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9. The Wealth Unfolded(continued) by Ruth Paxson
The Constitution of the Church (2:11-3:12)
Our approach to the study of this great theme will be from a somewhat new angle. Let us see not only how God constituted the Church in the beginning, but how His method of doing it with its glorious results is the only effective way of meeting the desperate need of human society to-day, which is in such a serious state of maladjustment.
There are two distinct and divergent lines of teaching in the Church to-day. There are those, who, interpreting the Word of God literally, say that God has commissioned the Church primarily to save the individual sinner, and, therefore, its first obligation is to
preach the gospel of redemption through regeneration. There is another group who, interpreting the Bible liberally, say that the primary work of the Church is to salvage human society, which is in such a deplorable state. So they advocate preaching a social gospel which aims at the reconstruction of society with the expectation of the reformation of the individual. Let the Word show us what God says and does. He clearly teaches that sin's primary work was to separate man from God (4:18). Adam and Eve, when once conscious of sin, "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord" (Genesis 3:8). So the first work of salvation is to bring the sinner out of hiding into real and joyous fellowship with the Lord. This necessitates preaching the Gospel of redemption to the sinner, that he may get right with God. For, if he is out of adjustment with God, he will most certainly be out of alignment with men.
Therefore the personal aspect of salvation is presented first in 2:1-10, where God creates a saint out of a sinner, thus making him fit for both divine and human society, rather than reconstructing human society to make it fit for men still in their sins. God created the saint before He constituted the Church out of the aggregate of saints. He has used His Church as a powerful and effectual factor in the remaking of society, as the unprejudiced study of any mission field will prove. Ephesians has place for a social gospel, but it follows the individual gospel as a fruit rather than taking precedence over it as the root.
The aim of the social gospel is to bring a right adjustment in all the manifold relationships of men with men, and nations with nations, so that wrongs and enmities may be abolished; that righteousness and love may prevail, and that men may live in peace one with another. That the Church has a responsibility in social as well as individual salvation no student of the Word will deny. But the Church itself is divided over the method to be used for its achievement. One section, stressing primarily the brotherhood of man, works to strengthen the human ties which bind men together through political, economic, social and religious alignments, so they give themselves to the advocacy of the World Court, the [United] Nations, disarmament, labor legislation, and World Conferences on Unity of Churches. Another section of the Church, stressing primarily the necessity of men’s reconciliation with God, works to bring about the conciliation of man with man by the mediation of Jesus Christ, who is able to do away not only with the fruit of enmity, but with the enmity itself, and thus open the way for a true brotherhood based on mutual fellowship in Christ. Again let us see from the Word God’s way of conciliation:
Sin’s secondary work was to separate man from man. When Adam was brought face to face with his own sin of disobedience to God’s command, he immediately placed the blame for his transgression upon Eve his wife. And when the Lord asked Eve, "What is this that thou hast done?" she promptly laid the blame upon the serpent. Men and women have been shifting the responsibility for their own sin upon someone else ever since that day.
Sin caused friction between that first husband and wife. Sons were born into the family. Cain, the elder, was the follower of Satan and his works were evil; while Abel chose to follow God and his works were righteous (I John 3:12). This caused jealousy between them which ended in the murder of Abel by Cain. The sin in that first family on earth, like a pebble thrown into the ocean of humanity, has caused an ever-widening circle of friction, jealousy and enmity, until to-day the world is one colossal war camp. One of the greatest of world problems is how to keep men and nations from each others’ throats.
Sin has separated human society into hostile peoples and parties. Sin has caused a mighty schism in humanity, dividing men racially into Semite and anti-Semitic, Aryan and non-Aryan; nationally into the totalitarianism of Bolshevism, Nazism, and Fascism, and into democracies; socially into caste and outcast, titled and common, white, black and yellow; economically into capitalistic and proletarian; and religiously into Christendom and paganism; while Christendom is subdivided into wheat and tares, truth and error, an organism and an organization. Sin has also created in individuals and nations a superiority complex that has led to aggression and invasion and made the weak a prey to the strong.
Surely human society is in desperate need of reconstruction. There must be a conciliator between man and man if hatreds and enmities are to be put away and any real brotherhood established. But who is sufficient for such a task? Can any nation produce such a conciliator? Woodrow Wilson was a man of high international ideals, and hoped against hope that he could step into the breach between the nations and be used to bring peace to the world through his Utopian dream of a League of Nations. He died, some believe, of a broken heart, and his dream has become more like a nightmare for others.
Men have resorted to pacts and treaties of all kinds and descriptions to cement international friendship and to court peace. Internationally-minded statesmen, passionately devoted to the cause of peace, have labored long over the preparation of these treaties. Representatives of many nations have traveled long distances and spent many millions to meet in conferences to discuss them. Nations have signed these documents, publicly pledging thereby to do their part to keep the world’s peace, and have speedily gone to incredible lengths as international kidnappers of neighbor nations.
No treaty ever made or to be made can weld antipodal nations into peace. It may temporarily disarm a nation, but it can never destroy its will to war. The heart of peace is not an "it," but an "He." "He is our peace," and there is peace in no other way. God works to unite men, not by the reconstruction of human society, but by the construction of a divine society on an altogether new basis, as Paul shows in 2:11-3:13, where he passes from the personal to the corporate aspect of salvation.
So let us turn now to a study of the constitution of the Church, which is Christ’s Body. 2:11-22 falls naturally into three parts:
The Contrast between Jew and Gentile
| We | Israel | Circumcision | Commonwealth
of Israel | Made Nigh |
| Ye | Gentiles | Uncircumcision | Aliens and
Foreigners | Far off |
| Twain -- separated by |
{ the middle wall of partition.
{ the law of commandment
{ contained in ordinances.
{ enmity. |
We have already considered the great gulf between Jews and Gentiles, dividing them into two camps which bear toward each other mutual hatred and contempt. The privileged Jew looked upon the unprivileged Gentile as outcast even from the love of God.
Let us consider the spiritual condition of the Gentile pagans:
2:12. "Ye were without Christ."
The Messianic idea of a coming Deliverer for Israel welded the Jews together as citizens in a commonwealth. As a nation they looked for the Promised One who would be prophet, priest and king. The nation, as a whole, might depart from God and serve other gods; yet there was always a remnant of the true Israel that kept its faith fixed on that Coming One. While the Gentiles were just a race of individual pagans having no essential oneness except in sin. They had no part in the promised Messiah and no claim upon Him.
2:12. "Having no hope."
They were "strangers to the covenants of promise," so they had no anchor. They were as sailors in a captain less boat on an uncharted sea. They had no divine revelation and so no divine plan for their course of life. "Their future was like a night without a star." They had only the horizon of earth, with nothing to satisfy them here or hereafter.
2:12. "Ye were without God."
The Jews had one God in whom their national life centred. The Gentiles had innumerable gods; so their racial life disintegrated into many nations with no common meeting-point. The Old Testament reveals the nations as utterly opposed to God, and under the domination of Satan. Such was the condition of the Gentiles; outcasts from both human and divine fellowship.
| At that time -- Without |
{ Christ
{ Hope -- BUT NOW
{ God |
God intervenes for the hopeless Gentiles and provides a way of salvation through a world Saviour. These Gentile Christians at Ephesus had heard the Word of truth and had believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. They had been brought home to God by the redeeming blood.
2:13. "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."
The Conciliation of Jew with Gentile
A way must be opened for the conciliation of Jew and Gentile. and 2:14-18 shows us what it is. A threefold cord of peace binds them in indissoluble union in Christ.
1) Christ Himself is their Peace.
2:14. "For he is our peace."
Christ is not merely a peace-maker; He Himself is "our peace." So to receive Him is to have peace and is the preliminary for making peace, as this passage so clearly shows. How different is the way of man, who both tries to make and to preach peace with Christ altogether left out of the transaction!
2) Christ made peace.
2:14. "He bath broken down the middle wall of partition between us."
2:15. "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances."
2:15. "For to make in himself of twain one new man."
2:16. "That he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross."
There are four distinct steps mentioned here in Christ’s work of making peace. First, by breaking down the middle wall of partition between them. We have seen that God had made a choice of Israel as a special people for Himself, and had separated Israel from the Gentile nations. This separation was typified by the wall in the olden temple by which the court of the Gentiles was separated from that of the Jews; to go beyond which would have meant death to the Gentile.
Many Jews were just as evil in the sight of God as the Gentiles. They were Jews outwardly, but not inwardly (Romans 2:28,29). Their nearness to God was a privileged nearness because of God’s choice of them as His peculiar people rather than a personal nearness because of their choice of God as their satisfying portion.
But this wall of separation tended to make the Jews bigots in attitude to the Gentiles. The further away from God they went personally, the more bigoted they became racially. Their distinction as God’s chosen people created within them a superiority complex. In order to make "both one" this wall of separation must be done away with entirely. This is what Christ first did in making peace.
Secondly, He made peace by abolishing the enmity between them. The separation between Jew and Gentile was emphasized by certain institutions designed to isolate Israel from other nations. Such, Paul says, was the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, which was given to Israel only. Just here read Romans 2:11-29, and note that the Gentiles were without law, while the Jews rested in the law, considered themselves teachers of the law, and made their boast of the law, while the majority of them were dishonoring God through breaking the law, and thus they blasphemed His name among the Gentiles. So, though they were more privileged than the Gentiles in being the custodians of the law, yet they were under its curse for having broken it. Therefore they were as guilty before God as the Gentiles.
This enmity must be abolished if peace were to be made. This could not be done by either race, for a Jew as a Jew, and a Gentile as a Gentile would never find a way of conciliation. There is no meeting-place in the natural where Jew and Gentile can be made one, but God provided one in Christ.
The Gentile had sinned "without law," and the Jew had sinned "in the law"; so both were under the penalty of death and of judgment. Someone must pay that penalty and bear that judgment for both. This Christ did in His own flesh. The law was good and holy. As the incarnate Son He obeyed its every command. Could the Father accept the perfect life of His Son for the imperfect life of sinners, and so cancel their debt? Oh! no, "the wages of sin is death." Christ must die. "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Galatians 3:10). Christ must be made a curse. In His own body on the tree He bore the full penalty of the law and cancelled the guilt of both Jew and Gentile. The Cross of Christ is the only place where the enmity between the Jew and the Gentile could be, or ever has been, abolished, and where they could meet on an equal footing. There they met on an equality of sin and of salvation.
Thirdly, He made peace by making in himself of twain one new man. So far all that has been done has dealt with the past and has centred in the removal of barriers to peace. But as yet there is not an established basis for real unity and continued peace. Now the Lord does a marvelous and a totally new thing.
"Of twain -- one new man." The two old parties, Jew and Gentile, are superseded by a new race and given a new name. God did not convert Jews into Gentiles, nor Gentiles into Jews, nor did God raise the Gentile to the earthly position of the Jew or lower the Jew to the earthly position of the Gentile. But through redemption by the blood of Christ the old racial and religious divisions were thrown into the discard, and in Christ both Jew and Gentile were raised to a heavenly position far transcending anything ever promised to or possessed by either.
"One new man" -- super-racial and super-national. God welded Jew and Gentile into a new race of men in which all the old distinctions and differences, bonds and barriers, are obliterated. No longer does either Jew or Gentile count his citizenship as of the earth, for he has become a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20). True, he is still a pilgrim on earth, but he is here as a stranger passing through to his heavenly home. But "the new man" is more than just redeemed Jew and Gentile.
"One body" -- It is redeemed Jew and Gentile united on earth as the Body of Christ with the risen, ascended Lord in heaven as Head of the Body. Over this new society Christ is to be the Lord, and in it He is to be the Life. The Jew forgets that he is a Jew, and the Gentile that he is a Gentile. Each now thinks only of what he is in Christ. Christ is to be all and in all to both. In such a glorious oneness every racial, religious, social and class distinction is utterly wiped out.
Colossians 3:11. "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor Uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free; but Christ is all and in all."
Here is a oneness that is inward and vital. A new start has been made from a new center. Here is no camouflage of a patched up, man-made peace, but a divine reality in a positive brotherhood of goodwill and love, born out of a true family relationship established by life in Christ.
Fourthly, He made peace by reconciling both unto God in one Body by the Cross. Before Jew and Gentile were conciliated and both made one, there had to be a reconciliation of "both unto God." The Cross was the place where a twofold enmity was slain; that between the Jew and the Gentile toward God, and that between the Jew and the Gentile toward each other. Each had to be at peace with God before they could be at peace with each other. But when once God had become their Father, then they gladly called each other brethren.
"By the Cross" -- There is, however, but one place for such conciliation. At the Cross both are alike condemned as sinners and redeemed by the Saviour. At the Cross both met as equals on the ground of grace, for both are lowered to the same depth in sin, and both are exalted to the same height in Christ. So the moment they were united to God through faith in the blood of Christ, they were united to one another as members of His Body. Such is the mighty, severing and unifying power of the Cross of Christ.
Oh! why is the crucified One not invoked to remove enmities and to secure peace in our war-torn, hate-infested world to-day? At heart the whole world is at war. Many countries are deliberately preparing for war, while others are actually engaged in wholesale murder through undeclared wars. In Spain it is brother against brother; in the Orient it is neighbour against neighbour. Every attempt yet made to bring peace has utterly failed. The reason is evident.
Because man’s way of making peace is by seeking to secure conciliation of man with man before men are reconciled unto God. Nations seek to heal the breaches made by sin by man-made negotiations, alliances and treaties that are worthless scraps of paper almost as soon as the signatures are dry, and by world conferences on every conceivable point of friction. But over every one of them, written in capital letters, is the word FAILURE. So they meet only to compromise for the present and to postpone to the future. They persuade themselves that peace is just around the corner, but they never get to the turn of the road that leads to the goal. And they never will, for the reason that they are not even going in the direction of peace. The Prince of Peace is not invited to sit at their council table, hence they do not even know the right road to take. Conciliation between man and man must have a divine basis, which is the blood of Christ shed on the Cross. This is God’s way to peace. If God now allowed men to make peace their way, He would confess that His way was a failure. God would never so betray His Son.
And God’s way works wherever men have been willing to cooperate with God in bringing peace. When we see God removing the enmity between two such absolutely opposite peoples as the Jews and the Gentiles and welding them together into a new race, as He did in that first century Church; then we know that He can do the same thing in this twentieth century between opposing nationalities. He is doing it in our day. In a conference on revival in Europe I witnessed a very touching scene: Two women, one French and the other German, neither of whom in the natural had any love for the nation of the other, stood with eyes moist, with hands clasped in true Christian love and fellowship, and each fervently pledging prayer for the other. "He is our peace."
Let this quotation from a letter received very recently prove how wonderfully God’s way of peace works: "Last Wednesday at our prayer-meeting we listened to a story from one of our missionaries, who has been working in Manchuria, of the behaviour of the Japanese towards the Chinese Christian leaders. The story she told seemed almost incredible. We were told of one pastor who had been tortured to make him confess that he was a Communist, but although he almost died owing to the tortures, he refused to tell this lie. After considerable pressure the Japanese authorities agreed to bring him up for trial. There was a bright side to this dark picture in that a Japanese Christian barrister went over from Japan to defend this Chinese brother. He said he knew he was doing this at the risk of his life, but he felt constrained to go." "In himself of twain one new man, so making peace."
In 1907 it was my privilege to attend a conference of the World Student Christian Federation, where there were representatives from more than forty nations. As a hymn was sung, one caught the strains of music in six languages. Only one word could I understand, but in each language it was clearly distinguishable; -- that one word was the name of Him who made us all one family in the Lord: the precious name of "Jesu." "That he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross."
  
This page Copyright © 2004 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://www.peterwade.com/. Would you like your own copy of books by Peter Wade and other authors? Go to our Catalog. | |
