The Multiethnic NT Church

INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

There are many things worth celebrating. We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate anniversaries. We celebrate victories. A couple of years back, Grace and I celebrated that God had allowed her to be cancer-free for 5 years. This past week, we celebrated a life well-lived through the memorial service for Ruth Boyce, We celebrated that God had given her nearly 98 years and that in those years He had worked through her to touch the lives of many people with His grace.

Involvement:

There are a lot of things worth celebrating. I would submit to you, though, that one of the greatest things that we should celebrate is what God is doing through His church.

Context:

Last week we began looking at the demonstration of God’s thoughts from His word regarding ethnicities. I am arguing that in order to fulfill God’s purpose for our church in our community, we need increasingly to become an ethnically integrated church.

Last Sunday morning we took a tour through the Bible and observed that God’s promise of blessing always has and always will include all ethnicities. Last Sunday night we looked at three spots in the Gospels that clearly demonstrated that our Savior had a heart for those who were not like Him, who were of ethnicities different from Himself.

Preview:

To become an ethnically integrated church, we must develop a greater joy in God’s saving work. To help us toward that end, this morning I am going to look at a rather large section in one of Paul’s epistles. Challenges presented by ethnic differences are not new. From nearly the beginning of the NT church, issues surrounding ethnicities arose. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we find the most extensive theological discussion anywhere in the NT of these challenges. From this letter, we will learn that our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. As we well know, we are here because of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. Yet, Our goal when we gather is to celebrate that work. Specially, we should celebrate that we are a new community created by God through Christ. Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work.

Because we are going to look at a large section of a couple of chapters this morning, I will not have the verses on the screen; rather, I would ask you to turn in your bibles to Ephesians chapter 2. We are going to pick up with verse 11 of Eph 2 and consider what Paul writes all the way through verse 13 of chapter 3 this morning. As we do so, we will consider four different points that speak specifically to things that we can celebrate with ethnic diversity.

Transition from introduction to body:

Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. The first thing for us to observe this morning is found in verses 11-13 of chapter 2…

BODY:

I. We are to celebrate our common status, Eph 2:11–13

I trust that you have turned to Ephesians 2 by now; let’s read these verses…<read Eph 2:11–13>.

To really understand what Paul is saying in these verses we have to go back almost 2000 years and think as people living in the Roman Empire in the 1st century would have thought. In verse 11 Paul references the historical gulf that existed at that time between Jews and Gentiles. Yet, as he does so, he immediately places the gulf in their pre-Christian past. This letter is written to believers and Paul is referring to the gulf as something in the past due to the change that God produced in them through their salvation.

Addressed by Paul as “you,” apparently the majority of the church members in Ephesus must have been Gentiles. He speaks to them from a Jewish standpoint, pointing to a real physical difference between them—circumcision. In the eyes of the Jews, the uncircumcision of the Gentiles was a token of their total separation from God. In verse 12 Paul lists five inherent deficiencies that the Gentiles had because they were outside God’s people and His saving purposes. Paul makes it crystal clear that the Gentiles were not entitled to the benefits that Israel had as God’s chosen covenantal community. They did not have a covenantal relationship with Him. Rather than worshiping the true God, we know that they had replaced Him with many idols. They had been in a truly desperate condition.

Yet in verse 13, Paul announces that there had been a dramatic change and their past condition is placed in contrast to their present state. Before, the Gentiles were “far” from God because they lacked the revelation that God had given to the Jews. Through the “blood of Christ,” they now have been “brought near.” The Gentiles now have a new position, a new status. God has graciously moved so they were given an opportunity to hear of Christ’s redemptive work and God had, in turn, drawn them to Himself in salvation. This was true for all the readers; They were now brought near to God by Christ—both Jew and Gentile alike.

Application

For all of us who have accepted God’s gift of salvation, we have a similar story. It doesn’t matter what ethnicity we are; we have a similar history. We were far from God, in a desperate condition. Somewhere in our own personal history, God brought us near to Him through Jesus Christ as we accepted the message of the cross. And at that moment, our status changed!

Illustration

You can think of it a bit like a wedding ceremony. Two individuals enter the ceremony—a man and a woman. Yet, at the moment that they each say “I do” followed by the pronouncement of the officiant as husband and wife their status changes. They are no longer two individuals; they are now one married couple. It is proper for them to be addressed together as Mr. and Mrs. It is now proper for them to form a single home living together. It is proper for them to file their taxes together. They have a new status.

Application

Through God’s saving work, as Christians, we all have a new status as well. Truly a change in status much more monumental that what happens when two individuals become a married couple. Through God’s saving work we have the status of “in Christ.” This is something to celebrate! It doesn’t matter what ethnicity we are; we share this in common with each other. We have a common status to celebrate.

Transition:

We are to celebrate our common status—we are now near to God by the blood of Jesus Christ. This is one reason that Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. As we celebrate our common status together, we will become a church celebrating God’s saving work.

The second thing to celebrate found in Ephesians chapter two is that…

II. We are to celebrate our common nationality, Eph 2:14–18

Let’s read these verses together…<read Eph 2:14–18>.

Paul begins with the great clause, “For He Himself is our peace.” Christ is the central figure here and the emphasis is placed on his reconciling work. The idea is that Christ somehow made peace between men and between men and God. That’s pretty great. Yet Paul says that there is an even more exciting part. It gets even more amazing when we understand how God did this.

Paul views humanity as naturally composed of two groups—the Jews and the non-Jews. One was either born a Jew or one was born a Gentile—a nice two-group system (Paul isn’t concerned with the fact that the Gentiles could be further subdivided into many nations). The point that Paul is concerned with is that reconciliation not only affected their standing before God, it “made both…one,” referring to the two-party system under which Jews and Gentiles were grouped prior to becoming one before God. God made both groups into one group.

But this was not a simple merging of two groups together. In the next verse, Paul says that Christ’s purpose in removing the ancient enmity between the Jew and Gentile was to make a new and undivided humanity, “so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man.” Thus, there are now three orders of mankind in this passage: Gentile, Jew, and Christian. Now, instead of there being simply Jew and Gentile; there is Jew, Gentile, and Christian. There is now the Jewish nation, the Gentile nation (or really nations-plural as the original Greek word is a plural word), and the Christian nation—the church.

The amazing point is that from Paul’s perspective each of us can still only be a member of one group—they are all mutually exclusive. You are a Jew, a Gentile, or a Christian.

Illustration

This is a bit like the experience that some of you who were born in other countries have had. Some of you were not born as citizens of the United States, but you have become citizens through the naturalization process. Your home nation has changed. The United States is now your country.

Through faith, in the perspective that really counts—God’s perspective—we believers no longer remain the nationality to which we were born. Through Christ, we are created into a new nationality—what we call the church. This is both an inclusive and exclusive idea. It is exclusive in that it is only true for those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but it is inclusive in that it applies to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. As one commentator expresses the idea, “Paul refers to a whole new race that is formed. A new race that is race-less!”

Distinctions, of course, still exist. Paul does not mean that Gentiles have become Jews, nor have Jews become Gentiles. Rather, in Christ, the old distinction between Jew and Gentile is transcended. What they share in Christ is now more significant than their historical differences. Identification with Christ is now primary, more significant than a Jewish or Gentile identity.

Application

This is why, theologically, there should not be any distinctions of identity between us, even though as I look around, we come from different nationalities originally. It doesn’t matter what nationality we were born into. Likewise, it doesn’t matter what religious system we grew up in. Through salvation, we have left all that behind. They are no longer significant in Christ; we have had a new spiritual life created in us and that spiritual life places us into a new group—the Church. Now what we each have in common with the other people sitting here far surpasses any differences that might come from our various ethnicities. We have Christ in common. When we celebrate our common nationality—Christian—we are celebrating what transcends our birth nationalities, not ignoring our birth nationalities.

Before I move on I want to draw out another application that is of the utmost importance to every person sitting here. There are three nationalities in Paul’s model: Jew, Gentile, and Christian. Which one are you? You can only be one. I pray that it is Christian because that is the only one that has a relationship with God. But that only comes through accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. If you have not done so, then you are either a Jew or Gentile…and while not discussed in the passage we are looking at this morning, the final destiny for both the Jew and Gentile is the same—an eternity in hell paying the penalty that your sins against a holy God warrant. You need to change your status and your nationality to Christian in order to have a different destiny. If you would like to know more about how you can make this change, please talk to me after the service or contact me this week through my email address that is on the screen.

Transition:

Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. We are to celebrate our common nationality. That is the second thing that we are given to celebrate in this passage. Continuing, in verses 19–22, we discover that…

III. We are to celebrate our common heritage, Eph 2:19–22

We are to celebrate our common heritage. We most often think of heritage as something that is ours from the past, but it also applies to what will be ours in the future. Let’s go ahead and read these verses…<read Eph 2:19–22>

Illustration

In this paragraph, Paul changed metaphors from our nationality to that of a building. As I read this section, I can’t help but think of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They took decades and even centuries to complete as they were slowly built by generations of craftsmen who worked to construct them. That is the picture that Paul is creating here. The church is like a building that is slowly being constructed.

Before he explains how the building is put together, Paul ties it into God’s historical program for humanity in verse 19. While the church is distinct from believers of other timeframes, it is not isolated from them. The point of verse 19 is that the church is a new entity being added to the redeemed of all ages. As part of the church, we are part of a larger group—the household of God. We are added into the saints of all ages with the church essentially forming its own wing in this great building. The church, while the focus of God’s program at this time in history, does not replace those redeemed in earlier ages. At this stage in God’s program Gentiles now are included alongside the Jews who have been reconciled to God through Christ. They are all fellow citizens in the heavenly commonwealth ruled by God, represented by this magnificent structure.

The church is presented as a large and ever-growing structure, with each of the believers having a position in that structure. This structure is extremely specific; it is a holy temple—the place where God dwells. God dwells with Christ’s church so there is a unique sense in which God dwells with us spiritually every time we gather corporately as a church.

Picture in your mind the temple that Paul is describing. The temple has Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. This is the significant stone in the foundation of the structures of that day which governed the lines and angles of all the other stones. It is another way of saying that Christ sets the direction for the church. The rest of the foundation was composed of the apostles and prophets. These were commissioned by God to communicate divine revelation. This revelation provided the instructions for the church, becoming the foundation for the church.

It is then on top of this foundation where each of us shares a common position—that of a stone in the church. Each believer is a stone that functions as a building block in this temple. You have to remember that in Paul’s day stones were not joined together with mortar. The master-builder would carefully select stones of the right general shape and size for placement into the building. Then the stone would be “fitted” for its spot. It would be carefully ground so that it fits tightly against the next stone already in the building.

Application

That is the picture here. Each of us at salvation is carefully selected by God for placement into the church. We each share a place in the universal church that God has been building over the centuries since the apostles. At the same time, we each share a place in a local church—the visible manifestations of the universal church. This is another display of God’s divine grace…a display of the power of the cross. God specifically selects each of us to be placed into a position within the church. Of course, we first have to go through a process of being fitted—the rough edges have to be ground off and our shape has to be fine-tuned so that we fit into our position in the structure of the church perfectly.

What an amazing truth! Verse 22 says that in Christ, we become the temple in which God dwells in the Holy Spirit. The idea of dwelling in this verse is one of permanence. This is not a temporary stay. It is a deep, settled dwelling. The Holy Spirit of God dwells in the corporate body of redeemed Jews and Gentiles called the church.

Application

As believers in the cross-work of Christ, this is our heritage! We each are specifically included in this building! We display the power of the cross by celebrating our common heritage! A commentator has expressed it this way, “The new community, God’s fellowship of reconciliation, transcends all distinctions of race, status, and sex. … No privilege is bestowed on the people of God in which Gentiles do not enjoy an equal share.”

When you look around you this morning, do you appreciate that you have a common heritage, a spiritual heritage, a permanent heritage with all the other believers in this room? We come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but we now share a common heritage because of Christ. Our heritage is that we are the dwelling of God in the Spirit. This is something to celebrate!

Transition:

Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. We are to celebrate our common heritage. In the first 13 verses of chapter three, we find, fourthly, that…

IV. We are to celebrate our common purpose, Eph 3:1–13

We are going to see this idea in the first 13 verses of the chapter. Let’s read those verses…<read Eph 3:1–13>.

Let me briefly sketch this large section so that we can see the reason for us to celebrate that’s given in these verses. Paul is in prison as he writes this letter. Yet, he viewed even his situation as a prisoner in Rome as related to the divine purposes benefiting the Gentiles. He had received from God as a “stewardship” the task of extending gospel privileges to the Gentiles.” This stewardship contained a “mystery” there in verse 3, something unknown and unknowable apart from divine revelation. Adding Gentiles along with Jews into the body of Christ was part of the mystery that Paul had received. In fact, it is was part of God’s all-inclusive goal of uniting all things under heaven and earth. Paul’s stewardship entailed proclaiming to the Gentiles according to verse 8 how God’s mystery was to be put into effect through Jesus Christ.

The plan had been “hidden in God,” that is, it was in God’s mind and purpose and clearly no afterthought. God’s purpose, according to verse 10, was “that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” “Manifold wisdom” in verse 10 is a poetic expression that speaks of the richly diversified nature of the divine wisdom. This multifaceted wisdom refers to God’s diverse ways of working which led to a multiracial, multicultural community being united as fellow members in the body of Christ. The church even displays to angelic beings the wisdom of God.

God’s purpose from all eternity, according to verse 11, was to make His many-splendored wisdom known through the church. The salvation of both Jew and Gentile was God’s eternal purpose, the way in which God had always planned to display His wisdom. The church is central to God’s plan to bring glory to His name and magnify His Son’s work on the cross.

Application

The church is central to God’s display of His wisdom. We are central to God’s display of His wisdom. It is not an accident that we are here this morning; it is God’s eternal purpose. It is not an accident that we have diversity within this room; it is God’s eternal purpose. Whether we are multi-generational white American, 2nd generation Mexican, 1st generation Ecuadorian immigrant, or whatever; we are here with a common purpose—to display the manifold wisdom of God to the entire universe. Even angels marvel at God’s wisdom as they watch us worship God together, jointly reconciled through Christ by His cross-work. No one saw this coming in ages past; it was part of God’s eternal mystery until the church burst on the scene. Until the church appeared, mankind was divided by numerous natural divisions. But now the church is here, and God’s wisdom is on display as natural divisions become secondary to the work of Christ. Our common purpose is to display God’s wisdom. That purpose is something to celebrate.

Illustration

Think back to the Chicago Cubs world series victory in 2016. I’m not aware of any Cub fans here this morning, but I am sure we all remember the celebration that those fans had when the Cubs baseball team won their first world series in 108 years. People from all over the country, all over the world for that matter, joined in celebration because of their joy.

I would suggest that the victory that we have in Christ is infinitely greater. The purpose of displaying the wisdom of God is infinitely more significant than baseball. That means that our celebration should be so much more exuberant. Displaying God’s wisdom is our common purpose!

Transition from body to conclusion:

Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work. We are to celebrate our common purpose.

CONCLUSION

As I said at the outset, there are many reasons that we celebrate things in life. This morning we have seen that God’s saving work gives us reasons to celebrate in our church. The reasons we looked at this morning are things that we share in common, things that magnify the work of God as they are shared across ethnic lines.

We are to celebrate our common status—we are in Christ. We are to celebrate our common nationality--Christian. We are to celebrate our common heritage—the church, God’s dwelling place. We are to celebrate our common purpose—God’s wisdom displayed. Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work.

Application

The thing about a great celebration is that there is a natural desire to see it grow—the bigger the better. This morning I have laid out the theological basis for why we should desire an ethnically integrated church—so that our celebration will grow. The NT church was a multiethnic church early on and as such, it served to celebrate God’s saving work as it continually grew. As you leave today, I trust that you will be examining your heart, asking yourself whether you have that desire.

Our church should be a celebration of God’s saving work.