A Radical Change in Position

Ephesians 2:11-13

"Wherefore remember, that ye [being] in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

As we continue in Ephesians we arrive at a passage that is yet another great example of how Paul the Apostle and Theologian expounds on points made earlier.  Look with me at the preceding verses…(read the first half of Ephesians chap. 2:1-10) we see the contrast between what we were in sin and what we are in Christ: we were dead in sin and now we have been made alive in Christ. Now in verses 11-13 we see more of that contrast between what we were and what we are, but this time from a change in position: we were far off, but now we are made nigh. We were alienated, but now we are reconciled. We were strangers, but now we are united together in one Body through the blood of Christ, by which God will achieve His purposes for all of creation.

To build His Church, turn with me to 1 Peter 2:5 “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”  This great Temple or house of living stones had first to be made alive by the atonement, the forgiveness, and the cleansing of our sin (I invite you to read 1 Peter 2:1-10 for the full context). Now the second step is placing those stones, bringing them together in that structure which is the Church and we will see this in these verses and those particularly at the end of this chapter. In explaining that constructive work, Paul once again reminds us of our condition before the work was done which was, essentially, separated from Christ, without the one and only One capable of doing this work.

Paul begins verse 11 with “therefore remember” when and in this case he calls his readers to remember when they were Gentiles called the “uncircumcision”…I’m not going to dwell on this phrase because it deals with an outward sign done by human hands and we want to focus on the inward man because I believe that is where Paul focuses this passage.

"That at that time Ye were without Christ"

"Ye were without Christ" is the most cogent statement; the others which follow it elaborate on what you are when you are without Christ.  As always for Paul and for us, Christ is the key, He is the central focus.  In Him is every spiritual blessing; outside of him there is every wickedness and condemnation.  In him there is hope and purpose and meaning and sweet fulfillment; outside of him there is despair and futility and immorality and destruction.  In him is life; outside of him is death.  In him is salvation; outside of him is destruction.  In him is acceptance; outside of him is rejection.  In him is Heaven; outside of him is Hell.  He is the One for whom and through whom the whole Temple is being built; He is the reason and purpose for its construction. And therefore, the worst outcome that can befall a human being, the most pathetic condition one can experience, the saddest end to which any man can come is to be without Christ.  Specifically, to be without Christ is to be adrift in the world without community, without identity, without hope, and ultimately without God.  Lost, just totally, pitifully lost.

"aliens from the commonwealth of Israel"

We as human beings are made to be social beings, we need community; we were created for relationships with God and one another.  While in the Garden, Adam enjoyed perfect fellowship with God, but in Genesis chapter two verse eighteen we read "And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."  So God provided Adam his life’s mate, Eve, and the “two became one flesh”.  Many of us begin to notice this need to not be alone when separated from the ones we love.  Especially when we are brought together in matrimony, no experience seems worth having unless it can be shared with your mate.  Many if not most people spend much of their lives looking for such relationships, “the perfect marriage” and then watch sin and selfishness destroy them.  Where does this leave most people, in the depths of loneliness and despair.

God's provision for this need is the family and, for the most part, it is our immediate or nuclear family.  But God provided the ultimate solution, the one designed to last not just through our time here on earth but also through eternity, and that is the Church. It is not that no one ever has a good marriage or a lasting friendship.  Even non-Christians by common grace sometimes do; but they have no cornerstone for these relationships. Even the friendships of Believers are fragile, and will end (in their current form) with death.  The bottom line for the survivor is still loss and loneliness.

But God has created and is creating a community with the best foundation, one that will last forever: and that commonwealth is the Church.  Our marriages will have a much greater probability of surviving when they are part of this and have this community as their cornerstone (despite what Barna’s research may show.)  Don’t we all speak of having a "home church" or a "church family"? Folks, the church will outlast my family and yours!  In heaven we neither marry nor are given in marriage and I find it interesting that that fact is stated in three of the four gospels (Matt 22:30, Mar 12:25, and Luke 20:35.)  Those earthly relationships will be transcended, but we will still be part of the Church, the Body of Christ, and as such we will be citizens of the New Jerusalem.  We are joined to this Body through our unity with its Head. And therefore, without Christ there is no true and lasting community.  We may achieve it for a while here on earth, but apart from Christ our lives will end in HELL.

"strangers from the covenants of promise"

We read in Genesis chapter twelve verses one thru three, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”  It was God's covenant with Abraham that set him apart from all other men and gave him a purpose and an identity.  He and his descendants would find their identity in relationship to their God and their purpose: they were His chosen people, through whom every family on the face of the earth would be blessed.  Their covenant with God was the foundation of their community, of their relationships with Him and with each other, and thus their identity; for we find our identity, our sense of who we are, in relationship to the communities of which we are a part. I am Doug the Third, son of Doug Junior, servant of Christ, under-shepherd of His flock, friend of Larry and Tom, Chris’s husband, Sarah and Rebekah’s father.  It is the complex web of all these relationships that I have to various communities to which I am related or apart of that is the sum total of who I am, and it is by examining and tracing these relationships that I discover that identity.  This is inevitable.

The importance of the New Covenant in Christ is, therefore, just like the Old before it, it defines who we are in Christ and thus gives us the only firm and stable basis for both lasting community and fulfilling identity.  Israel's purpose was to be used of God to usher in the Savior of the world; the Church's purpose is to take Him into the world as the answer to its search for purpose and community, and then for us, as a church, to simply exist for all of eternity as the fruit of his mercy and glory and grace.  Therefore the New Covenant gives us not only eternal life but a reason sufficient to justify living that long.  To inherit the Covenant of Promise is not only to be blessed but to be a blessing to others--to be an integral part of God's great work of salvation.  Therefore, to be without Christ is to be a stranger or an alien to the Covenant, to be adrift in the world without identity and to be eternally unconscious of who you are.

“having no hope”

To be set loose in the world with no lasting foundation of community and therefore with nothing to live for beyond our own self-gratification is indeed to be adrift without hope.  Without Christ, man does not have these things.  And without Christ, where is he going to get them?  There is no other source for them, no other basis for them that is not a dead end, a horrible trap, a lie, something destined to disappoint us and leave us eternally unfulfilled.  We see people accepting moral relativism and we read of some in the Church preaching a “purpose driven life”, but as Voddie Baucham writes we need to have a family driven faith.  We need to focus on the Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 mandates for God-centered family to produce hope, not only in our families but in the world as well.  Without Christ, we see the “intelligentsia” of our day producing a philosophy that is devoid of hope.  You’re just an accident of nature and you evolved from apes.  Truly, to be without Christ is to be adrift in a world without hope.  It is the blackest darkness.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel; there isn’t even a tunnel.  There is only an unfathomable brick wall of senselessness.

“without God in the world.”

The final summary statement of all these dispossessions is the worst: to be without Christ is to be without God in the world. Turn with me to the book of John chapter fourteen and verse six, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."  Jesus is the definitive source of all truth and life and the only way to God.  To be cut off from Him by our sins and wickedness is indeed to be without community, without identity and purpose, without hope.  That is what it means to be without God in the world.

“BUT” and I love Paul when he does this as his ties this together.  Remember he started with “remember when…but now…

"But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."

Distance can be a real problem when it comes to relationships.  Who says she can help you "reach out and touch someone"…Ma Bell.  And there are all sorts of new means of connecting with others…email, video teleconferencing, and voice-over-internet as well--but it is still not the same as being there.  Some types of distances are worse than others.  I get this all the time…we can be in the same room with someone but be emotionally and spiritually miles apart or we all know people who are difficult to get to know… they seem "distant."  This kind of distance can be the hardest to overcome.  Are you separated from those you love by a few hundred miles?  All it takes is a car, a few very expensive gallons of gas, and a day's driving, and the problem is solved. But with emotional, intellectual, or spiritual barriers, the distance can seem totally insurmountable.  That's what Paul is talking about here, when he says that we were far off from Christ but have been made nigh by his blood.

Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 5: 17-20.  “Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  And all things [are] of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.  Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech [you] by us: we pray [you] in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.”  God is indeed the One who takes the initiative in bridging the distance.  But still it is not an adequate description of our problem.

Let us read Romans 1: 18-25.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed [it] unto them.  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

So the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and so God, who expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden, placed the flaming sword in the hand of the Angel at the gate so that they could not return.  There had to be a separation…as Isaiah is quoting God, in chapter one verse fifteen, “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”  Not only has Man turned his back on God, but God, in the light of sin, must also turn his face away from Man. Are you a sinner without Christ?  If you are then God will not hear you; you are not acceptable to him; indeed, you are intolerable to him.  This is part of the distance that has to be overcome for us to be saved.

God's eyes are too pure, too holy to look upon our evil deeds; every imagination of man's heart is only evil continually.  God loves light and dwells in unapproachable glory and splendor; Man loves darkness because his deeds are evil.  God is pure light without any shadows; Man is polluted and corrupted and his very righteousness is as filthy rags.  These two are far apart from one another, at the greatest distance imaginable, at opposite ends of the universe.

It is no wonder then that the average person has no interest in God, except possibly as a philosophical notion or concept.  If he thinks about God or truly begins to contemplate and understand Him, he discovers what God is really like.  He can’t stand it and he flees in abject terror!  Unless…unless…unless somehow Someone could bring the two together.  And who less than God himself could be adequate for such a task?

Considering this natural enmity which exists between a holy God and fallen Man, isn’t it amazing that God still pursues us?  Considering his merciless hatred of evil, why doesn’t He just completely destroy us?  He almost did it once before.  Yet to bring us near to Himself…to reconcile us to Himself, at the price of the blood of his only begotten Son--this is love and grace beyond all comprehension.  Let’s look again at how He has done it…by the blood of Christ.  If we had read one more verse in 2 Corinthians chapter five we would see in verse twenty-one, “For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”  He became one of us so that He could die as a Substitute for our sins and atone for our sins.  Only on that basis can God, without compromise to his justice, offer us forgiveness, adoption, and union with himself.  The distance we could not have bridged or overcome by any effort of ourselves, God has erased in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  His righteousness is imputed to our account and, therefore, there can be reconciliation from that total separation--emotional, intellectual, spiritual--that existed between us.

So then what can we say…we were just as far off as anyone else, just as lost and separated from God as anyone else, just as hopelessly alienated from God as the entire human race has been since the Fall--but it is we who have been made nigh!  Receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord by faith, we have received in Christ by faith alone justification, forgiveness, adoption, and the right to be a son of God.  Receiving Jesus Christ by faith we have also received from Christ a new nature capable of communion with God, a nature truly compatible with the character of God.  Receiving Christ we have also received the promise that this new nature, through sanctification, will be the only nature we have.

"…At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

The death and resurrection of Christ has removed every impediment, every distance, every barrier to intimacy with God.  They are nailed to the Cross.  And while the gift of this new relationship, this union and intimacy, will take a lifetime to grow into, it is already our permanent possession.  My prayer is that your heart has been regenerated and through faith, you have been made nigh by the blood of Christ.