Tuesday, July 18, 2006

First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Ephesians 2:11-22

[Each week, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built as I can. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Hopefully, it's helpful to others as well, since most weekends, our Bible lesson is one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world.]

The Bible Lesson: Ephesians 2:11-22
11So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— 12remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

General Comments:
1. For general introductory comments on the book of Ephesians, look here.

2. The specific issue being addressed here is one which dogged the early church. It was this: How were Gentile believers in Jesus Christ to be viewed by Jewish Christians?

The Council at Jerusalem had long ago agreed that in order to become Christians, Gentiles didn't have to first become Jews. The notion that this might be required of new Gentile believers in Christ may seem bizarre to us today. But in fact, it would have been an almost natural assumption for the Jewish Christians to have made. After all, no one had ever really known the God of the universe apart from the laws and rites of the Jewish faith.

What the first Christians--Jews and Gentiles--came to see was that it had always been God's purpose to cultivate the Jewish people as His own witnesses in the world in order to cast a light on the nations. When Jesus, the light of the world, came and died and rose, historic Israel achieved the zenith of its purpose. The early Church came slowly to understand the task to which the risen Jesus called them: To move out into all the world and share the good news that all people--Jew and Gentile--may be eternally reconciled with God by faith in Jesus Christ.

One of the perennial arguments made against any new initiative in churches today is found in what are often referred to as the seven last words of any church meeting: We never did it that way before. For the early Jewish Christians, even those who could accept the decision of the Council at Jerusalem that Gentiles didn't have to go through the hoops of Old Testament ritual in order to be welcomed into the Christian family, there was another issue. How could they keep from treating these Gentiles as johnny-come-latelies, as spiritual also-rans, as second class citizens?

3. The author of Ephesians began giving his answer to this question in what was last weekend's Bible lesson: Ephesians 1:3-14. In the opening verses of chapter 2, he also says that "once" the Jewish and Gentile Christians were all in the same spiritual boat, even those who may have observed Jewish ritual. They all had lived "in the passions of [their] flesh."

We read a phrase like that today and because of our contemporary obsessions, assume that the author is saying that the Ephesian Christians were once sexually promiscuous. While that may have been part of what happened in their former lives and such behavior may have resulted from their one-time "passions of the flesh," much more is meant by the phrase.

In Paul's writings (and Paul-influenced writings, as some scholars believe this book to be), the flesh refers to the entire short-sighted world view that craves immediate gratification of my own personal desires, God and other people be hanged.

The Jewish and Gentile Christians of Ephesus alike had lived in the Kingdom of Me, our lesson says.

4. Unwilling to see us eternally separated from Him, the inevitable consequence of living in that Kingdom of Me, God created a new access point to Him, a single means of reconciliation with Him: Jesus Christ.

5. The words of our lesson are meant to remind all the Christians at Ephesus of their common dependence on the charitable love of God (what the Bible calls grace) through which sinners, Jewish and Gentile, are able to turn from their sin, believe in Jesus, and so be given life.

6. All of this is not dependent on obedience of law, but on Christ and our faith in Him.

If that were all the author of this passage said, all his Christian readers, ancient and modern, could nod their heads in agreement as though they were listening to some self-evident platitude. (Even though salvation by faith in a gracious God is absolutely revolutionary and life-changing!) The problem is that he asserts that God has utterly abolished the Old Testament law.

In his commonly acknowledged writings, Paul never made such a claim and was, in fact, an observant Jew his whole life. (A fact that argues against Paul being the actual author of Ephesians and in favor of it being authored by a later disciple of the apostle.)

Jesus explicitly says that He hadn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Can the assertion of this weekend's Bible lesson be reconciled with this statement by Jesus?

I think it can be when one considers the principle to which I've returned again and again in these "passes" at Bible lessons: One can best understand content when one considers context.

Evidently, by the time Ephesians was written, the Church had moved beyond the core issue of whether Gentiles could be Christians or whether they needed to become Jews first. But it's equally evident that some of the Jewish believers regarded the Gentile Christians as being not quite up-to-snuff because they didn't circumcise their males or follow other Jewish ritual law. Some may have, in fact, attached significance to obeying these laws--keeping a kosher table, sacrificing a lamb on Yom Kippur, and so on--in the whole economy of salvation.

In that sense, the writer of Ephesians was right. In Christ, as the New Testament book of Hebrews eloquently affirms, God had abolished the old ways. Christ makes it possible for all who believe in Him to live in the assurance that He has fulfilled the law and paid the price for our sin for all eternity. While every Christian is called to live in obedient response to the gift of new life they have through Christ and therefore, is called to both avoid deliberate sin and to live in an attitude of "daily repentance and renewal," no one should lay new laws or guilt trips on the believer in Jesus Christ. We are free!

7. Finally, one of the great overarching themes of this passage is reconciliation. Jews and Gentiles are, in common, reconciled to God by one means alone, Jesus Christ. Since we are all commonly dependent on God's charity (grace) in Christ, there's no room for arrogance or condescencion. In Christ, believers in Him are reconciled to one another.

The Church then, is much more than a human organization. It's a people once enslaved to the passions of their flesh, now free to be who God made them to be, reconciled in Christ to God and to each other, each individual a brick laid on the strong foundation of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Him given by the prophets and the apostles.

Oneness with God and oneness in Christ are what the book of Ephesians wants all Christians to acknowledge and experience.

More on this passage later in the week, I hope.

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