E-Med(itations) Daily

Overwhelmed, the apostle Paul gushes with the amazing privilege and blessing of being God’s servant for the message of the mystery of grace. Yet, humility is the instinctive response of a heart embraced by grace. While he can confidently write with great logic and clarity about the mystery of grace, he is overcome with the thought that God would use him, of all people!

Paul, when he contemplates the greatness of the truth of God’s mystery of the church, sees himself as the most unworthy person to be its messenger. He considers himself “the very least of all saints.” One might be tempted to think Paul was simply speaking with rhetorical flourish to emphasis his point. But we rather think he actually believed this self-assessment. In another place, he wrote, “I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor … It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Tim 1:13, 15). The apostle was not given to isolated self-abasement during times of depression. This was a common refrain, “For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor 15:9).

Paul understood grace. Paul was overwhelmed by grace. His self-denigration did not drag him into the morass of depression, but positioned him to rejoice that he had not only been accepted by grace, but also that he had been graced to be a servant of God to spread the news of that grace. He understood that the grace He experienced was great enough to reach the Gentiles as well. It was the same grace and it would be overwhelming for the Gentiles as well.

For Paul this was unfathomably rich! In the Old Testament God was known as gracious, but that understanding was infinitesimally small compared to what Paul had learned from God and what he was spreading to the whole world. In the church, God is gathering all people who come by grace through faith—it is not a Jewish thing, but a grace thing. The unseen world stands by as the truth unfolds. The Church’s existence serves as God’s object lesson to the angels who longed to understand these things. They are finally having their “aha” moment. Now it all makes sense to them (see 1 Peter 1:12).

Continuing to extol the revealing of the great mystery, Paul gives more details. In calling Gentile believers “fellow-heirs” he refers to their equal standing with the Jewish believers. Again he reiterates the underlying truth that there is only one church, and it is not a Jewish church and it is not a Gentile church. It is one church, one “body,” one “fellowship,” and we are all partakers of the one “promise,” that is the promise of Christ Jesus.

The basic concept here is that Christ’s death brought salvation to all who believe. What an amazing act that was on God’s part. However, it is a bigger story that has enamored the apostle. It is the way God brought about this salvation. It was no longer just a Jewish thing. Christ’s death removed the distinction that had been so long in effect, a distinction in which the Jews had too great a pride and which Gentiles had to accept if they were to relate to God.

While earlier Paul emphasized his unique role in communicating this “mystery,” he makes clear now that this was revealed to the other apostles and prophets. In particular, Acts 11-12 shows, for example, how Peter learned of this truth in his dealings with Cornelius, the Roman centurion who came to faith and received the baptism of the Spirit.

Nevertheless, the truth that God would remove the Jew/Gentile distinction in bringing about salvation was something that was not known before this time. In fact, Peter explains it this way, “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating … It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you…things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:11-13). This has come about only through God’s work in bringing the Church together. The Church is a direct result of God’s mystery being revealed. Old Testament prophecies of salvation find their fulfillment in the Church. And God wants us to understand this truth, this insight into the mystery.

Paul begins an idea in verse 1, then digresses to another related thought before recommencing his first thought in verse 14. The intervening verses have proved difficult for translators to punctuate. Verses 2-7, for example, comprise one long sentence in the Greek. This freeform movement of his writing indicates a heightened excitement over the truth about which he writes.

The thought Paul begins in verse 1and continues on with in verse 14 can be summarized this way, “Because of this truth of the mystery, namely, God has reconciled both Jew and Gentile, as one group of people to Himself, we should pray for a deepening love for His people and a greater understanding of God’s love for us. After all, we are part of the same body.”  But, the thought gets interrupted with a further, excited commentary on the mystery he has revealed.

Notice here, Paul identifies himself as the “prisoner of Christ” (see also 4:1, 6:20). He wore that title proudly. This reminds us of Peter and John who rejoiced “that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 5:41). He wrote this letter from jail. The usual word people would use here would be that he languished. However, it is difficult to describe Paul as ever languishing. He carried on quite an active writing ministry while there.

He makes clear that he was given the unique stewardship of this truth. He did not arrive at it through human reasoning; it came by revelation from God. Now we don’t know exactly when this happened. Possibly it came in rudimentary form during the days after his conversion. He was told by God, through Ananias, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15). He was privileged to preach the gospel primarily to the Gentiles. Peter affirmed this when he acknowledge that Paul “ had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised” (Gal 2:7).

The full mystery was that God’s grace extended not just to the Gentiles, but it extended equally to the Gentiles as to the Jews. This was a huge truth that Paul could not speak about enough. It was his major contribution to the cause of Christ. Grace fully extended to both Jew and Gentile alike. That is why he breaks out from his thought to extol this great truth once more.

Metaphorically speaking, the apostles and prophets are the foundation of the church, and our passage today indicates that Christ is the cornerstone. This image is different than the image Jesus gave, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt 16:18). There is no difficulty in admitting that Scripture uses different metaphors to describe similar but slightly different things. Jesus was speaking of the rock-like faith that Peter expressed (the Greek word for “rock” and the word for “Peter” are related but different words, one meaning “rock,” the other meaning “stone”). The existence of the church is dependent upon faith in Christ, a faith which Peter so eloquently expressed.

In terms of building up the church, the process began with apostolic teaching. The twelve apostles were the first to teach the faith. Everything else builds on that foundation. In other words, the work of helping the church to grow is rooted in and connected to what the apostles originally taught. The church began at Pentecost with the apostles’ ministry and continued to grow on their active ministry through their lifetimes. Today we have their teachings in the written New Testament and we continue to build on that foundation.

Our passage expands the metaphor to say that Christ Jesus is the cornerstone. The word actually refers to the capstone of a building, the uppermost stone that finished it off and held it altogether. It was somewhat like the middle piece in an arch or the top piece that bound two walls together like a modern day framing plate. Christ is in that position in the image.

This in no way contradicts Paul’s teaching elsewhere, “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11). Apostolic teaching embodied the truth of Christ and His teachings, so both passages say the same thing. The emphasis here, though, is on the building up of the Church, and Christ is involved at every step of the process. Paul uses the phrase, “in Him.” The growth of the church is “in” Christ. We are being built up, fitted together, growing together. God is preparing us as a residence for Himself. This is the church, not just a social organization, or a religious institution. We are the very dwelling place of God in this world! This is the place where He finds Himself at home in this world.

Since Jews and Gentiles are now one people in our standing before God, we all have a privileged status. We Gentile believers are not on the outside, but are “fellow citizens” and members of God’s household through faith.

This new “one group” is like a building; the apostle uses this metaphor to picture the ramifications of the mystery of one church that includes both Jews and Gentiles. There is a common foundation, that being the teachings of the apostles and prophets. The apostles were crucial because they were Christ’s authorized representatives of what He taught. The early believers in Jerusalem following Pentecost “were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). As Christianity spread, apostolic authority was the supreme test of orthodox teaching, that is, the standard of truth. All teaching had to agree with what the apostles taught and represented as Christ’s teachings.

The prophets’ ministry was supplemental to the apostles’ ministry because the apostles could not be everywhere. Both gifts, apostles and prophets, formed the foundation of the growing church movement. These gifts are no longer operational in the sense of being present day giftings. However, the foundation endured through the testament of Scriptures and “is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). All teaching and spiritual life today must be built squarely on that foundation.

This truth has enormous implications. The so-called teaching of “apostolic succession” is unapostolic! That is the erroneous teaching that present day bishops are part of a succession of authority traced back to and carrying  the same authoritative role as the first apostles. First, nowhere does Scripture teach that the gift of apostleship is transferrable to others. Second, if apostles still existed today, then the foundation would be continually being built. The image of a building with a foundation would lose its metaphorical value. Once a foundation is built and finished, the building itself is constructed. To change the foundation would render the building unstable. We now have the apostolic and prophetic writings of the New Testament as our infallible, unchanging, authoritative and foundational guide. Authority today resides not in a church magisterium of bishops, but in the Word of God.

Lord, thank You for giving us Your word that records the foundational teachings. We know we can build our lives and ministries on a sure footing.

The “One Church” doctrine is so important, Paul gives detailed teaching to drill the point home. By this we are not referring to modern ecumenism where all the denominations of so-called Christendom unite and set aside their differences. Right biblical doctrine is never to be compromised for the sake of an outward show of unity. There are serious differences between biblical Christianity and many forms of religious “Christendom.” Certainly, the claim of Roman Catholicism to be the mother church, to which all derivatives should ultimately return, is scripturally unfounded. Many down through the centuries charge that it has long departed from biblical Christianity. Any unity today must center around apostolic doctrine as presented in Scripture which holds the ultimate authority for spiritual life and practice for all Christians everywhere.

Paul’s concern with unity addressed the issue of how Gentile converts were to relate to Jewish believers. He wrote of this unity as being a great mystery revealed to him through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s goal was to bring peace with God to humanity, both Gentiles and Jews. Did not the angels at Christ’s birth proclaim to the shepherds, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” That peace certainly has to do with peace among people, but more importantly it has to do with our relationship with God. Christ came preaching a peace with the Creator God against whom people have rebelled. God sends the dove with an olive branch.

Notice, specifically in our passage today, that Christ’s message was intended for two groups of people. The first group of which he writes are his readers, the Ephesians. He says, “to you who were far away.” The Ephesian congregation was largely Gentile in character and as Gentiles they previously had been far away because of the “dividing wall of enmity,” the Law. Then Paul writes of “those who are near.” He uses the third person pronoun, referring not to his readers, but to others. In this case, those who are near refers not to a geographical nearness, but a spiritual nearness to God. The Jews were near to God because they had the oracles, or the written revelation of God in the Law, the prophets and the other Old Testament writings, “But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it” (Deut 30:14).

Now, in Christ and through Christ, the living Word, we have access to the Father in one Spirit. Both Jews and Gentiles have the same access.

The dividing wall was torn down between the Gentiles and the Jews; the two have been made into one group, as the previous verse declared. Now, Paul continues by explaining how that came to be. That dividing wall was the Law of Moses and it distinguished the Jews from all others. They were unique, set apart from the rest of the world. The Law was the sticking point for Gentiles. Prior to Christ coming, in order for Gentiles to experience the full blessing of God, they had to embrace the Law of Moses, that is, they had to become Jews. They had to become, as it were, proselytes, converts to Judaism. So, in that sense, the Law was “enmity,” or the cause of friction between Gentiles and Jews. Contemporary Judaism made a big deal of this distinction.

In Christ, now, the sticking point is neutralized, it is no longer the barrier to Gentile blessing as it once was. Note particularly that this took place through a physical event, “in His flesh…through the cross.” Christ’s death removed the division. His death fulfilled the Abrahamic covenant of blessing to the nations of the earth (that is, Gentiles) by removing the distinction of Jew/Gentile in terms of receiving the blessing. This was a complete surprise! It had been so ingrained in the Jewish mindset that they were a special people to God, that their ethnicity became a source of enormous pride. The Jews by and large had difficulty with the notion Paul writes of here, as can be seen by their constant harassment of him in his travels.

God’s plan to reach the world was through the Jews first (Romans 1:16). The message and promises come through the Jews (Romans 3:2). Jesus, the ultimate message, was a Jew. But that didn’t mean Gentiles had to become Jews to be rightly related to God. God brought the two together not by Gentiles becoming Jews, but by both being made into one new group. God reconciled that new group to Himself, re-establishing peace with His image-bearers.

In coming to faith, Jewish people must accept the fact that,  just like Gentiles, they must come to God by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9). To be sure, God still has a unique plan for the Jewish people, played out in the prophetic future. But in terms of salvation and the spiritual life, there is no difference now between Jew and Gentile. There are not two churches, one for believing Jews and one for believing Gentiles. There is one Church and one faith (see Eph 4:5).

This is the mystery Paul referred to earlier, captured in three verses (14-16), that was hitherto unknown anywhere before. Certainly, it was known that God would bless all the nations through Abraham, not just the Jews. It was also known that the blessings would somehow come through the Jewish people, God’s chosen ones, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What was not known until this time, certainly not as clearly as Paul writes it, was that God would not require the Gentiles to become Jewish in order to receive the blessings. And furthermore that God would treat the Gentiles and the Jews identically, in terms of the blessings. The Gentiles would not be second class citizens in the kingdom.

In Christ, Jews and Gentiles, are no longer two groups, but one. Paul writes elsewhere, that, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Our peace with God does not depend on any distinctions, whether gender, economic or ethnic. All that matters is grace on God’s part and faith on our part (see Eph 2:8-9).

We have seen hints of this truth in the historical unfolding and propagation of the gospel, particularly in Acts 10-11 the story of the conversion of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and the question whether the Gentiles could receive the faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The fledgling church wrestled with this and finally accepted Gentiles into the fold. And, of course, the Jerusalem counsel of Acts 15 struggled with and finally accepted that Gentiles were not required to be circumcised. It was at that time Paul wrote his treatise to the Galatian churches where he made this point clear—that circumcision was not required for salvation because faith preceded and grace superseded the Law. Paul is the one, however, who lays out this full truth, explained clearly!

That which divided Jews and Greeks, namely the Law, has been broken down. August 13, 1961 marks the beginning of the construction of the Berlin Wall that divided West Berlin from East Berlin and the surrounding East Germany countryside. It came to represent what was known as the Iron Curtain, the ideological divide between the east and the west during the Cold War. But, November 9, 1989, destruction of the wall commenced and free flow of movement began again. The Iron Curtain, as it were, came down. So also in Christ, the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles came down.

Gentile believers were Paul’s primary audience in this letter. And he calls attention to the fact that prior to faith they did not enjoy the benefits of God’s promises that the Jews enjoyed. They had no hope and were alienated from God, the One who created them. The Jews for their part despised the Gentiles and used what amounted to a racial slur in calling them the “Uncircumcision.” They took great pride in their own “Circumcision.” These terms referred to the outward “surgical” sign that God had given to Israel which marks them out as a people separated to God, special. However, the Jews were nationally arrogant about holding to the outward form, but were lacking in the faith necessary for an authentic relationship with God.

Gentile believers do well to remember this. Apart from Christ non-believers have no promises from God to hope in; they are without Him. They are strangers to all that God was doing in the world. However, though we were like that, now that we have believed, we have been brought into an intimate relationship (“brought near”) with God. We are “in Christ,” as Paul has repeated throughout the letter. And it is on account of “the blood of Christ.”

Sometimes, Christians like to speak of the blood as though there was something different about the physical properties of Christ’s  literal blood, something almost magical—as though if one could have captured a few drops of it at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, it could be enshrined as a holy relic. However, the blood is used simply as representing the sacrifice required for our salvation, just like the blood of animals in the Old Testament represented the life of the animal (Gen 9:4, Lev 17:11,14). Blood was so associated with an animal’s life that it became synonymous with the life itself. Jesus therefore behind a memorial for us to repeatedly practice, namely taking the bread and wine as symbols of His body and blood. So the blood of Christ has become entrenched in our minds as the enduring representation of Christ’s giving of His life for our salvation. How important it is for Christians to continually remind ourselves of the blood shed for us through the practice of the Lord’s Supper!

Doing good is what we were made for, that’s the point of this verse. We should do good works. In our zeal to stress that good works is not a requirement of salvation we fail to realize that our need of salvation is precisely because we failed to do the good works that we were created for. But this concept needs unpacking, lest we miss the important message of this pericope, or short collection of verses (8-10).

We were created with God’s exquisite craftsmanship, where He used Himself as the blueprint for our design. In biblical terms, we were created in His image (Genesis 1:26). While we share certain physical characteristics with other creatures, like arms, legs, heads, etc., we share certain characteristics with God. Classically, theologians tell us these include having emotion, intellect and will. But also included are the ability to have a personal relationship with God, to have both soulish and spiritual self-awareness and to have the capacity to willfully share in God’s creativeness. In other words, we were created to reflect Him in our lives. Our creation was “in Christ,” as our verses today say, meaning the second person of the trinity was intricately involved in our creation and is involved in the outworking of God’s purpose in our lives.

Now God’s purpose was well thought out before we were even created, and was not just some afterthought. We were created with God’s purpose in mind in accordance with His image, representing Him in life. Our problem came when we failed to live up to the purpose for which we were created. Our failure to do good works is merely symptomatic of our failure to obey Him. But, His purpose for us has never changed, namely to live our lives reflecting Him, that is, to do good things in this world.

It stands to reason that salvation (with all that means, including forgiveness, redemption and restoration) cannot be attained through human efforts of good works because, simply put, we have proven ourselves incapable of doing it. In fact, one failure is sufficient to reveal us as sinners, spiritual failures. It is written, ^“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (James 1:20). God’s solution is the gift of grace which we receive not by works, but through faith. And as saved believers, we are now back on track to do what we were created to do, reflect the image of God in the works He created for us to accomplish in our lives. Salvation apart from good works is precisely a salvation that restores us to doing good works.