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August 6, 2006
Pentecost 9
Ephesians 2:13-22
Pastor Joel Zank

Christ Jesus is Our Peace!

(Ephesians 2:13-22) But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. {14} For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, {15} by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, {16} and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. {17} He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. {18} For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. {19} Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, {20} built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. {21} In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. {22} And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

In Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace, dear fellow Redeemed,

It was more than three weeks ago that tensions boiled over in the Middle East and war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah. Ever since, we've been hearing calls for an immediate cease fire and talk of the desperate need for a sustainable peace - "sustainable"- the very word serves to highlight what a fragile thing peace really is. All it takes is one gunshot to break a cease fire. All it takes is one angry word to start a family fight. Peace is so hard to come by in the world and in our homes. Today the Apostle Paul tells us why that is, but better yet, he points us to what we crave and need the most - real, sustainable peace; Paul points us to our Savior. Christ Jesus is our peace with God and with people.

Paul first wrote the words of our text to a people who were "once far away," not geographically, but spiritually. The fact is, Paul was writing to people just like us, people who were not born into the family of God's Old Testament people, Israel. Remember, in his grace, out of all the nations on earth, God had chosen to make a covenant only with Israel. At Mount Sinai he gave Israel his law and told that nation, "Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people" (Jeremiah 7:23).

In his love, God made Old Testament Israel a nation near to his heart, a nation that enjoyed many spiritual advantages over and against the Gentiles, those to whom Paul refers as being "far away" from God. Israel's past advantages become crystal clear in the verses just before our text where Paul says: "Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth...were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:11-12).

By birth, each of us, regardless of his or her ancestry, came into this world separated from Christ. That's because we were all born sinful human beings. Sin is the great separator. First and foremost, sin separates us from God. Isaiah says, "...your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. {3} For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things" (Isaiah 59:2-3). God knows us so very well. He knows every sinful thing these hands have done. He's heard every lie our lips have spoken and every wicked word our tongues have formed. He knows it all. Now he wants us to know something. He cannot be friends with sinners. He can't and he won't because God hates sinners as the palmist confesses in Psalm 5 where he prays, "You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. {5} ...you hate all who do wrong. {6} You destroy those who tell lies" (Psalm 5:4-6).

We were born at war with God. Can you imagine anything worse? Our sin made us enemies of him who is the Lord of life and death, enemies of the One who has complete control of our destiny, not just for the short time we're here on earth, but for all eternity. We were born without God in our lives. We were alone, afraid and angry. We had no choice but to conclude that every awful thing that happened to us was a bomb dropped by God right on our heads. So when we weren't shaking our fists at him in defiance, we where begging him to cease fire. But why should God do that? We're we ready to stop sinning? Could we really say, "Enough, Lord! I'll never speak another foul word. I'll never do another selfish thing." A cease fire based on such promises wouldn't last a second, would it? No, we weren't in any position to bargain with God. We were far away from him, unable to meet his terms for peace, and so destined to die at his hands the worst death of all, the one that doesn't end, but rather brings unspeakable torment in hell forever.

That is the death we all deserve to die, but we won't have to-none of us. For "...now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. {14} For he himself is our peace...{15} by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations" (Ephesians 2:13-15). The peace that we could not bring about by our defiance or our begging, God himself secured for us in a way that we could never have imagined-through the blood of his only Son. The Bible says that God hates sinners. It also says that God loves sinners. Those statements seem to contradict each other, but they really don't. For God's hatred and God's love meet perfectly at the cross of Jesus, where in the greatest act of love, God's own Son suffered in his flesh all God's hatred for all of us sinners. Apart form Christ's sacrifice there is no peace.

You see, the guilt of sin that stains our fingers, the filth of sin that fills our thoughts and flows from our mouths can't be washed away, except with the holy blood of Christ-the one and only God-man. His unique and precious blood, spilled so long ago on Calvary, is enough to wash away every sinful stain of every human being who will ever live on this earth. So powerful, so cleansing is that divine blood. Believe it, dear friend; the blood of Jesus has washed away all your sin - no matter what you've done or failed to do, no matter how often you've done it or failed to do it, your sin is gone, removed from God's sight as if it never happened! Christ Jesus truly is your peace with God! For Jesus' sake God doesn't hate you; he loves you. For Jesus' sake God won't every punish you, but will make all things serve your good. Talk about sustainable peace!

Oh and how Jesus wants you to live in his peace. That's why "he came and preached peace to you who were far away..." (Ephesians 2:17). It wasn't enough to bring about the peace. If Jesus hadn't preached it to you through his gospel in Word and Sacrament, you would never have known nor believed that the war between God and sinners is over. You'd still be fighting with God, with your guilty conscience and with those around you. But as it is, there is no reason for you to be at war, not with the Almighty, not with anyone. For you see, not only is Christ Jesus your peace with God, he's also your peace with people!

Throughout our text, Paul makes reference to two groups of people. We've already identified them. Those born near to God are those who were born into the nation and family of Israel. God had brought those people near to himself by the covenant he had made with their ancestors. Those far away from God were the non-Jews, the Gentiles who were not in a covenant relationship with God. These two separate groups were at odds with each other. In fact Paul says, it's as if there were a fence, a wall of hostility between them, a wall made up of God's commandments given at Mt. Sinai. You see, there were some among the Jews who had failed to realize that God's purpose for giving them his law was to teach them about their sin and their great need for the promised Messiah. Instead some in Israel thought they could actually keep the commandments and so make themselves righteous and lovable in God's sight. At the same time, these same people despised the Gentiles who lived so much of their lives apart from the commandments. And, as you might imagine, the Gentiles, in turn, detested the Jews for judging them. It was intolerance on the part of both groups that drove them far apart from each other.

Self-righteousness and intolerance are still at work in our world today, and not just in our world, but in our own sinful flesh. Not a day goes by when we aren't taking stock of the people around us, comparing them to ourselves, measuring them by our standards and, then, judging them to be inferior. We're forever thanking God that we aren't like other people, you know, the ones who don't know how to raise their children, or spend their money, or keep up their yard, or manage their weight, or speak our language, or whatever else it may be. They're different; that's all we know about them, and that's enough, it's all we want to know about them. And it isn't just strangers we treat this way. We do the same sort of thing to our friends, and even our family. We grow frustrated and impatient with our spouse, our children our parents and siblings because these people don't live up to our expectations. But today, God opens our eyes to see and deal with the people around us, all of them, in a brand new way.

God did this same thing for his people in Ephesus, both Jews and Gentiles. Through the faith he gave them, God convinced the members of his church that self-righteousness and intolerance cannot thrive in a heart that belongs to Christ. That's because self-righteousness and intolerance are built on a faulty understanding of God's law. All human beings are equally sinful; not one is better than another in God's eyes, no mater how well any of us tries to live by God's law. The law cannot save us because we cannot keep it perfectly. Instead the law damns us-one and all. But in his great love for all people, God sent Jesus to meet the law's demands for everyone, and so Jesus abolished the law, in this sense: no longer is the law something we must keep to gain access to the Father in heaven. Jesus has kept the law and earned heaven for us, for all 6.5 billion of us who live on this earth. So Paul writes: "[Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two [Jew and Gentile] one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, {15} by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, {16} and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility" (Ephesians 2:14-17).

God does not see any of us as being better than anyone else, so for me to see myself in this way is a sin-one for which Christ died, as he did for the sins of all my family members, all my neighbors, all my friends, all my co-workers, as well as for the sins of all those who are strangers to me. Through Christ, I am at peace with all these people, for I share in common with them the greatest gift of all, Christ's blood-bought forgiveness. Every wrong these people might do to me, is a wrong that has been paid for by Jesus, just like all my wrongs. Of course, these people may not know this and so they may not be at peace with God or with me. What can I do about that? I can do for them exactly what the Savior did for me, I can preach the gospel of peace to them. By that gospel, Christ has given you and me a life filled with meaning and purpose, a life built on his rock solid love, for by his gospel Christ has made us fellow citizens with his people and members of his family, the church. If he can use the Word of his prophets and apostles to do that for sinners like us, he can do that for all other sinners too.

So Christians, you and I are in a position to change things, our homes, our church, and even our world with the good news that Christ Jesus is our peace with God and with people. For by the power of this news, God's Spirit can take people who were once divided by sin, and make them one beautiful, holy temple, in which the Spirit himself lives and by which Christ is glorified here in time and forever in heaven. Amen.