Proper 11B, 2024
Text: Ephesians 2:11-22
Title: Change
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Can people truly change?
Does it happen?
Can you change?
Can you give up bad habits?
Can you conquer your addictions?
Can you make yourself a better person, if only you just try hard enough?
How long did your last diet last? Your last exercise program? Your last attempt to stick to a budget and get your finances under control?
Could you make a real and lasting change in your life?
Today Paul talks about a change, a radical change.
He talks about a change that is bigger than losing a few pounds, saving a few bucks, or any other change that you’ve managed to make on your own.
To understand the nature of this change, first we have to understand what we were like before the change needed to happen.
Paul is writing to Gentiles, to the non-Jews, to those who had not been circumcised.
God had made His promise of blessing to Abraham, a promise that would passed down to his descendants, a promise that was sealed with the sign of circumcision.
The people of Israel trusted that the Lord would keep His promise and would bless them.
But what about everyone else? What about the Gentiles? What about you?
Paul says that you were, “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
Separated. Alienated. Stranger. Hopeless. Godless.
That was you. That was your condition from before you were even born.
Separated. Alienated. Stranger. Hopeless. Godless.
You were on your own. You had no connection to Christ or to God the Father, or to any of God’s people, and the promise of blessing He had made to them.
Imagine going home one day, and finding yourself locked out of your house. You can’t get in. You knock and you knock, and no one opens the door for you. Your own Father doesn’t recognize you. Your brothers and sisters don’t know you. You have nowhere to go. Nowhere to be at home. No family to belong to. No hope that your circumstances could change.
That is where you started. That is what your life was like.
Separated. Alienated. Stranger. Hopeless. Godless.
Your sin, including the sin that you inherited from Adam and Eve, and the actual sins that you commit in thought, word, and deed, and all the good deeds that you fail to do, these separate you from God, and they separate you from other people around you. Your sin is what makes you a stranger and an alien.
But God did not leave you alone and isolated.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near…”
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…”
Did you catch that change, that incredible change?
You have gone from being a stranger, an alien, and outsider, to being a citizen, and a member of the household.
You never need to feel like a stranger. You never need to feel like you don’t belong.
God has one people, one nation, one family, and you are a member of it. You have equal standing with the saints. The distinction between Jew and Gentile doesn’t matter any more. We are all equally members of the household of God.
And it’s even more than that.
You aren’t just a member of the household, you are a part of the house itself. “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
You are now the temple, the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God.
You are so fully incorporated into the household, that you are a part of the house itself. God lives in you through His Spirit, and so you are God’s house, the place where He is present here on earth.
Can you imagine?
There’s only one house. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the stone that gives the whole house its strength and direction. Then the apostles and prophets, those who spoke the Word of God, they are the foundation. Everything that the church says and does flows from that very Word. And you have a place, too. You are a stone in the living house of God.
What an amazing change, to go from someone who was rejected, who was on the outside, to being part of the very dwelling place of God on earth.
How could it happen? How could such a change take place?
This change didn’t take place because God lowered His standards, and He decided just to relax, not care so much, and let everyone in.
This change didn’t happen because you tried really hard, gave up all your bad habits, and became the perfect person you wanted to be.
You may be able to give up smoking, or drinking, or unhealthy food, but you can never give up sinning. As long as you remain in the flesh, you will struggle with that sinful flesh.
This great change in you did not happen by anything that you did by your own strength and power.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
It was only by the blood of Jesus Christ that you have been changed.
Jesus came to fix this problem of separation, isolation, and alienation.
Jesus came to bring you and the Father together, and to bring you and all the rest of God’s people together.
In a word, Jesus came to bring peace.
This peace began with His incarnation. In His very flesh and blood, in His body Jesus united humanity and divinity. He brought God and man together. “He made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”
This peace continued with His perfect life. Jesus kept all the laws and commandments for you, in your place. “He abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.”
This peace was completed with His death on the cross. He “reconcile[d] us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” When Jesus died, He put to death all your sin, all your hostility toward God and other people.
And that wasn’t all. “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
Do you remember Jesus’ first words to the disciples on Easter evening? What was the first word out of His mouth? “Peace!” “Peace be with you.” “You now have peace with God and peace with one another because your redemption is complete.”
And Jesus breathed on the disciples, and they received the Holy Spirit. Their sins were forgiven, and now they had access to God the Father.
That same Spirit is at work among us today, forgiving our sins, making peace between us, uniting us in the one, holy, Christian, and apostolic church.
And one day, you will experience the greatest change of all, when your sinful, mortal flesh, that has been laid to rest in the dust of death, will arise, and will be changed, transformed, made to be just like Jesus.
No more hostility. No more isolation. No more alienation. Only complete and perfect peace.
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