United to One Another

We read from Ephesians 2:11. Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands. Remember that at the time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.

He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who are near. For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. And then we're just jumping to chapter 4, verse 1.

As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Well, we're continuing with the theme of one another this morning.

And although you didn't find those words "one another" in the reading, nevertheless, they are implied, and I hope to convince you of that. If you were here a few weeks ago, you might remember we began the series "one another" by talking about the new commandment that Jesus gave. Love one another as I have loved you. Last week, encourage one another, and we discovered, didn't we, something of our insulting need for a shepherd. And then we were surprised as to who they might be.

We looked briefly at one another shepherding. We looked at the great shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Himself. And we also looked at leader shepherding in the church. This morning, our text is all about becoming who we are, united with one another in Jesus. And because of the gospel, we have a unity with one another.

And we're going to discover that our text is basically holding up three pictures or three images, if you like, or three word pictures of what we were, what we once were, then what we are now, and last of all, what we one day will be, what we will become. Who we were, who we are, and what we will be. Past, present, future. Three points this morning. First of all, Paul tells us what we once were.

It's implied in this comment in verse 19. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens. Our children hear the word "consequences" and there is quickly prick up. They're familiar with consequences, are they not? There has to be a reason why consequences happen.

So what's going on here? In this case, the consequences are because something good happened, something wonderful. Earlier on in verse 13, Paul explains it: in Jesus Christ, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. The blood of Jesus. The power of His cross has the effect of bringing people near, closer to one another.

And for that reason then, you are no longer foreigners, no longer aliens. We don't live as strangers to one another. Who's Paul talking to? Well, he tells us again in verse 12, earlier on: once you are separated from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. That's a reference to unbelievers who were Gentiles, people who are not Jews.

Now they believe and they've become Christians. They weren't literally foreigners in the sense that they were living in a strange country speaking a different language. They were living in their homeland. They shared a common language. They were surrounded by people and the culture they grew up with.

But spiritually speaking, they were foreigners, aliens even. Because these groups of people never had a connection with Abraham, with Israel, or the covenants. But they do have a connection with Jesus. Gentiles are hearing the gospel. They're getting converted.

They're being saved and Paul's very keen to see that they're included, welcomed even into the promises once given to Abraham. At another level, Paul's saying here that in our natural state, before you and I even believed, all of us spiritually speaking were foreigners, aliens separated from God. Paul is saying that's the way we once were until God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. Verse 5. In Jesus we found our true home and we're brought together and we're sharing something that goes way beyond that strangeness or that lack of familiarity that we might have experienced before we were converted.

And it begs the question, doesn't it? What is it that we have become? And what we have become is best described by Paul in these word pictures that I've been referring to. Three metaphors and they're all very important for us to notice this morning. They're extremely interesting images about the church, about you, and about me.

First of all, Paul says that we are fellow citizens. Second, that we are God's household. And last of all, stones or bricks in a temple being built by God in which He lives by His Spirit. First of all, citizens. That's the image of a nation or a country, and we are citizens together of the kingdom of God and of heaven.

Second, we're God's household. It is the strongest biblical word there is for family. So we're children, God's children. We're sons and daughters together in a family. And thirdly, we're a temple.

We're the place where God chooses to dwell. We are described as living stones being built up as a temple in which God lives by His Spirit. Now each of these pictures is very important. Each one is deliberately more intense than the one before. Maybe you've already noticed that.

With regard to our relationship with God, each one grows in intensity. You've ever played that game with your kids before called hot and cold? Somebody hides an object in the room, and it's your job to go looking for it. You don't have a clue where that object is because it's been hidden so well, but you hear people around you shouting out warm, warmer, hot, and even red hot. And when you're red hot, of course, you've found it.

Well, let me say this. Here is where we are made to feel warm, comfortable in our relationship with God. That is as fellow citizens. Because if you're a fellow citizen, you identify with someone who's a king, and the king is the ultimate authority, and you have a right to that citizenship. You may even have a certificate of citizenship or a passport.

And certainly on your birth certificate, if you were born in that country, then you identify with that country. And we belong, says Paul. We have a citizenship whereby Jesus is king. Paul warms the relationship up a level, ratchets it up a notch, and talks about a household or a family. In a family, a father, that is God, lives under the same roof with his children.

They do life together. And at dinner time, the screens are turned off, the phones are put away, and family members talk to each other. And it seems to me the relationship gets a little warmer, goes up a level. But we might say the relationship is red hot when Paul says God actually lives in a temple. It's where His presence takes on greater significance and it's where He is pleased to live with us.

And we, for our part, are living stones in that temple in the very place where God chooses to dwell. Now as true as that is with respect to our relationship to God, these pictures are also valid. They also count because they deal with our relationship with one another. And that also grows more intense, gets warmer. If we're citizens together in the same country, well, you may live kilometres away from one another.

But if we're in the same family, we only live a room away from one another. And if we're stones in a building, well, there's just no distance between us whatsoever. We're kind of cemented or mortared together, if you like. So each one of these images grows again in intensity. They become relationally more intense.

Now what does Paul want us to learn? Well, for example, citizenship is powerful. If you go overseas and you visit a strange country, and while you're there, you hear someone saying something like, g'day mate, or how's it going? Well, your ears might prick up because you might recognise the accent. And you identify with that person because, well, you've grown up in the same country.

You develop a kind of an affinity for that other person. You share the same citizenship. You probably have the same passport. But a family is more powerful than that. Who your parents are, who your siblings are, how you were treated when you were growing up.

We all know that's an even more powerful force that binds people together. The people you grew up with are in the same home, closer to you than fellow citizens. But what about this? What if you're a brick or a stone in a building? You've been shaped, you've been put in an oven by someone who maybe is using a chisel so that you fit perfectly with the brick that is next to you and there's like no distance at all between you.

The force that shapes us to become bricks is the gospel. That's what Paul's thinking of. And of all the forces known to man, the gospel is the life changer. The good news of Jesus changes people, enables them to fit, to belong into a building where God dwells. Paul's saying here, if the gospel has touched you, it's more powerful than your citizenship or your family in shaping you. More powerful than how your citizenship or even your own family has shaped you.

What he's saying is that Christians can meet with other Christians from other nations, from other cultures, from other families, and then begin to feel more of a bond with one another than someone who doesn't believe. Someone who's not being shaped by the gospel. What Paul's saying is there's no more powerful shaping force in our lives than the gospel. It changes you from the inside out. Your identity changes.

It completely changes your understanding of yourself. The gospel gives us a worldview, a way of interpreting and looking at everything that happens in this world. It has changed in the light of what Jesus has done and is doing. Now you know what this means. Do the pictures of a brick in a temple or children in a family or citizens in a country, do they mean anything to you?

How can we hope to be any of those things if the only contact we have with other Christians is, let's say, once a week on a Sunday? Is that what being a Christian is all about? Can you accept this morning the growing intensity of these images? If you choose to meet with other Christians every so often, is that really the kind of intensity that Paul has in mind? If you are a Christian then you've been called to deep relationships, a deeper involvement in love in the Christian community and with God.

But I hear you thinking, how deep? And I'm glad you kind of asked that question. It's a mistake really because we have so much time left this morning. Let's have a look at just two things and let's get some perspective about the depth of our involvement. One of them we talked about was last week, and we saw then the writer to the Hebrews taught us to encourage one another.

And we discovered, did we not, that the word for encouragement in our English translations is linked to the original Greek word for shepherding. There's this shepherding action that needs to take place with one another. And how important that is without elders or a pastor in the church in our current season. We saw then we had this mutual responsibility to shepherd one another. The compelling text was perhaps Hebrews 3:13.

None of us wants for our hearts to be hardened because of the deceitfulness of sin. Secondly, the images here, temple, family, and a country, means that we need to deepen relationships with one another because we belong to God's household, says the text. Students in a classroom study together, but that's pretty much all they do. Colleagues in an office work together, but again, that's pretty much all they do. But in a family, you do life together.

You share each other's space. You share each other's things. You eat together. You play together. You work together.

You really are doing life together. And the same is true for a church family. You just don't show up at events as if you are a student, and neither do you show up as if you are a work colleague in an office. We could describe ourselves as brothers and sisters belonging in a family. We're devoted to one another.

We don't just exist in this place as one another. We're here sharing life together under God and by His grace. Think about this and what we're becoming. Paul says we're becoming a spiritual house where God lives, in some translations a temple. Each one of us says Paul is a brick or a living stone in that building.

God comes down to you and me not as individual bricks but he comes to a house or a living temple. He chooses not to inhabit each individual brick, but He inhabits the whole house, all the bricks combined. The impact of that really is this, that to the degree that we are devoted to one another, we experience the wonder of His presence with us as the bricks and the stones form the building. I won't know all there is to know about God and His presence without knowing who the other stones are in the building and what God has done for each one of them. In fact, you are the closest thing that I have to a spiritual family, the church.

And the men that we remember as our pastor and elders who served us previously, well, who are they really? They're just another brick in the wall. They were not some special link with God that means that the house or the building can't exist without them. Together, we discern the presence of God in the building. Allow me to illustrate.

Years ago, early in my time as a minister, when I still had so much to learn, even as I do today, I had a colleague in ministry, an older man, and when he prayed, it was like he was speaking the language of heaven, or so I thought. When he prayed, he would refer to God as thee and thou, the language of heaven. And just listening to him pray that way made me feel as if I was in the very presence of God. He had an effect on the people listening to him pray as well. Many of them held the view that this pastor was their priest.

Their really only true link with God. And unless you couldn't pray the way he was praying, no prayer would count. No prayer would matter. And so it was that their own relationship with God didn't count very much at all because they never used the language of heaven themselves. They didn't pray with thees and thous.

And for that reason, they thought they couldn't pray to God at all. But hear this this morning. There's no one brick in the building who can teach us everything there is to know about God. Each person is just another brick in the wall. God is so much bigger than any one person.

He chooses to live in a building, and together we're the bricks where He makes His dwelling known among us. It's how we know God. It's together how we learn about Jesus and the good news of the gospel. So I think I know what some of you are thinking this morning, and there's a little bit of pushback. And quite frankly, I sympathise with you this morning.

You know, Tony, I don't feel that connected with others in this building. I just do not. I feel the Christians that I meet are way different than I am. And to be frank, I don't really like them. I just don't feel these incredible relationships that you're talking about.

I don't feel like every Christian I meet is my brother or sister, and I certainly don't feel that I'm cemented together like a brick in a wall. I don't feel the incredible unity that you're talking about. So what can I do? Well, I suggest you listen to this third and last point, becoming what we are, and it'll be a step in the right direction. The third point according to Ephesians is that we must become what we are.

Nikki read to us from chapter 2, but she also read from chapter 4, just a few verses there. And Paul says, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit. Make every effort to keep what you already have. The unity of the Spirit. He doesn't say go out and strive for it or somehow create it or manufacture it or let it happen among yourselves, but rather he says, keep what you already have.

Nurture what has been given to you. It's a given. It's there for us. On the one hand, we can't create relationships that I've been talking about. But on the other hand, they're automatically there if you're being shaped and formed by the gospel.

It's a given. You and I can't create those bonds. The unity of the Spirit is here in the church. It's a given. But on the other hand, we have to express it.

You still have to realise it. You have to experience it. It's a consequence of knowing who Jesus is. We have this unity, but we only can experience it if we can admit what we really are. Now I'll put it to you that much should be clear every time we hold a celebration of the Lord's Supper in this place.

Some churches refer to it as communion, literally a common unity among us. We've been given a unity in broken pieces of bread and wine or juice that's been poured out. They're symbols of the body and the blood of the very thing that reconciles us to God, the sacrifice that we reflected on earlier in the service. Now while it's a given and given to us, we're called to give expression to it. In other words, we have to partake of it.

We have to physically eat and drink to participate in that unity of the Spirit. And by that action we tell one another, this is how I want to live my life. This is how I want to be shaped by the gospel. It takes on real substance as we do that together. It's no random activity.

It's not just a hit and miss approach. Such unity translates into how we choose to live our lives during the week. In the context of where, wherever God places you with other Christians. And that can happen simply if we choose to visit one another and have a coffee together. Or it can happen in the context of a small group or a Bible study group or one on one Bible reading together.

It's something we work to achieve in the leadership team of the church. We try to model behaviour that is consistent with the kind of unity that we have in the Spirit of God. It's not if we will have it now and then we switch on the unity button and then for a day, a week, or a month, or the next time I'm ready to go to church. But unity is here now, and it's actually what we have with us in the week and the year ahead of us. And Ephesians 2:22, and in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.

You see there's a process going on. And those who say, don't like a lot of other Christians, I don't feel that great connection. Well, let me tell you of all the bricks in the building and of all the stones that are cemented together, there is one that is different. There is one that is going to be the cause or the reason that we can experience this unity. And as any builder can tell you, it serves a very crucial position in the way the building is being constructed.

It's certainly not a random stone that's just being placed at the very top of the building. Maybe you know the stone that I'm going to refer to. It's the reason the building holds together. Without it, literally it would come falling down. Jesus Christ alone is the sure foundation of this building.

In fact, Paul talks about Him as the chief cornerstone. Verse 20. That will help you and I maintain the unity of the Spirit that we've been given because the building itself rests on this one central truth that there is a chief cornerstone. It's the stone by which all other stones in the building take their reference or know how they're properly aligned or they fit together because there is this one cornerstone keeping the building together. Realise with me this morning that when Paul calls Jesus the chief cornerstone, he's drawing on Old Testament imagery, Old Testament teaching.

For years God's people expected that the Messiah would be the cornerstone of the new kingdom of God, but only after he would be rejected by religious leaders and the very builders of the building themselves. You see this for example in Isaiah 28. See I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation, the one who trusts will never be dismayed. And again in the Psalms, the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. The Lord has done this and it's marvellous in our eyes.

There's the prediction that Jesus, the chief cornerstone, would save us, would hold the building together by being rejected, tossed aside by even the builders of the temple. God sent Jesus to this earth and when he sent Jesus he came as a foreigner, as an alien, a stranger really. He came to His own and His own received Him not. Jesus said about Himself, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Jesus was rejected and despised by man.

And then in His death, He was utterly homeless, utterly forsaken. He was crucified outside the gate. It was cold and dark. Jesus actually was a foreigner, an alien, a stranger. No family, no citizenship, nowhere to live.

But He came and experienced all that so that you and I would have somewhere to live, would have a family, and would know the very presence of God in the building today that God is making. You and I are the closest thing that anyone of us have to a spiritual family. Remember this, Jesus lost His family so you and I could get into the family. He was fully the stranger, the alien, so that we could have a citizenship even in the very kingdom of God. And we've become bricks, stones together so that we could discern the very presence of Jesus, not just in individual Bible reading or prayer, but together in a building whereby Jesus is the chief cornerstone.

Comfort one another with that. Reassure one another with that. Let one another know that we're loved because of that. You know, one thing as a father I disliked immensely when I had teenagers in my family was this. But I do want to say I think I've learned something from it, and that's why I'm telling you my own experience as a father.

We used to have these mealtimes together. Right? And we still do occasionally, but they're not teenagers anymore. And either their mother or I would ask them the question, are you going... Are you going out this evening? Or where are you going?

And we get the very short response, I'm going out. Out with my friends. But where are you going? Out was the reply. And you know what that means, don't you?

It means that all that matters as far as these kids are concerned is relationships. They're the people they want to hang out with. They're the people they want to identify with. That's their friends. That's all that matters in their world.

Not where we go, but I just want to be with other people, with friends, my peers. You know, people often say when they're about to die, nobody ever said, well I wish I'd spent more time in the office. And they always say things like, I wish I'd spent more time with my family, with my friends. Love, community is what life is all about, really. And don't you see what we're being told this morning?

You belong to a community that will last forever. A community based on love. Not even death can remove us from the experience of community. This is what every human being wants. They'll know we are Christians by our love.

Comfort one another. Encourage one another in what we have. We have a gospel, we have a church, we have a cornerstone and we have a unity that God is working so we might all discern His presence and know Him better than perhaps we ever have before. Amen. Let's pray.

Father in heaven, how grateful we are for Your busyness in our lives, for shaping us, for creating within us a kind of unity that You want to bless Your people with. Oh Lord, help us to find new ways, encouraging ways to live in that unity together. May our experience of You come because we are in unity, because as living stones, we can discern the real presence of You as You choose to dwell with us. Help all men everywhere to know that we are Christians by our love for You. Thank you for Jesus, our chief cornerstone.

Help us to align ourselves always together being directed by Him and His great love for us. And in Jesus's name we pray when we say together, amen.