What Is the Church

We've been looking at all the various facets or aspects of the church, but this morning we're going to be dealing with a fantastic part of scripture that Paul the Apostle writes in Ephesians 2 about the church. And in a sense, everything we've talked about these last few weeks is summed up and comes together in this one passage that we're going to be dealing with this morning. If you can get your Bibles open to Ephesians 2, we're going to be reading the second half of this chapter from verse 11 to verse 22, the end of the chapter. Paul writes to the Ephesians in Ephesians 2:11. Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men, remember that at that time you 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.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility 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. And in this 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 were near, for through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and 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. So far, our reading. There are three things that we see in this passage, and they are sort of neatly laid out to us in this passage. Three things: verses 11 to 13, then it's broken up to verses 14 to 18, and then finally 19 to 22.

And they're great themes or great ideas that Paul is expressing. The first one that Paul deals with is the truth of a new people under God with a new identity. Now if you remember, you who were here three weeks ago, we dealt with the issue of identity as we started looking at this topic of what is the church. And we looked at Jeremiah and saw God telling the Israelites to get on living in Babylon. And the question is, how could God ask this people, the people of God who had their identity built on God being with them in Jerusalem, how could they go on with their identity when it had been so dependent on the physical homeland that they had?

But God says that He has a new plan for them, a new plan to prosper them. And that plan we saw was centred on Jesus Christ. Their identity was not dependent on their culture nor on their physical location where they lived. And this morning, as we look at Ephesians, Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that they who were formerly Gentiles, not Jews, but were unbelievers and were foreigners to the covenants of promise. Verse 12, they were without hope and without God.

But now, because of what Jesus Christ had accomplished on the cross, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. This plan that God said in Jeremiah 29, this new thing that He was doing, would cause a new reality of God's people to exist. And when talking about the church, we talk about a new people, a radically new identity, a new nation who have been created by faith in one gospel, in one truth. The Christian community consists of those who have repented and those who have believed and have a common experience of God's grace in their life. That is what this reality, this new nation is.

People that have repented, people that have believed, and have a common experience of the message of God's grace and love in Jesus. But this is not a new invention of the New Testament. We see even right back, and this is what Paul is alluding to, right back in Exodus 19, where God makes the promise to this ragtag bunch of people in the desert at Sinai, and says to them in Exodus 19:4-5, a people oppressed, enslaved, marginalised. He says to them, you yourself have seen what I did to Egypt, to your oppressors, how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to Myself. Now if you obey Me fully and you keep My covenant, a promise that I'm making to you, then out of all nations, you will be My treasured possession.

Exodus 6 says this more specifically. God said to Moses when He says, I'm going to do this for the people of Israel. Exodus 6 says, I will free you from being slaves to Egypt, and I will redeem you. I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God. This was a covenant promise.

I want you to be My people, and I want you to love Me as your God. But notice the order. Notice the order of these promises, of these requests by God. First, God saves. First, God saves from slavery and oppression from the hands of Egypt.

And then secondly, as a result, His people obey His law and live according to His will. And Paul points back to this again. He says, before all things, God, by pure grace, saves. And then in return, His people are to commit themselves to God, to call Him their king, to become His people. And as a result, as a result, they become a distinct people.

In other words, what made the Israelites or the Jews in the Old Testament a people, a corporate body, a community was this shared experience of God's grace. But the reality, the amazing thing that Paul wants to flesh out here is that there is a new people with a new identity. And the apostle Peter Himself in 1 Peter 2:9-10 deliberately echoes the phrases of the Old Testament of Exodus 19 and applies it to the church. He says, once you were not a people. Once you didn't belong anywhere, but now you are the people of God.

Because we have heard and believed the gospel, we have been brought into a new relationship, not simply with God, but with other Christians who we now call brothers and sisters. And the same pattern applies. Before all things, before all things, God, by His pure, sheer, undeserved grace rescues us from slavery. Not merely from human oppressors, but slavery to a powerful spiritual reality of sin, of Satan, of death. And because we have been saved, we are called to commit ourselves to God.

And so too we become a distinct people. We become a people of a new identity, and we become part of this covenant promise that God made in the Old Testament. We see this fleshed out a little bit in the second part here. And we see in verses 14 to 18 that Paul discusses the issue of how the promises to the Jews and to the Gentile Christians have been reconciled because of Jesus. By having died on the cross, Jesus abolishes the barrier between the moralistic Jews and the irreligious Gentiles.

And this is accomplished in verse 15, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. In doing so, He created in Himself, as verse 16 says, one man out of two. Out of the moralistic Jews and out of the irreligious Gentiles, one man is formed. And because of that, Jesus Christ has put an end to hostility between the various understandings of how we have communion with God. Verse 17 says, He came, Jesus, came and preached peace to those who were far away, meaning the Gentiles, and those who were near, meaning the Jews.

For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. In other words, this is what Paul is saying. In other words, whether you were far or whether you were near, Jesus Christ came with the same message, and that was a message of peace. Jesus still had to preach a message that would give you peace. The peace that you are loved, that you are accepted by God.

Now whether you are Jew or Gentile, whether you are far away or whether you are near in your understanding of God or who He is, we are all the same because none of us really were ever with God. You were close, He says to the Jews, you were close, you were near to Him, but you weren't with Him. And as Gentiles, you were far away, but obviously you weren't with Him. It is only through Jesus Christ that we have access, He says, to the Father through the Spirit. Now the metaphor that Paul uses again is about being united in one body, Christ's body.

And again, two weeks ago, we looked at this metaphor in 1 Corinthians, where the church is likened to be this body of Christ, a Christian community of people deliberately sharing and existing as one organism together. Christians, in other words, aren't an aggregate of individuals, but they are a coherent organism existing together with each member playing his or her part whilst deeply and integrally connected to the rest. In other words, unique people with different gifts and different abilities and different backgrounds, but sharing in one life together. Paul said in Jesus' body, hostility had been put to death between the Jews and the Gentiles because of the cross. But that also means that hostility between perhaps charismatics and Presbyterians or the extroverted and the introverted, the South Africans and the Aussies, and perhaps perhaps even Armenians and Calvinists, don't shoot me, has been put to death.

Christ's death has put an end to hostility because we are one body. If the hand hurts, the whole body hurts. If you shoot yourself in the foot, every other part hurts. The question is, do we agree with this reality? Has it hit home yet?

If Jesus had come to preach peace to those who were far away and those who are near, then wherever you place yourself along that spectrum in your understanding, in the things that you hold dear to, wherever you place yourself, the reality is, whether far or near, you still need His peace. Because no one has it in and of themselves. Not even the Jews had it in and of themselves. The gospel crushes our pride. It crushes our pride, and it makes us humble, and it makes us forgive.

It is the only thing that could cause us to exist together in this phenomenal organism called the body of Christ, the church. We are one person sharing one life together. That is the image. Now having explained the reason that we become one or how we become one, that moment when Jesus preaches peace to those who are far and near, and having received access to God the Father through the Spirit, we move to the third part of this passage, verses 19 to 22. And Paul explodes in this amazing part, just an explosion of metaphors of what the church is, who the church is.

He says that in a few short sentences, we hear that we have become a kingdom, we have become a family, and we've become a temple. Have a listen. Verse 19. Consequently, as a result of these things, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as a 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 place in which God lives by His Spirit. Now there's significance, and there's a reason that Paul uses these metaphors when describing the church. And Paul uses these images in other parts of scripture and other parts of His letters, but He throws this entire mix together to explain or to remind of all the different facets or different truths about the church of God. Firstly, He says, Christians have the assurance that we are no longer foreigners and aliens, but that we have become citizens or a citizen of God's people. You don't have a tourist visa anymore.

You have a passport. The language here is of becoming part of a kingdom with full rights of citizenship. Now, again, we have to remember in the time of Paul's writing, the issue of citizenship was a big deal. In the Roman era, if you had a citizenship, if you were a citizen of the Roman Empire, you had it set. Your life was set.

You had privileges. You had special treatment that most people could only dream of. And we see this so poignantly in Acts 22 when an official in the Roman army says to Paul, are you a Roman citizen? Paul says, I am. And He says in more or less, wow.

You're lucky. I had to pay a lot of money to become a citizen. It was something that was very precious and very dear. And many of us understand the privilege of that moment where we move from being a visa holder to being a citizen of a country. Full citizenship in that time meant that you moved into the guaranteed Pax Romana, the peace of Rome.

While you were a citizen, you were guaranteed safety and prosperity. And in the scary days of the Roman Empire, that sort of peace, the Pax Romana, was worth its weight in gold. It meant security. No one could mistreat you without the full weight of Rome's advanced legal system coming to your aid. You were entitled to legal hearings, to lawyers, to advocates, to unbiased judges, and impartial legal systems.

And Paul says that when we become Christians, we receive the full rights of being God's people in God's kingdom. No longer foreigners. No longer visa holders. No longer aliens without rights, without access to God. Once you were outcasts, now you belong. Once we were stuck in our ragtag tribes divided by animosity, hounded by iniquity, by partiality, by oppression.

But now we have the Advocate, Jesus Christ, mediating for us. We have full rights to the peace of God, and we have the security of being protected by a good and righteous king. It's interesting if you have a look at just how many times that word peace is mentioned in this passage. Peace, security, safety. Secondly, while we are citizens and have full access to the peace of God's kingdom, we are also members of God's household.

We are members of God's household. No longer foreigners and aliens. And while we have the safety and the security of this kingdom, we are loved and accepted like we are in the family. Both the apostles Paul and Peter talk about receiving the inheritance of God, which is the riches of God as Father lavishly bestowed upon us as His children. The image of family is so intimate, and while it seems easy for us to imagine now, when Paul talked about God becoming a Father and us being His family, it was, in many ways, revolutionary.

God was God. God was majestic and powerful and deserved all His glory. And we can understand being in His kingdom, but to suggest that He is a Father, that intimacy is almost shocking. What it means for us is that we have open and free access to God like any child should have with their Father. It means that God is for us, not against us.

God as Father is for us, not against us. He inclines His ear to hear us. Rather than being distant or out of our reach, it means that those sitting around us have a massive privilege of being more than fellow citizens. They are brothers and sisters loved and valued by this great Father. And therefore, it will make us think twice about hurting our brother and our sister.

We are protected by the security and the strength of God's kingdom, but even greater is that we are loved and valued as God's family. Finally, Paul says that all of us as the church is joined together and rises to become the church of God, a dwelling place in which God lives by His Spirit. Again, Paul talks about this elsewhere, the idea of God's temple being in His people, like in 1 Corinthians 6. But the image here is that as a united fellowship, God has formed His temple with us and dwells with us. If it was possible, Paul says that if you think of God's family as being intimate, as God as your Father, if you think that's intimate, imagine God dwelling amongst us right here.

Talk about intimacy. The security of God's kingdom, that's amazing. The love and acceptance of God's household, but now the holiness and the purity and the glory of God's dwelling place, the temple. The rich theology of the Old Testament temple is probably a bit too deep for us to deal with adequately this morning, but in short, the temple of Israel was the physical representation of God's presence with Israel. It meant that God understood.

He really understood what was happening with Israel. It meant that nothing was hidden from God. It meant that God understood and put His name on Israel. And in a sense, God's glory was tied up with Israel's story. Now please understand me.

God's glory is glorious irrespective of what's happening on earth. But when God put His name on that temple, when God put His name on Israel, Israel's existence became intricately connected with God. So perhaps it's better to say that Israel's story is inseparably tied with God's glory. When the church is called the temple of God, it means that God's glory is revealed in us. Can you imagine that?

God's glory, the glory that we've sung about this morning, the praise, the majesty, the greatness. That glory is revealed in us. It means that when we become vessels through which He works and He dispenses His pleasure. He is pleased to have His name rest on us. But again, that has all sorts of implications, doesn't it?

It means that our love for one another and the unity we have with one another reflects on the glory of God. That's why Jesus said that's why Jesus said they will know you are My disciples if you love one another. The glory of God is reflected in how united we are, how much we love one another. It means that God's purposes for this world will be achieved through the church, that God uses the church. And that's an amazing truth.

No world bank, no superpower, no America or China, no United Nations will achieve God's purposes for this world. It will be through His church. With Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone and the foundation of the prophets and the apostles, in other words, God's word, we as a dwelling place of God become the representation of God's presence and glory on earth. That is huge. And if that is true, friends, how dare we dirty it with pettiness?

How dare we dirty it with pride and with hostility? This morning, God shows us all the amazing facets, and these aren't even all of them. Shows us many of the amazing facets of the church. We are a new people with a new identity, a distinct people with distinct values. We share one life together, the life of Jesus who came to preach to all, whether far or near.

Consequently, we have become the kingdom of God, the household or the family of God, and the temple of God. And we are just reminded again and again that this is all grace, that this is sheer and unadulterated grace and a gift. None of us deserved to become citizens. We couldn't pay enough to be part of the peace of God. None of us deserve to be adopted as children, and none of us are clean and pure enough to be the dwelling place of God.

As we wrap up this month's look at the church of what it is, what it means for us, talking about membership and talking about mission, the truth is what we have in the church, what we have in this church is wonderful and precious. It is beautiful. But ultimately, it comes down to is that this church is built on nothing alone but the grace of God. And this message that we have up here, for God so loved the world, He loved us that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. This church doesn't hold up this message.

This message holds up this church. And that is the amazing thing about what we do here, and it just breaks down any anything that's going to cause disunity, that's going to cause hatred and hostility, and that is why Paul writes so much about this idea of oneness in the church. So let's strive to be a church that is worthy of the calling God has placed on us. A place of unity, a place of love, to be truth bearers and gospel sharers, intimate with God, yet inclusive of all people, a people of healing, yet a people of holiness, a people saying yes to grace, but no to sin. We are the people of God.

We are the church. Let's pray. Lord, what an amazing gift it is to be sitting here this morning, to be sitting with visitors and friends from distant parts of this country, friends that we've only met half an hour ago, and to know, Lord, that we are all, and we are all part of this kingdom of Yours, that we've all received a peace that no other country can give us, a citizenship that is eternal. There's no need to renew passports. Lord, the fact that we exist in a household with a Father that cares, that knows us, a Father that has not run away, slinked off, a Father that inclines to hear us.

Thank you, Lord, that we have friends around us that are more than friends, that are brothers and sisters. And thank you, Lord, that You are not far off, but that You are inside of us, dwelling. And Lord, all these implications and all the consequences of these amazing truths, Father, forgive us for when we have forgotten. Father, forgive us for when we have fallen short of that amazing calling. Lord, as we as we step forward as a church together, we pray that You will use us and move within us to live out, to be what You want us to be.

Father, we place our trust in You. We know that You are the King of this church. Lord Jesus, that You are the King of this church and that You will have Your way with us. And we humbly ask, Lord, that You will smooth out our edges, that You will mould us as the great Potter into the vessels You need us to be. And, Father, that we may serve as You want us to. Again, we come this morning to give our lives into Your hands and to say, Lord, You have permission.

You have all right. Thank you for the many blessings we receive and the truth of these images of the church. And we pray, Lord, for Your continual presence with us in the future. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.