I want to have you turn in your Bibles this morning to the letter of Paul to the Ephesians as we pick up our study there. And we continue today a section that began in chapter 2, verse 1, and runs through chapter 3, in which Paul demonstrates the great truth of the gospel that in Christ, Jew and Gentile have been reconciled to one another, and that because they have been reconciled to God in Christ. Paul began this section with the strong and undeniable truth about who we are, reminding us that all men and women, whether Jew or Gentile, by nature are dead men walking, and that only because of the sovereign love of God, the elect have been saved by grace, through faith. And are no longer dead men walking, but are living men working to the glory of God and to the benefit of His church. Paul begins in verse 11 of chapter 2 by charging the Ephesian saints to remember their past situation, which is the focus of verses 11 and 12. And he concludes our reading this morning in verses 19 to 22 by describing the reality of their present and forever situation, which is the consequence, the result of, the benefit of, the work of Christ on our behalf, which he sets forth in verses 13 to 18. Paul opens this section from verses 13 to 18 with a statement that sums up the entire passage we're about to read when he says, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. And why is that? Because Christ Himself is our peace. He continues in verse 14. Christ Himself is our peace. In verse 13, Paul sums up his call for the Ephesians and the saints of all ages to remember our past situation of hostility, of enmity, the biblical word enmity, hostility, rejoice in our present situation of peace, and to give thanks to God for sending Christ Jesus in the flesh to be our peace. And Paul begins verse 13 with the words, but now in order to draw our attention to the change that He's going to draw us to. The change that God has wrought in His saints who were formerly far away but are now brought near through the blood of Christ. Read with me Ephesians chapter 2 verses 11 through 22. Hear the Word of God. Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who called 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 his 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. Again, our text for today to guide our thinking is verse 13. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. Paul's first point in this verse 13, this summary verse, is made by his address to the Gentiles. He says, you who once were far away. And in the simple statement he sums up all of verses 11 and 12 where he called them to remember that formerly you were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision. Remember that at one time you were separate from Christ. When we consider the Bible, we consider the revelation of God from beginning to end, we see that the Gentiles, by definition, were far away from God and His people. And they despised God's people. They had enmity, they had hostility towards God's people, and it was not without reason because it's grounded in the basic hostility that every man, woman, and child has by nature. Since the fall of Adam, all men by nature are enemies of God. Each and every one is conceived and born in sin and by nature are at enmity. hostility with God. All men are born far away. And from the very beginning, all the nations have raged against God and His sovereign rule. But God in His mercy did something to change that. According to His sovereign good pleasure, He set His affection on Abraham and on Isaac and on Jacob. And He loved them and He chose Israel, their descendants, above all the rest of the nations. He chose them not because there was anything good in them nothing deserving in them in fact they were the least of all the nations he says but because He's faithful to His oath to Abraham He redeemed them from the land of slavery and He set them apart in a land distinct from all the nations He made them heirs of the covenants of promise given to Abraham He brought them near through the exodus from Egypt and He lived among them in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and the tabernacle and the temple. And through His prophets He gave them reason to hope in the Messiah to come. He set them apart from all the nations and He did this by covenant. He made a covenant with them and in this covenant it was codified in the law given through Moses. And by its very nature, the law of Moses was exclusive to the people of Israel. And by definition, it excluded all others. The Gentile nations were by definition outside. And in marking out Israel as his peculiar people, his particular people, God made them to be targets of the enmity of the nations, just as he himself was the target of the enmity of the nations. And in their experience, God foreshadowed the experience of His one and only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the one true Israel who came in the flesh, who bore the enmity of all. Isaiah 53 verse 3 reveals Jesus Christ when He would come as the one who would be despised and rejected by men. a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised and esteemed him not. You see, by the law, the Gentiles were judicially and ceremonially far away from God's chosen people, the Jews. Judicially, the law marked the Jews off as a separate nation, And the Gentiles were barred from membership, from citizenship, the full benefits within the nation of Israel. And ceremonially, the law barred the Gentiles from temple worship. They barred them from the presence of God in this world. In fact, on the wall that divided the temple on the inside, in the court of the Gentiles on the outside, was a banner, was a marker. And it read, No man of another nation is to enter within the barrier, an enclosure around the temple. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death, which follows. The law barred, it kept away the Gentiles. Therefore, Paul says to Gentile converts in verse 12, he says, You were excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. Far away from God and the covenant he had made with his people Israel, the Gentiles were separate from Christ. having neither the promise nor the hope of a Messiah to come, to deliver them from their body of death. But for their sake, God did something. The Lord had called Israel to be a light to the nations, to be a light to the Gentiles. The Lord said to Israel in Isaiah 42, verses 6 and 7, I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the Gentiles. To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. Oh, what a glorious calling Israel had. To be a light to the Gentiles. But instead of opening eyes and setting captives free, the Jews became as blind men, leading blind men. And Jesus pronounced judgment on their hypocrisy. in the seven woes of Matthew 23 that include this one. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. The Jews had turned the law upside down. They'd forgotten their deliverance. And they spread their distortion of the law of Moses. They majored in the judicial and ceremonial aspects of the law, even as they neglected the moral aspect. They neglected the more important matters, Jesus said, of justice and mercy and faithfulness. Jesus said of them in Matthew 15, 7-9, You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor me with their lips, but they're far away from me in their hearts. so you see by the time that jesus came not only were the gentiles far away for they had been from the beginning but the jews also were far away from their god they had come to pin their hopes on the sign on the physical circumstance of the covenant they had pinned their hopes on circumcision of the flesh even though they did not possess the thing it signified. They didn't have circumcised hearts. Paul wrote in Romans chapter 2, verses 28 and 29, that a man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor a circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly. And circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, and not by the written code. Now the error of the Jews found its way into the church by what Scripture calls the Judaizers who taught the Gentiles that they must first submit to circumcision and the other ceremonial requirements of the law of Moses before they were baptized into the Christian church. And from the very beginning, Acts 15, the synod had met in Jerusalem and they rejected that error out of him and yet Paul had to fight it every day. All of his letters refer to it in some way or another. Most notably, of course, his letter to the Galatians. You foolish Galatians, he says. Will you finish in the flesh what has begun in the Spirit? In chapter 2 there records, of course, his rebuke of the Apostle Peter. The Apostle Peter, who certainly knew better, but fell into the sin of rejecting and denying the Gospel because he denied eating with Gentile converts. And Paul rebuked him, rightly so. But even here in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul puts the Judaizers on notice. They were active in Ephesus, not as strongly as in Galatians. We read in verse 11 and listen to this with that in mind. Verse 11. Paul writes to the Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision. That done in the body by the hands of men, they were proud of their circumcision and the despised of the uncircumcised. The Judaizers needed to know that what Paul had twice told the Galatians, he said, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The text here this morning reminds us that whether Gentile by birth or Jew by circumcision, whether new convert to the faith today or one raised in a household of faith, left to ourselves, we would all remain far away from God at enmity with God and at enmity with His people. But this text also reminds the saints. That was then, Paul says, This is now. For while you were formerly far away, he goes on to make a second point in verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, he says, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. In Christ, Paul says to the Ephesians, you've been brought near. We must remember this is covenantal language. This is speaking to those who were outside. They're now brought near. This is not a language of synthesis where the Gentiles and the Jews sat down and hashed it out and came to an agreement about what they were going to believe and to establish the church of God. This is not the language of the United Nations or of the Tower of Babel. This is the language of incorporation by a sovereign act of God. Christ has, as Paul says in verses 14 and 15, made the two one, creating in himself one new man out of the two. Thus, or in this way, making peace. You see, the Gentiles within the church are no longer at enmity with the Jews, in hostility with the Jews, because God has made them to be Jews. Not Jews judicially as a nation state, not Jews ceremonially by making them be circumcised, but Jews truly by circumcising their hearts. It was true for them and it is true for the saints of all ages as Paul wrote to Gentile converts in Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12. He says, In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with the circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ. The circumcised. And Paul writes in our reading today to Gentile converts in verse 19 that now, because of that work of Christ, you are fellow citizens with God's people. You are members of God's household. In Him, he goes on in verse 21, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, he repeats, in verse 22, it's parallel. They're saying the same thing. In Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. There's only one chosen people. There's only one people belonging to God. There's only one royal priesthood, one holy nation. There's only one holy, Catholic, apostolic church. And her members are citizens of the kingdom of God. And they are heirs to the promises to Abraham. They have unwavering hope of this promise being fulfilled in Christ Jesus. You see, in this church, in and through this church, God is in the world, living by His Spirit through His people. This church is, as Paul writes in verse 20, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. Paul's making a reference here to New Testament apostles and New Testament prophets, which he does later in chapter 3, verse 5. It's true that the church depends on the prophets of the Old Testament, but we need to know there were prophets given to the church in the New Testament when Scripture was being recorded. And this is what Paul's speaking of here. He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 28, that God appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, and then the rest of the gifts for the church. And he repeats that priority in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 and 12, when he writes that God gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets. some to be evangelists, pastors, and teachers, all of which together are to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ, the one holy Catholic apostolic church, can be built up. It's much the same as what we saw when the new Parsonage was built. It started with footings, and they added the slab, and then they put up the walls, and they put on the roof, and they put on the fixtures and the fittings and the finish, and it was done. so also the Church of Christ. The true Kingdom of God is being built up on the cornerstone of Christ, the foundation of the Apostles. And through the gifts the Holy Spirit gives to the Church, which we'll consider when we get to chapter 4. It began with the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh. He came, Paul writes in verse 17, and preached peace to you who are far away and peace to those who are near. He came and preached the Kingdom. and then he went away. But he left behind the apostles and the prophets. He poured out his Spirit on his church to continue his work and to finish the foundation. We read in the book of Acts where Luke wrote all that the apostles did in establishing the church to Gentile and Jew. And he begins by looking back. He says in chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, He says, in my first letter, his gospel, I wrote what Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven. And then he goes on through the rest of the book to tell what Christ continues to do through his church today. It's on this work of Christ in his incarnation by the Spirit through the apostles and New Testament prophets that the church of Christ is being built. Even as we wait for the heavenly temple to be come down, that John saw in the Revelation, we enjoy God in the world today through His church. You see, as one new man, Gentile and Jew together have been granted peace with God so that He dwells with them. In Christ, the church has been granted the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, Paul writes in Ephesians 4, verse 3. You see, within the church there are none who are far away and there are none who are to be treated as though they are far away. As Paul says to the church in Galatians 3, verses 26 to 28, you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and you are heirs to the promise of the covenant. And Paul says in verse 18, through Christ, we both, Jew and Gentile, have access to the Father by one Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Now this access is more than a free pass that we get to carry in our wallet and when we want to go to see God. I fear we use it that way sometimes or think we do. The truth of the matter is that we have Christ, our High Priest, who in His glorified humanity has already entered into the presence of God and we, with Him, have already been ushered in and are there. As the people of God. Reconciled one to another. Reconciled to God. We are in the presence of God as His people. Remember what chapter 1, verse 3 said. The Father has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In chapter 2, verse 6, God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with Himself in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. We are seated there. If we're in the church of Christ. We have indeed been brought truly near to God. And the means by which the saints who were formerly far away, whether Jew or Gentile, and who have been brought near is summarized by Paul in the last part of verse 13, chapter 2, when he says, Now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. Now, the work of Christ permeates the language of this entire letter, and in particular verses 11 to 22. But most clearly in this section we read today in verses 13 to 18, Paul uses language over and over again that speaks of the redemptive work of Christ for his people. He says in verse 13, that it is through the blood of Christ. In verse 15, in his flesh. In verse 16, through the cross. It's the finished work of Christ, Paul writes in verse 14, that destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. That is the dividing wall of enmity that divided between Gentile and Jew, making the two into one. And it's the finished work of Christ, he writes in verse 16, that put to death their hostility, not toward one another, which he has just mentioned, but their hostility held in common toward God. The finished work of Christ has destroyed the enmity between men. and between men and God. The Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone has accomplished all that has changed for us as saints. Through the blood of Christ, the saints have been, in a word, reconciled. That is, they have peace and unity with each other and with God. According to Paul in verse 15, Christ obtained all this, this wonderful reconciliation by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. Abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. This is the great truth that stands behind what Paul would have us see here today. By His life and death, Christ, God in the flesh, has freed his saints from the law. We're no longer under law, but under grace, Paul says in Romans 6. And by that it means in Christ we're no longer required to seek our salvation by obedience to the law. The law that says do this, do all of this, and live. Because cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything in the book of the law. Christ has abolished the law. But we must not misunderstand what this means. Christ has abolished the law not by setting it aside, not by throwing it out the window, not by suspending it by some caveat of His change of mind. He has abolished the law in this way. By satisfying it in the humanity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He has satisfied his demands and he has rendered it no longer judicially or ceremonially binding on his people. He has freed us from the law as a covenant of works to gain access to God. And at the same time, enables us by His Spirit to more and more keep the moral aspects, the weightier aspects, the abiding aspects of the law that we review this morning as we consider God's law's guide. By His Spirit, He does that for us. In His flesh and through His blood, Christ Jesus propitiated the wrath of God against His people. Now there's a big word for you, propitiation. We don't hear it very often. Some may have never heard it before. God and Christ propitiated the wrath of God against His people. Part of the reason we may not know this word is that the NIV translators choose not to use it in translating the text. It's understandable. They're not making a gross error here. You will find in your Bibles where this propitiation is used in the Greek, the phrase atoning sacrifice in your NIVs. And this is understandable because through the atoning sacrifice of Christ is how God was propitiated by Christ. It's the means that Christ used to get the result that we're talking about. Christ offered Himself as an atoning sacrifice. That is, He substituted Himself for His people. He was born in the flesh, subject to the law, coming in the flesh to fulfill all that it demands, perfectly obeying it, even obeying His Father in the death of the cross in place of the people that earned it, us, sinners. And as our sacrifice, Christ satisfied the justice of God. He atoned for our sin by the shedding of His blood for us. So, atoning sacrifice is required for propitiation. But at the same time, when Christ atoned for our sin, He did something else. Something else was accomplished. Something more. There's something more that this text is all about. By His atoning sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ propitiated, that is, He turned aside the wrath of God on the saints and he turned it aside to himself. He bore for you and for me and for all the saints the wrath of God. The wrath of God that continues to abide against the unbeliever. The wrath of God that will never be satisfied for them but is only satisfied for the saints of God in Christ. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 2, verse 17. For this reason, Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make propitiation for the sins of his people, that he might turn away the wrath of God from them and take it upon himself. Therefore, Paul says in verse 16, That it's through the cross that He put to death their hostility, their enmity. Speaking of our enmity with God. And this the Apostle John writes in 1 John chapter 4 verse 10 is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins. He stood in the way and took what we deserve. Not only death, but the wrath of God, eternal wrath of God. So saints of God this morning, hear this word of God from Ephesians and be reminded that you were formerly far away, but have been brought close to one another and to God through Christ who is Himself our peace. He's united us one to another. He's reconciled us to God through His blood shed for us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this Word this morning, this Word that tells us of what You've done for us in Christ. We live in an age in which we don't like to speak of the wrath of God. We live in an age that is content to hear of Your love and maybe even of Your justice. But we have a hard time accepting that You bear wrath against those who are opposed to You. And Father, we've been reminded this morning that left unto ourselves, we would be under that wrath. We would abide under that wrath. We would be eternally judged and condemned by Your wrath. but Christ Himself is our peace. And He has come to turn away your wrath from us and to turn it to Himself. And by His life and His work and His death on the cross, Lord, He has redeemed a people for you, a people from all nations, a people from the Jews. We marvel, Lord, at your sovereign work to build up a church from that which was not. To create the one man in Christ Jesus from the nations of the world and the Jews. To satisfy your law in Christ. Thank you, Father, that this is true for us, that we are no longer far away, but we've been brought near. We've been brought into your presence in heaven, in Christ. Lord, help us to know this is true. and help us to live in a manner that is in keeping with it. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.