one-the Church. And this building is radically different. For starters, the 'dividing wall' was constructed around a cornerstone made of clay, Adam's sinful legacy to humanity. But the Church is built around the Rock himself-Jesus Christ is our cornerstone, and there's no surer basis for building something that lasts!
In antiquity a cornerstone was the first block laid. It had to be perfect given that the entire structure took its identity, shape and 'square' from that first block. But notice that Paul identified the foundation as being the apostles and prophets. We'll find out more about the ministry of these gifts to the Church later in Ephesians but for now I'd like to point out that this is not a reference to people who claim to exercise the ministry of apostles or prophets in the Church today. This is a reference to the apostles and prophets who had a foundational role in establishing the Christian Church. Jesus is the cornerstone who provides, squares and shapes the Church's identity. The apostles and prophets were the first course of bricks that functioned as the Church's foundation. And all subsequent Christians-including us-make up the individual bricks who are constantly being added to the ever-growing and holy temple, to the place where God chooses to dwell in Spirit!
I honestly believe preachers should avoid parading Hebrew and Greek in their sermons, whenever possible. But I'd like to make an exception now, and only to point out something very significant. There are a few Greek words that can be translated as 'temple' into English. But the one that's used in verse 21 specifically refers to the 'Holy of Holies' in the Jewish Temple. So when Paul says that you and me are being joined together, it's because we collectively form the Holy of Holies where God dwells right now! Surely this must speak to the importance of unity.
-Conclusion-
John 13:34 I give you a new commandment-to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples-if you have love for one another.
When all is said and done there's one thing and one thing only that should always identify us as Christians-our capacity to love others selflessly. There really is so much more to being saved than just getting the vertical relationship right.
So, thanks be to God that we're no longer created in Adam, but re-created in Christ! Thanks be to God that we're not only called, but also enabled to live lives that express the Triune God we worship: lives that are sacrificial, selfless and interdependent, lives based on mutual, enduring love. Finally, thanks be to God that our perspectives of each other, and of life more generally, are now shaped by a view that's only possible because we're seated in the heavens. Thanks be to God that we've moved from living 'under the sun', to dwelling 'above' it.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father we thank you through Jesus Christ that you have equipped us, by your Spirit, to love others sacrificially, selflessly, completely. Thank you for placing us in churches that model grace. We pray that you will continue to mould and shape us individually and collectively, to demonstrate your love and compassion to others, so that they may also come to know peace through your extended grace.
We pray for this in the name of your precious Son, our Lord, Christ Jesus. Amen.
