1. "The Bible is full of these bursts of light, these contradictions. You have the fall of Adam and then God's grace. You have the darkness of judgment followed by promise and fulfillment."

2. "He interrupts this list of ways we're empty without God, without hope in the world. But now. Do you feel at times that the greatest word in the entire language of humanity is the word 'but'? If you do not, your understanding of Christianity is very defective."

3. "We Christians have no message apart from the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is absolutely central to our understanding of our own hope."

4. "Peace could just seem like the absence of conflict, but friends, peace is this wonderful state that we have been brought into where this God who made us, who had every right to be hostile toward us, is no longer. And in fact, all of that hostility has been absorbed in Christ."

5. "They became proud that they held the very Scriptures which told them that they needed to be saved from their pride."

6. "The ceremonial laws can be abolished, not because they were wrong and have been replaced, but because they were right and have been fulfilled. They've gone from the bud of promise to the flower of Christ's birth and life and teaching and death and resurrection. Friend, it's no insult to say to the flower's bud that the bloom is its purpose."

7. "There is only peace where there is forgiveness. And brothers and sisters, as you bear with one another, do remember that those sins that you are tempted to hold against someone else here in this church, those are sins Christ has died for. Do not blaspheme God's work in Christ by your own resentments."

8. "God's hostility toward us and our sins is correct, it's right. Our hostility toward God, on the other hand, is evil. We are hostile toward God because we don't want him to follow through in any way that doesn't give us what we want when we want it."

9. "As believers we never appear before God in our sins. In the cross God has exhausted all of His hostility toward us for our sins, all of it. You never need to fear to come to the Lord in prayer or in praise."

10. "Don't fear when you come to God. Don't look down. Look Him full in the face, knowing that you're accepted in His beloved Son. Not because you're perfect. But because Christ is for you."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 2:12, what five things characterized the Gentiles' condition before Christ (separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, without God in the world)?

2. In Ephesians 2:13, what two contrasting positions does Paul describe for the Gentile believers—where were they before, and where are they now?

3. What does Paul say Christ has "broken down" in verse 14, and what does he say Christ "abolished" in verse 15?

4. According to verse 15, what is the purpose for which Christ abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances—what did He intend to create?

5. In verse 16, through what means does Paul say Christ reconciled both Jews and Gentiles to God in one body?

6. What does Paul say happened to "the hostility" at the end of verse 16, and how was this accomplished?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul emphasize that the Gentiles were "far off" (v. 13) and then describe Christ as the one who "brought them near"? What does this spatial language communicate about the nature of salvation?

2. The sermon explained that the "dividing wall of hostility" (v. 14) likely refers to a literal barrier in the Jerusalem temple. How does understanding this historical context help explain what Christ accomplished spiritually through His death?

3. Paul says Christ abolished "the law of commandments expressed in ordinances" (v. 15). How does the sermon explain the relationship between the fulfillment of the law and its abolishment—why is this not an insult to God's law?

4. The passage mentions "hostility" twice—in verse 14 and verse 16. According to the sermon, how are these two hostilities different from each other, and why is it significant that Christ addresses both?

5. Why does Paul emphasize that "both" Jews and Gentiles needed to be reconciled to God (v. 16)? What does this teach us about the universal human condition and the exclusivity of Christ as the way to God?

Application Questions

1. The sermon noted that before Christ, many of us in the congregation "would not have gotten on with each other." What specific relationships or attitudes in your life demonstrate that Christ has broken down walls of hostility, and where might you still need to let His peace do its work?

2. The preacher urged the congregation to prepare their hearts for the Lord's Supper by ensuring there are no grudges or bad feelings between members. Is there anyone in your church or Christian community against whom you are holding a grudge for sins that Christ has already died for? What concrete step will you take this week toward reconciliation?

3. The sermon stated that "diversity in the church exalts the purpose and power of Christ's cross." How might you personally contribute to building boundary-crossing friendships within your church that display the reconciling power of the gospel to those watching?

4. The preacher addressed those who "feel easily guilty" and reminded them that Christ has exhausted all of God's hostility toward believers. How does this truth change the way you approach God in prayer and worship this week—what fears or hesitations should you lay aside?

5. The sermon described the story of Lois, who affirmed her spiritual family over racial identity when confronted. If you were challenged about your primary identity and loyalties, how would you explain that your deepest connection to other believers transcends ethnic, cultural, or social bonds?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Colossians 3:5–17 — This passage parallels Ephesians 2 by describing the "old self" that believers have put off and the new identity in Christ where distinctions like Greek, Jew, slave, and free are overcome.

2. Romans 5:1–11 — Paul explains how believers have peace with God through justification by faith and how Christ's death reconciles us while we were still enemies.

3. Galatians 3:26–29 — This passage reinforces that all who are baptized into Christ are one in Him, with no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.

4. 1 Peter 3:13–22 — Referenced in the sermon, this passage explains that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.

5. Revelation 5:6–14 — This vision shows the Lamb who was slain purchasing people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation, demonstrating the ultimate fulfillment of the reconciliation Paul describes.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Universal Problem of Conflict in Our World

II. Summary: Being Brought Near by the Blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13)

III. Peace with Others Through Christ (Ephesians 2:14-15)

IV. Peace with God Through the Cross (Ephesians 2:16)

V. The Church as a Prefiguring of Final Reconciliation

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What's the answer to the conflict in our world? Regardless of what news source you use, whether you're still a newspaper reader, or you turn into television news, or you learn things through Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, or you have a favorite online source, you know that our world today is full of conflict. But you don't need to turn to the newspapers to know that. Too many of us can look back over our last week, maybe our last day, and see conflict, interpersonal conflict, conflict based around our desire to follow God, conflict over matters in our families.

What's God's answer to conflict? That's what we're looking at in the Bible today. Please turn to Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians chapter 2. Let me begin reading with our passage last week, beginning in verse 11.

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands, 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. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, 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 the cross, thereby killing the hostility. So last week we considered verses 11 and 12. Now we come to verse 13.

Where those who were heathen by birth, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made by hands and the body, at that time without the Messiah, cut off from the citizenship of Israel, foreigners to the testaments of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Now in verse 13, a great change has happened. Speaking directly to such folks here in verse 13, Paul says, you, were brought near to God and to God's people.

Do you understand what Paul means there when he says that in verse 13? Verse 13 is really a summary of what he says there in 14, 15, and 16. We read, But now in Christ Jesus... and I love the way he begins that... but now in Christ Jesus.

The Bible is full of these bursts of light, these contradictions. You have the fall of Adam and then God's grace. You have the darkness of judgment followed by promise and fulfillment. You look even in our own chapter, up in chapter 2, you had the darkness of our depravity at the beginning and then succeeded by the clarion call there in chapter 2, verse 4, But God. Now the desperation of our separation from God that we were thinking about last week in verses 11 and 12 is ended.

In verse 13, and Paul begins, But now. He interrupts this list of ways we're empty without God, without hope in the world. But now. Lloyd-Jones once asked, Do you feel at times that the greatest word in the entire language of humanity is the word but? If you do not, your understanding of Christianity is very defective.

There you were, but.

And immediately you lift up your head and you begin to sing. But...

Here Paul summarizes the state, particularly the Gentile believers. He says, you, were once far off, that is far off from God and far off from God's people. And that you there in verse 13 connects it to those verses 11 and 12 just before it. In verses 11 and 12 he says, Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is in the flesh made by hands. 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.

And then comes our passage, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off, these are the same people that Paul had described up in the first few verses of chapter 2 as dead in sins and transgressions, but now God who is rich in mercy. Believer, this is true for all of us. We were all of us by nature spiritually far off. We were far off, lost in Adam's sin, compounded by our own. For those of us who are ethnically Gentiles, we're not God's people.

We were lost and without hope. But don't misunderstand what the Bible teaches here. Those of us with a Jewish background were similarly lost.

Paul is clear that we had turned the signs of God's favor, like circumcision or Sabbath observance or temple sacrifices, we had turned those signs of God's favor into idols to be used and manipulated by us just as a pagan would their own idols. That's what Paul had implied in verse 11. Remember when I said last week about man made done by hands like idols were described in the Old Testament? But now, we who were far off, whatever our background, religious or irreligious, Jewish or Gentile, we have been brought near to God. Spurgeon calls this nearness our delightful privilege.

And can we be any nearer to God than being made in Christ Jesus?

I mean, we're made near in one sense just by hearing the Bible. We're made near by hearing it preached. We're made near by being around people who know the Lord and love the Lord and love us. But friends, here, Paul talks about us being made near in the sense of being put in Christ Jesus, united to him in faith. You see how this glorious privilege was provided for us in that last phrase in verse 13, It was bought by, not by yourself, not by your own efforts, no, but by the blood of Christ.

There are, I'm sad to say, a lot of churches around the district, many of them closed these days, who don't tell you about the blood of Christ anymore. Because it seemed to be offensive and objectionable. But friends, we Christians have no message apart from the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is absolutely central to our understanding of our own hope. Paul sounds here like Peter in 1 Peter 3:18, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.

Peter learned that from Jesus who taught that He had come to lay down His life, to give His life as a ransom for many. Paul repeated again in verse 16, Christ's blood has been shed on the cross in order to reconcile us to God, to propitiate His wrath, to satisfy the penalty that we are due because of our sins, to redeem us, to justify us. Friend, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, the reason Jesus Christ died is so that you might know forgiveness of sins and liberation from the judgment that your own sins call down on you if you will only turn from those sins and trust in Christ alone. All of this is included in the being brought near by the blood of Christ. As Paul had put it in chapter 1 and verse 7, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

Christ's blood is the foundation of all the privileges that we read of here. This is the sinner's access to God. We'll sing at the end of our time together today, There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins. Friends, through that sacrificial death of Jesus Christ as a substitute on the cross for all those who would believe in Him of every race, of every nation, we could see that He was birthing a new people for Himself, made up of no one race, no one ethnicity. So to summarize verse 13, what was the problem?

You once were far off. And last Sunday, about two-thirds of us stood up and said, We could remember a time. When we were far off. And what was the solution to that distance from God? He says, you,'ve been brought near.

Who did that for you? Christ Jesus. And how did Christ do this amazing spiritual repositioning? The last phrase in verse 13 is the answer: by the blood of Christ. So that's a summary of this first verse in our passage.

It's really a summary of the whole. The rest of our passage, Paul opens up these grand themes even more. First, in verses 14 and 15, he explores the peace that God has brought us with others. And then second, in verse 16, he explores the peace that He's brought us with Himself. So verse 13 is a summary, which I've already talked about.

Verses 14 and 15 are about our peace with each other. And verse 16 is about our peace with God. I pray that God will help you find the peace you need today.

First is peace with others. We see in verses 14 and 15 Paul speaks of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, how we've been made one, how we've been made peace between us.

The problem here is the hostility that he mentions in verse 14. So just to be clear, if you're looking down at your Bibles, in verse 14 you see that word hostility, and you see that same word in verse 16, hostility. It's the same word in the original. But I think it's talking about two different things. That hostility in verse 14 is the hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles that existed, the wrong divisions.

Whereas in verse 16, that hostility is between us and our sins and God. We'll come to that when we come to verse 16. But up in verse 14, what's the solution for the problem of the long distorted divisions between Jew and Gentile? Well, we see in verse 14, Paul said, We were made both one. He concludes in verse 15, one was making peace.

And who was this great peacemaker? Verse 14, it's Christ. He Himself is our peace. As Paul says in verse 15, that He, Christ, might create in Himself one new man. How would He do that?

Well, that's that very long phrase in verses 14 and 15, the end of 14, the beginning of 15. He has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

Let's consider this peace with others a little more closely. Verse 14 begins with what is really a broader headline, stressing Christ's role in reconciliation generally, both with God and each other, when it says, For He Himself is our peace. Paul is saying, Listen, the answer to the conflict we know with each other, maybe they were knowing in the Ephesian church, we know with God is the same. The answer is Christ. He is the answer for any two Christians who are in conflict, let alone in a whole church.

Christ is the answer. He Himself is our peace. In the original it's stressed because the he is put before the for, for He Himself is our peace. And the original reads, He for is our peace. It's just putting in the very beginning saying, and that's why the English has He Himself.

He Himself is our peace. So when the Lord promised through Isaiah that He would send the Prince of Peace, well, that's fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus promised His followers He would give them peace. Repeatedly, God is called the God of peace by Paul. And God has called this because God is the one who both desires peace and who can bring it about, and who has brought it about in Christ, as Paul explains in this very passage here in Ephesians 2.

God has caused so much of His own greatness and glory to be refracted through the peace that he gives to us in Christ. Have you thought about that? Peace could just seem like the absence of conflict, but friends, peace is this wonderful state that we have been brought into where this God who made us, who had every right to be hostile toward us, is no longer. And in fact, all of that hostility has been absorbed in Christ. Do you see how in the way He has given Christ as a substitute for our sins, do you see how God's character is displayed so fully?

Friends, this peace between us and others, between us and God, has only been made because of the cross of Christ. It's only been made because God's goodness has been shown. That is, He will not relent. He will not say the sins don't matter. And thus He requires a sacrifice.

And yet His mercy is shown. He will provide the sacrifice He requires. You see how God's character of goodness and mercy, of holiness and love, is displayed in the fabric of the peace that He has purchased for us.

This is not a peace that comes about by relaxing our standards, or a peace that comes about by an indifference that doesn't care about a person or a problem. No, this is a peace that comes about because the problem has been most fully dealt with in Christ. This is the peace that we enter into in Christ. We see this in the peace that he brings to us in our relationships with others and in our relationship to him. We can see something of the unity that God brings through Christ between Jewish and Gentile believers as Paul moves here from the you in verse 13, speaking to the Gentile believers, now to the our and us he has in verse 14, who made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

That dividing wall is probably a reference to a literal physical wall, a low barrier that existed in the temple in Jerusalem that separated off the space that the Gentiles were allowed into into space where only Hebrews could enter. It stood as a symbol of the divisions there were then between them. But now Paul is saying in the Christian church, enemies have lost their enmity through Christ and His work on the cross. Christ died to break down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility. In Paul's day that was between Jewish and Gentile believers.

In Christ, God overcame these divisions. And now that same principle extends out into whatever racial strains and stresses we're feeling today in our world, in America, here in the district. Among Christians. Our enmity, our anger, our distrust, or jealousy, or envy, or indifference are all sunk. They're all taken away by Christ's breaking down in His flesh those things that would separate us from other Christians.

We see this as we look at this Jewish Gentile division here.

The abuse of God's law had wrongly separated the Jews from others. Yes, God had called the Jews to be a distinct people, but not in the way they had put it into practice. There was a right separation from the nations that God's people were to know, a separation that glorified God, a separation that displayed His goodness and His grace and invited others to come into it. But Israel had long ago replaced that with a separation that was saturated with their own self-righteousness. That's why they saw no need for the righteousness of Christ.

When his was offered, they had a satisfaction with their fleshly distinctions. They had made idols of signs like circumcision and the Sabbath. When instead God gave those distinctions to point to himself and their dependence on him. The God of grace that their sacrifices and symbols were meant to display and to draw the nations to instead had become tragically obscured as these rules and observances ironically became monuments to their own sense of superiority and self-sufficiency. Friends, do you realize the strangeness of that?

They became proud that they held the very Scriptures which told them that they needed to be saved from their pride.

But if you think that Pharisaic self-righteousness is just incomprehensible to you, then spend some time this afternoon praying and reading the parables of Jesus and see how this kind of self-righteousness finds a home in Christian hearts today, too. How would this be dealt with? Well, look in our passage in verse 15. By abolishing the law of commands expressed in ordinances. It's very much like what Paul said in Colossians about nailing to the cross the record of debts that stood against us with its legal demands.

The commandments here in verse 15 are God's commands through Moses for the establishment of the state of Israel. These commandments revealed sin. They multiplied transgressions. Paul even characterizes Moses' law as sometimes as bringing death. A little bit like what we're thinking about Wednesday night in Romans 5, more like what we're going to come to in Romans 7.

The law's purpose was not to save us, but to show us our need for a Savior. When the promised Savior had come who had been prefigured in the sacrifices, the signposts of Moses' covenant The ceremonial laws are no longer needed. They were emptied of their purpose. They can be abolished. That's the word the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to use here.

They can be abolished, not because they were wrong and have been replaced, but because they were right and have been fulfilled. They've gone from the bud of promise to the flower of Christ's birth and life and teaching and death and resurrection. Friend, it's no insult to say to the flower's bud that the bloom is its purpose.

The law exposed our sin and pointed to the cross which dealt with our sin. And why did Christ abolish the law? Well, we read here in verse 15 that He might create in Himself one new man in the place of two. Christ is about creating a new humanity. We become a new creation in Him.

Or as Paul vividly puts it here, a new one new man. Instead of the two there had been, those inside and outside of God's covenant with Moses, God now was making a new people as His very own.

Friends, we are that new people. I love the expression in Scotland that's traditional of the Kirk, the church comes in. They come into the building. They come into the gathering place. That's why we as the Capital Baptist Church have continued just fine wherever we are.

Yes, there are more inconveniences, but the church is not at 525 A Street. This is the church. We are the assembly. This is the gathering. Friends, we as this gathering are God's new house, His new place of dwelling.

He chooses to put His Spirit here to live specially among us for our delight and for His glory forever. Before we were marked with various distrusts and disaffections. Many of us in this room before we were converted would not have gotten on with each other. Maybe sometimes we don't feel we do that well even now. But imagine before Christ.

But now those things have been replaced by the peace of our treasured shared unity in God. As Paul puts it here in the end of verse 15, making peace. Now here's the question, is this peace only between Jewish and Gentile believers? Does this apply to the differences we know say in our congregation today? Yes, we have Jewish believers in our congregation and Gentile believers, but are there other divisions in our congregation that this would apply to?

Friends, I think these are the same theological principles that puncture any racism or any other kinds of groupisms. Paul himself understood this and taught this. He deployed this argument to defeat reliance on whatever group we might feel membership in gives us extra rights, whether it's the rich or the poor, whether it's the strong or the victim. Whatever is the in-group with your group and those you respect. There are multiple examples of this in the New Testament.

One I would give you, you can easily look over at, is Colossians 3 verse 11, where Paul says, Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. But Christ is all and in all. He has similar lists of contrasting groups you can find elsewhere that are included together in Christ by faith. Brothers and sisters, this is how the Bible undermines all kinds of ethnocentrism or racism. Our depravity is not just skin deep.

Neither is Christ's Atonement. God's election doesn't correspond with the nation of our origin or the color of our skin. This is why in our church we pray for diversity because it exalts the purpose and power of Christ's cross. The blood of Christ has brought us near to God and each other, whatever our background religiously or ethnically or racially, regardless of how hostile or harmful one group was to another in the past, By the blood of Jesus Christ our sins have been substituted for and the distance between us and God erased. And as that happens, the distance between us and each other vanishes.

What else can we boast of than in the blood of Christ that has done this? How's the way we are living as a congregation highlighting this and displaying this power of Christ's blood?

Do our lives together demonstrate this kind of reconciliation to those around us? Or do we look like we're eaten up with ethnic bitterness and strife? Brothers and sisters, pray that God will multiply examples of boundary crossing love amongst us. You see how that kind of love manifests accurately the wideness of God's mercy and the greatness of God's glory. That's why Christ here is called our peace in verse 14.

And that's worked out in these two ways, in verses 14 and 15, as we see Christ creating peace between Gentile and Jewish believers, and then in verse 16, which we'll turn to in just a moment, peace between sinners and God. One warning here as we're talking about this: this peace is not with all Jews or all Gentiles, with all sinners or with all people. This is not proclaiming immediate worldwide peace regardless.

This peace is only with those who, as Paul said up in verse 8, have been saved by grace through faith. Only those who believe among sinners, There is only peace where there is forgiveness. I bet your family has shown that to you, the truth of that, this last week. Your friendships explore that. Your marriage testifies to that.

Your membership here is an example of that. There is only peace where there is forgiveness. And brothers and sisters, as you bear with one another, do remember that those sins that you are tempted to hold against someone else here in this church, those are sins Christ has died for.

Do not blaspheme God's work in Christ by your own resentments. There is no sin you've suffered for which Christ has not died. There's no holding of grudges.

When our church originally was meeting on Capitol Hill, they would have a special meeting on Thursday nights before the Lord's Supper was happening, the coming Lord's Day. You all know what big thing is happening next Sunday, right?

We're having the Lord's Supper. It's far more important than where we meet. We're having the Lord's Supper, and our forebears in our church would have given a little bit more time to preparing than we may give. They would meet together on Thursday night to have a covenant meeting to make sure there were no grudges or bad feelings between the members so they'd be prepared on Sunday morning to take the Lord's Supper. Well, friends, we may not have that Thursday meeting restored.

But we can work to make sure that our hearts are as they should be, our relationships are combed out in order for us to be prepared to take the Lord's Supper. In Christ we've been translated into a relationship of peace with those from whom we used to be alienated but are no longer. In any ways we feel alienated are the results of sins that have no natural place among us anymore. And which are retreating in the face of the Holy Spirit's growing work in and among us as He remakes us more and more in His image. So much for the peace between us that's brought.

Let's turn now to our last verse where Paul says that in Christ we have peace with God, reconciliation with God. Here the problem is God's good hostility to us in our sins. And our evil hostility to God in His goodness. Do you understand what I just said? Let me say that again.

The problem that Paul is addressing in verse 16, this hostility in verse 16, is God's good hostility to us in our sins and our evil hostility to God in His goodness. You see, God's hostility toward us and our sins is correct, it's right. We shouldn't do like that, we shouldn't be like that. And because God is good, He will follow through on that goodness. Our hostility toward God, on the other hand, is evil.

We are hostile toward God because We don't want him to follow through in any way that doesn't give us what we want when we want it. And we view him hostilely because of his convicting spirit's work.

If you're here and you're not a Christian, I wonder if you realize that you have a problem with God. God is not satisfied by your indifference to Him. God takes that as hostility toward Him as the one who made you.

Okay, so what needs to happen? Well, we need to be reconciled to God. Well, who could and would do that? Well, the answer here is Christ. How would He do it?

Through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. Paul said in verse 15 that Christ broke down the dividing wall. He did that in order to create in Himself one new man. Now, verse 16, we say, He did that in order that he might reconcile us both to God in one body. That us both in verse 16 is referring to Gentile believers and to the Jewish believers.

And what this presumes is that they both needed to be reconciled to God, Gentiles and Jews. In fact, both here is Paul's emphasis in writing to this church. We'll see that again in our next study in Ephesians. We come to verse 18. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

I remember years ago now being a part of a Jewish Christian dialogue downtown. This center had three Jewish rabbis and three evangelical pastors in for some long private lunchtime conversations. While our long and frank conversations yielded evidence of our differences, these rabbis thought that Jews could be saved without Jesus, and Christians could be saved with Jesus, two different ways to the same God, with Jesus as the negotiable bit. But that's not what we see here. In verse 16, both groups, and any other pairs of opposing people you want to name, both groups needed to be reconciled to God.

What does it mean to be reconciled to God? It means we're no longer alienated from God, because our sins have been borne, our obligations met, our righteousness completed. Death, hell, and the devil conquered for us. As the Lord prophesied through Isaiah, By His knowledge shall the Righteous One, My Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. The iniquities of both Jews and Gentiles were born by Christ.

In fact, having both, as Paul says here, believers of Jewish and Gentile backgrounds, highlights compellingly what God's purpose in sending Christ was. There aren't two saviors or two crosses. One way to God. For both of us, not two ways. Is there a clearer verse in the Bible that teaches this?

The cross destroys hostility. It exhausts God's righteous wrath toward us.

Both being reconciled to God brings about a reconciliation with each other, this one body here in verse 16. Is a reference to the one new man in verse 15. This is the body of Christ. We believers are together one new man in Christ. He is our common location, our common identity, our common core.

We've been brought together because we've both been brought to God, as Paul says here, through the cross. Friends, if there's no cross, there's no Christianity. No reconciliation without forgiveness, no forgiveness without the blood of Christ. Jewish and Gentile believers' unity fills out a demonstration of the cross's power. Jesus is not just the Messiah for the Jews or just the Messiah for the Americans or for the Canadians or for the Mexicans.

No, Revelation 5:9 shows us there's going to be a church ultimately that's composed of those from every tribe and language and people and nation, both Jews or Greeks, slave or free, as Paul Paul says elsewhere, all were made to drink of one Spirit. So the both here shows that neither in creation nor in redemption was God's image limited to just one race or one nation. God has reconciled to Himself people from every nation. And we can see it today all the way around the world as local churches gather to begin this new week by celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And we are only reconciled both to God in one body through the cross.

It's the cross of Christ that will bring us together, bursting through the hostilities that have separated us from each other, even more importantly destroying the hostilities that have separated us all from God. Friends, there is no other way to bring an end to conflict and hostility between God and us, because of our sins than through the good news about Jesus Christ. That's why people need to hear about Jesus Christ to be saved from their sins. That's why we're always repeating this great news and encouraging you to do the same through the days and occasions that God gives you to share it, because this is the way, as Paul says here, that hostility is slain, is killed. Notice those last words, thereby killing the hostility.

Friends, this is the killing that comes from love. Because God loves those made in His image. He wants the hostility between Him and them killed. Again, if you're not here as a Christian, you're here because a friend came or you're walking by, you're curious, this is good news for you. You can be forgiven of your sins.

You can be made a new creature. Through God's love in Christ. Speak to me afterwards, I'll be standing over there. If you want to know more about that, or speak to any of the folks around.

And those of you who are already Christians, I wonder if you're here this morning of the kind who feels easily guilty, or who remembers the sins of others against you and has a hard time forgetting them. Friends, our only hope is in Christ. Remember that as believers we never appear before God in our sins. We sang earlier, Jesus died my soul to save. And so you should know that in the cross God has exhausted all of His hostility toward us for our sins, all of it.

You never need to fear to come to the Lord in prayer or in praise, at home or here in the gathering. To you because of Christ's cross, All is peace. As we sang earlier, Jesus paid it all.

Don't fear when you come to God. Don't look down. Look Him full in the face, knowing that you're accepted in His beloved Son.

Not because you're perfect.

But because Christ is for you. Through Christ and His cross, God has brought us reconciliation with Him and with each other. We can come to Him now because we've been brought near to Him in Christ.

John Piper once commented on the gospel that Christianity is not first theology but news. It's like prisoners of war hearing by hidden radio that the allies have landed and rescue is only a matter of time. The guards wonder why all the rejoicing. Friend, this world with all the hostilities gone is a dim preview of what God has told us is coming in the fullness of time when Christ returns and unites all things to Himself. The hostilities and enmities and strife and disorder and terror and injustice and tragedy of this fallen world is not the last word.

There will come a time when the forces of evil will be disarmed. When according to Philippians 2 everyone will bow and acknowledge Christ as Lord. Not in the sense that everyone will be saved, but in the sense that everyone will acknowledge his Lordship. This will be God's final universal victory in Christ when all creation acclaims Christ as Lord from the begrudging bass notes of hell to the chords of joyful praise of the redeemed. In heaven.

This reconciliation is prefigured in the church.

And it was powerfully exemplified for us last Sunday by our sister Lois, as someone began shouting at her at just about this point in the sermon.

She was sitting on the front row and as Lois described it to me, This woman that she didn't know, and I'm quoting now, was really angry with me and attacking me, asking me whether I knew how stupid I looked with all these white people. And I told her that I was glad to be here. That made her angrier. And she asked if I knew how stupid I sounded. She said we were sisters.

I told her that these whites were my brothers and sisters in the Lord, and that she was not because she was not a Christian. Based on what I heard coming out of her mouth, I pointed to the brothers who had come over to help and said to her that they were my brothers in the Lord and my connection to them was closer than any connection I might have had to her based on race. That caused another attack. Did I realize how insane I sounded? However, from what I heard when I finally listened to your sermon, this particular part of the conversation was taking place near the precise time that you were preaching on our identity.

And that's true. During all that, while many of you guys were not looking at me like you are right now, you were looking right over there, and I was wondering, what on earth am I doing? I was saying something like, in case you didn't hear it last week, our natural condition since Adam's fall is to be lost, to be without God, the Author of life, is naturally to be dead. And to be liable to His eternal judgment in hell. Our alienation from our fellow humans indicates our alienation from God in whose image we were made.

And this reminds us of how hatred of others for whatever reason, disagreement or resentment, unforgiveness or prejudice, for whatever racial or religious or national difference, all of it is blasphemy because it strikes at the image of God of the God in whose image that person is made. Well Lois hadn't heard any of that, because she was over there talking to the visitor, sounding a bit like Jesus, when he said, who are my mothers and brothers? Looking about at those who sat around him, he said, Here are my mothers and my brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Thursday evening, Lois told me, I just this evening had a chance to listen to that last part of Sunday's sermon and I am just stunned to hear the sermon knowing what was happening in the background and how it just seemed to be a complete illustration, live streaming in real time of Paul's horrifying description of our Gentile lives without Christ. Then that turmoil just made the reality of our bonds in Christ so much more evident and real.

I have never had an experience like this in my life. My friends often wonder why we don't see the miracles that we hear about, but we did Sunday.

Friends, being reconciled to God and each other by Christ is a miracle. And the church in this life is just the beginning.

More is coming, and all because of the cross of Christ.

Let's pray together.

Lord God, we thank youk for the love that yout have shown to us in Christ. Thank youk for how through His death you've reconciled us to youo and to each other. We pray that you would be honored as we love you and love each other in your name and for your glory. Fill us with your Spirit, enable us to do that. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.