United, Part 3 of ID: Finding Your True Identity in Christ looked at Ephesians 2:11-22. Click here to read the series intro.
Sermon Summary
In all of our lives there are walls that separate. Sometimes they are walls that others build up to keep us out or that we build up to keep others out. There are walls that can separate us from God as well. When we come up against those walls we have the painful experience of feeling excluded, rejected, a stranger. This is part of the human condition – no one is exempt. As we look at our world we see that walls – whether emotional, spiritual or physical – continually stand in the way of people coming together. The result is all too often divisions, anger and hostility, violence and destruction. The impact of that can be seen in individual lives, families, churches, and nations. There seems to be a satanic conspiracy to bring division and hostility into our human relationships and into our relationship with God. The walls that have been built up in many cases have taken years to build and seem impregnable. But is there any hope that the walls that divide us and keep us from knowing God can come down?
This passage is all about the walls that divide us. Just like the previous verses where Paul interrupts his bleak description of men and women dead in their sins with the words “But God…” (2:4), Paul in this section paints another bleak description of what we are apart from Christ. All that has changed in Christ – “But now in Christ Jesus ….” (2:13) Jesus breaks down the walls that separate us. Walls between us and God and between us and those who are different than we are. Walls that keep us apart and walls that keep people from God. The Church is to be a vivid example of how Christ is working out His plan to unite (1:10) and to complete all things in Christ (1:23). In order for that to happen some walls will need to come down.
Key Verse: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2: 13
Bottom Line: “Sometimes in order to build a house you have to tear down some walls”
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