In that, peace has been brokered between the two divided parties. A peace that is for the benefit of all. Watch this Bible Project Video on Peace.
Peace Then – Leviticus 3
In Leviticus chapter 3, there is an offering often translated as a “peace” offering, and one of its functions was a fellowship offering or thank offering. It was an offering you would bring when you wanted to spend time with God and His priests to express gratitude for all that He had done for you. It was messy and bloody and required a significant literal sacrifice on the offer’s part in that it involved the ritual slaughter of a valuable animal. However, it was the only way to have fellowship with God and say thank you. It was also only available to the Jews.
Peace Now
Paul is saying that access to God now not only bypasses this type of sacrifice, but it is open to both Jews and non-Jews alike. He implies the ‘priesthood of believers’ fulfilled the role that the people of Israel were supposed to fulfil (Exodus 19:3-6), as the need for a specialist sacred barbecue to have as a sacred time of fellowship with God and His priests has been eliminated.
Peace – Unity and Diversity
“He has made the two to be one.” – Bound in Him.
We have to understand that the peace Paul is talking about here is not about creating uniformity. Just like no single brick in a wall is the same as any other. Peace or Shalom is about unity in diversity, just as our Father God is three distinct persons in one.
“He has pulled down the barrier, the dividing wall, that turns us into enemies of each other.”
There used to be a barrier in the temple that had a sign on it that said ‘no Gentiles beyond this point on pain of death’.
“He has done this in his flesh,”
Paul is not simply referring directly to this barrier in the Temple. He is using it to refer to the barrier of the Torah. There is little doubt that he would have had the barrier in the Temple in mind as a very real symbol of the separation of Jews and the Gentiles. It is also no less symbolic of the separation of all humans from God. But all barriers have now been removed. Jesus has taken them away with his death, with his body being pulled apart, we are put together.
The Tearing of The Curtain
I see no doubt that Paul links more than the temple barrier separating Jew and Gentile. Matthew 27:51 records the tearing of the temple curtain, showing that God destroyed the barrier of the holy of holies. God’s removal of this barrier first opened the way for all Jews to communicate directly with Him. Paul now declares that God has also abolished the barrier for Gentiles. God grants all believers access to the holy of holies.
The tearing of the curtain in Matthew happened dramatically, showing it was no trivial event. God accomplished this through sacrifice and great power. The holy of holies still demands reverence, never a lighthearted approach. Almighty God’s seat rests there, and Leviticus 10:1-2 shows unworthy priests dying before Him. We must approach this place with awe and humility.
Peace Abolishing The Law Yes / No?
15 “freeing us from the law with its requirements and regulations”.
People often confuse Jesus fulfilling the Law with Paul speaking about the Law being abolished.
The Law (The Torah) still holds abundant wisdom. Jesus affirmed this in Matthew 5:17 when he declared that he came not to abolish the Law.
Many Christians fail to recognise that the Old Testament law focuses on love. Yet the Law itself declares this truth. A concordance search for the word “love” confirms it. God designed the Law to show people how to love their neighbour. When the church lives in the Spirit, it fulfils the Law.
For example, Leviticus 19:18 commands, “You shall not seek vengeance, and you shall not harbour a grudge against your fellow citizens; and you shall love your neighbour like yourself; I am Yahweh.” Similarly, Zechariah 8:17 commands, “Do not devise evil in your hearts against your neighbour, and do not love a false oath, because all these are things I hate,” declares Yahweh.
God originally gave the Law to specify what constituted love, thus keeping his people holy and separate from non-Jewish nations. Now that he calls all nations to himself, this separation has ended.
The Law once created a barrier between Gentiles and God. Through Jesus, God abolished that barrier.
Peace in Context – The Law (The Torah) In Paul’s Theology
The Torah Was Intended To Bless All Nations
There is no implication in Paul’s theology that the Law is bad or evil. From the beginning, God intended to bless all nations, choosing Israel as His means by which that would happen. Had they succeeded, there would not have been hostility between the nations, but they would have come together and basically said, “Here’s God.”
There are moments and glimpses of that within the story of Israel itself. Solomon, for example, when the Queen of Sheba comes, and she says, “God is among you.” (2 Chronicles 9:5-9, 1 Kings 10:6-9). But these become the exception rather than the rule. And so since they failed, Jesus comes now to do what Israel couldn’t, reconciling all nations together, bringing unity and saying that “this is God. Here He is.”
The Torah and How It Created Enmity
So, how does that Torah create a barrier or enmity?
Underneath that question is the whole theology of Romans 7. It’s sin or falling short of the standards that is hijacking the divine command, which creates death and hostility. So it’s the power’s distortion of the good thing.
God uses that distortion as a tool to put the magnifying glass on the real problem. It’s not humans per se. Humans are capable of ruling the world together with God if only we’re not enslaved by our own hands to the powers and our lusts and so on. And that echoes Genesis 3:15 in that, to kill the enmity, is another way of saying to crush the head of the snake.
God Does The Ultimate Judo
Think of the whole book of Genesis. What does Joseph say to his brothers towards the end of the book, in Genesis 50:19? “You conceived of all of this for evil.” God does the ultimate Judo by going with the flow until the perfect opportunity is set up. He can take human evil and, through Jesus, turn the energy back in on itself so that evil destroys itself and God can move forward with His plan for good.
Certainly! Here’s a combined version that brings together the clarity and richness of both alternatives:
Genesis 3:15 reveals that the serpent loses its power to strike and kill, and that power becomes the very means of its defeat.
This key theme runs throughout Genesis: God speaks to the darkness, declaring, “You’re contained. Now, even you will serve My purpose—to bring light instead of leaving the world in darkness.”
The Torah is Given to Israel
Reading about hostility and the language that Paul is using, is taking us back to God giving the Torah to Israel right before getting into the promised land. The military instructions that come with the Torah are prohibitions against making alliances with the nations that are all around. We can see the hostility right there, not as a war against them personally, but as a boundary line to keep them on the right track and their purpose as a holy nation.
It begins with Exodus 19 when Israel arrives at the foot of the mountain. God’s invitation to the people is to ascend the mountain. All of the people were to ascend the mountain, but they first had to wait three days. He creates a barrier. “Wait three days. On the third day, ascend the mountain,” which is all patterned after Abraham travelling, waiting three days, ascending Mount Mariah. But that’s a whole other thing.
God shows up in the smoking cloud and so on, and the people don’t want to go. The people stood back and shuddered with fear. And so the barrier remains. Then they say, “Moses, you go up, for we are afraid.” And so they push Moses to go up on their behalf. That’s the first hint in the story of the giving of the Law that everything’s not well on Mount Sinai.
The Torah Ends Up as A Contractual Relationship
Moses goes up to Mount Sinai and gets the Ten Commandments. And there in the very next narrative block is that of Israel breaking the two commands that they didn’t go to receive personally. Had they all ascended the mountain, they would have known not to make idols. They would not have been in a position to mess up, would have been irrelevant. The Law was ineffective from the start because Israel didn’t want to be in the covenantal relationship that generates love and obedience.
The Laws (The Torah) ended up being a contractual relationship instead of an intimate covenant relationship. Right from the very beginning, the story is telling you these Laws could be the gift of life, just like the tree of life. But that snake convinces me that I desire the thing that God told me is going to kill me. It was supposed to be a marriage and it ended with a prenup.
Loving The Laws of The Torah
Paul agrees with the poets of Psalm 19 and 119. They love the Laws of the Torah and think they reveal God’s wisdom and justice. Loving to read them and ponder them. Paul is not saying, “Nobody should ever follow The Laws of The Torah, and that ethnic Jews should disown The Torah whatsoever.” Absolutely not. He kept kosher in many situations.
What Paul is battling against is the exaltation of those commands to be the thing that defines the covenant family of God. Paul views the Laws of the Torah as wisdom literature, a source of divine wisdom. But he views the entry requirement into the covenant family, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, as nothing that you do, but something you receive through trust as a gift.
The Torah and Paul, Misunderstood by A Lot of People
It’s nuanced, and you can see why Paul was hard to understand on this point, and why it was such a charged issue. The moment Israelites heard him say anything nuanced about the Law, they would write him off.
It’s very similar to other religiously charged issues that can be difficult to talk about civilly. You say the trigger words, but you don’t say those code words, and the radar goes up.
A lot of people, even those close to Paul, unfortunately misunderstood him. That misunderstanding continues today. But Paul tried to unify, not to say that Judaism is bad and cold. He emphasised that the Torah expresses God’s wisdom. Through the Spirit, it still speaks to us today.
The Torah and Messianic Jews
Even today, well-meaning Gentile Christians constantly try to evangelise Messianic Jews (Jews who believe in Jesus as the Christ). They ask, “Why do you eat kosher? Why would you do that?” hoping to help them understand they have the freedom not to follow those practices.
The question itself fails to take into account that within Judaism, there are hundreds of sects, just like in Western Christianity. What one group calls kosher may be different from someone who is keeping Halakha, which is a stricter kosher or some of the Hasidic, the ultra-orthodox.
Add to this, Jews will have had varying exposure to Christians. Even to the point of Paul’s name. Paul is his Roman name. Saul, שָׁאוּל, is the name he is known by in Judaism, as it is his Hebrew name, creating a potential deep mistrust towards Paul.
The Laws And Being The Temple
However, Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He kept the Torah, and yet he was a believer. For him, salvation came from what Yeshua (Jesus) did at the cross. If you can marry those two things together, it makes beautiful synergy.
For example, if we are a microcosm of the temple, might it not be good to understand the laws of the temple? It doesn’t mean we have to do them the way they were in the past. But understanding them seems to be a thing that would be useful.
It is not and has never been about Jews keeping kosher. It is about breaking down the barrier between those who keep kosher and those who do not. Eating Kosher does not bring salvation, but the practice of it under the new covenant is not sin. In contrast to imposing it as a path to salvation.
The Torah is About Righteousness and Love
Everything in God’s Word is about keeping the Torah. Everything is about righteousness and justice. It’s about how we treat our walk with God and how we treat one another. And if there’s hostility, we’re not doing the Torah correctly. It ought to bring us to a deeper worship and a deeper relationship with our fellow brethren and with Him.
When Jesus is asked, “What’s the Torah about?” Paul echoes the master.
Jesus says it is about loving God and loving your neighbour. He does not make that up. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 from the Old Testament, His Bible. All the commands divide between our relationship with each other and our relationship with God.
The Torah – Abolished in Romans and Ephesians?
This brings us back to Romans 8. Notice what he says, “The new humanity doesn’t do away with The Law. Rather, it creates people who can actually live by the just requirements of it.”
That line surprises a lot of people. It’s like, “Really? I thought Paul’s anti-law.” But if you thought that, you fundamentally misunderstood Paul. The Torah is good and leads to life. And with supercharged new humanity by the Spirit, we can truly fulfil its original calling.
Ephesians 2:14. The English Standard Version says, “For he, himself, is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man.” It sounds a little different to Romans 8 in what Jesus says, “I did not come to abolish the law.”
The Meaning of One Abolish
The ESV translates the word Katargeó as “abolish.” Katargeó means you release from power something that holds authority and direct command over you. You take that thing down from its position of authoritative command. Paul used this same word when he said, “The rulers of this age crucified the Lord.” He says they become idle and lose their power. You do not destroy them, nor do you declare them inherently bad. You strip them of the power that defines your identity.
Peace Making One From Two – One New Humanity
“He did this so he could create in himself one new person out of the two and so make peace,”
The Law was there to keep the people of Israel holy as best it could, but also had the effect of keeping the Gentiles separate.
Now, Jesus resolves that paradox, “so making peace.” He fuses the two distinct people groups into one. Two groups of failed humans become one new person in Him. Genius intended this from the beginning: one human body, the body of Jesus.
New Human
This is what it means to be a new human. God’s will and my will merge. It is God and I. Not to the exclusion of each other, but to the full union of each other. Paul has a category for thinking about God and me becoming one in Christ, so that it’s me and not me at the same time.
Jesus uses the metaphor of the vine when He says in John.15:1-17, “You’re the one who needs to produce the fruit, but of course, it’s not your fruit because you’re abiding in the vine”
Reconciliation
16. and completely reconcile both of them to God through the cross as if they were just one body”
If Paul were to come back and visit our churches today, he would be horrified at how we have colluded with division.
What does being reconciled mean?
Forgiveness does not equal reconciliation, and forgetting does not equal reconciliation either. Reconciliation means coming together. You may still disagree, yet choose to work together on what you both accept and strive to understand each other. You follow the path toward a meeting of minds and actively seek a way to unite two ways that would normally remain mutually exclusive. In Hosea 3:1-4, God shows that He always desired this. God calls Hosea to join with an adulterer, uniting the rejected with the accepted.
Peace – The Coming of – The Death of Enmity
“having destroyed our hostility towards each other.”
Jesus’ death ends “enmity 2.” We can no longer say, “the devil made me do it.” God brings all supernatural influences to heal until the day of the Lord destroys them. Therefore, if we are in Christ, we alone bear responsibility for our disunity.
17 “He came and shared the good news of peace with those of you who were far away, and those who were nearby,”
Peace may not be easy. Jew and Gentile must play a part in reconciliation. Still, through Jesus, peace is now within reach. Spiritually, there are no barriers to drawing close to each other or God. That is Good News!
We even see it in the strange reference in Luke 23:12, where, after Jesus’ death, Herod and Pilate become friends. Not necessarily Christians, but it highlights that something has happened. The world has changed.
Peace and Sacred Space – Leviticus 1 & 2
Believers gave thanks to God under the Levitical law by bringing an offering, sometimes called a peace offering (see above – Peace Then Leviticus 3). Now, Paul says we no longer need to do that. Jesus has already fulfilled our “thankfulness duty” to God.
Leviticus 1 and 2 describe the system of burnt offerings that allowed people to access God. These offerings did not address sin, even though translations often suggest otherwise. Instead, people used them to say, “I want to spend some time with God, but I don’t want Him to kill me.” They recognised God’s holiness made His presence dangerous and sought to appear acceptable to Him. In a much smaller way, we still do this when we bring a gift to someone’s home after a dinner invitation, though we are unlikely to face harm if we get it wrong.
The whole of the Levitical law is to show just how other God is. And the sacrifices only cover contamination and the avoidance of contamination of the sacred space when someone approaches God. Intentional moral sins resulted in expulsion from the community, if you were lucky, but were just as likely to lead to death.
Jesus Listeners Shocked
What shocked Jesus’ listeners most was that he moved the goal posts by saying many sins in Leviticus, dealt with by sacrifices, logically amounted to moral sins punishable by death (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7).
The horror of this was that there was no escape from expulsion from God and his community, no matter how vigilant and virtuous you were in your religious practices. And he would not have been the only one exposing this. Salvation was only ever through faith. The Law only stopped things from getting worse.
How much of a release and an apocalypse was the death of Jesus to the Jews then? Whilst the sacrifices only covered non-moral sins, and there was no relief from the burden of moral sins, and many of those logically were mortal sins, the death of Jesus covered it all.
Shalom – Peace
When Paul says, “and peace, too, for those who were close at hand”, he is saying we have peace on every level. The Jew also now enjoys peace because they no longer need an animal sacrifice to enter and be in God’s presence.
Now all of us can fit together in peace and be a part of building a community, a tree of life, a vine, a temple where God and His glory can dwell. But not just dwell. Dwell and grow, and not just grow but develop and not just develop but build out together.
This is true, Shalom. It is what it is all about. Peace is everywhere!
See The Bible Project Video On Shalom Peace Above.
Sacred Space Now Open
18. “… because through him we both gain access to the Father through the same Spirit.”
God freely gives the Gentiles access to His sacred space without risk. The Gospel brings us into God’s very presence and unites people who were once divided. Jesus removes the division between heaven and earth. He unites Jew and Gentile as one. This uniting brings hope to the whole world that we, too, can live in peace.
19. “That means you’re no longer strangers and foreigners; you are fellow citizens of God’s people and belong to God’s family”
Everything has now reversed. We have moved to the opposite state from where we were. We now live in a state of peace instead of a state of enmity.
The Temple
20 “… that’s being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus (The King) as the cornerstone.“
Paul uses this metaphor differently elsewhere, but in this instance, he uses it to bring to mind Jesus’ own reference to Psalm 119, where He refers to Himself as being the cornerstone.
21 “In Him the whole building is joined together, growing to form a Holy Temple for the Lord.”
The image transforms once again from a building to a living thing that grows. It must live because renewed resources make it up. People live and grow as communities. They unite as one, in one sense becoming a tree or vine, as John 15 describes, and in another sense becoming the temple fitted together. This story shows how people grow into the temple because living, growing new humans make it up. It grows into something where heaven and earth become one.
22 “You, too, are being built together in him as a place for God to live by the Spirit“.
Here’s your passage rewritten fully in active voice:
Paul sees this as central to the gospel. God builds living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human temples from human lives and communities. He tells you that God builds you, too, together with others, into a dwelling for His Spirit.
Temple Language
We had temple language long before the current verse. “bringing them near by the blood(v13), for example. That was the whole purpose of the Peace offering in Leviticus. To bring the two parties, God and the person making the offering, together.
Paul uses competing Metaphors to try and explain what has happened. As in:
You were foreigners and immigrants, now you’re citizens. But not just citizens, you’re members of a household, like brother and sister. You’re not just brother and sister, you’re also rocks and stones. Except the foundation is the prophets and apostles, with Messiah Jesus as the Cornerstone in whom the whole thing fits together. As it joins together, it grows. This is tree imagery, so this Temple is also the tree of life.
This community is a living, breathing, growing tree of life temple-household. Jews and the nations are a new humanity.
The Shekhinah
Consider this living, breathing, growing tree of life temple-household is growing into a dwelling place of God‘s Spirit. The Shekinah is, in later Jewish tradition, the tent of prayer. The Glory of God.
God creates a space where heaven and earth unite, and He fills it with His presence. The beachhead, the vanguard of it, is the incarnate God-man, the Messiah himself. He becomes that which finally bonds heaven and earth eternally. His people receive anointing through Him to live as The Temple and as The Branches abiding in The Vine.
In chapter 1, verse 23, we see, “The church is his body; it is the fullness of the one who fills all in all.”Now the building-tree is a body, His body, that is, “the fullness of the one who fills all in all”. This assembly of people is now a physical body. The expression of Jesus Himself. They are the filled-up thing of the one who fills the new creation with his presence.
Paul, as indeed do all the apostles, uses all kinds of different metaphors. But they’re all trying to get at one thing. The life of heaven invading earth begins with Jesus.
Together we become a dwelling place for His Shekhinah!
Something To Think About:
Unity in The World
The world, the hippie movement, and humanism have tried to unite many times, but only those in Christ actually carry it off.
Holy Ground
Where is Holy ground? Sure, the Bible teaches us God is everywhere, but Holy Ground marks his presence more specifically.
Paul writes that God is specifically present within each believer. In other words, every believer is a sacred space.
God dwelt in the temple. Today, He remains present wherever believers gather as a group; those gatherings form the temple, the holy ground. The Bible states that God’s people, together, make up His temple. Together we form God’s holy ground, the special place where His Spirit resides. When believers gather, we sanctify the spiritual ground amid the powers of darkness.
Questions:
- What implications does being The Temple have for any congregation meeting for a church service?
- How do people in your world express hopelessness?
- How do you express hope in your world?
- How does the tearing of the Temple curtain at Jesus’ death affect your worship?
- What does community look like in your congregation?
- In light of this understanding of Atheism (above), how do we relate to our local atheist?
- In Light of verse 18, does this mean we don’t need to be respectful of the awesomeness of God?
- Should we express our awe of God? And if so
- How should we express our awe of God?
- What might it look like for believers in our day to live in that unity that God has created in Christ?
- Paul proclaims “peace” to the world through Christ. What might it look like for you to be a bearer of peace to a world in turmoil?
- If we were to take this imperative seriously, how would we pray for and work towards unity together?
- What would some of the practical and peace-loving ways of making this a reality be?
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1English: Free Bible Version Provided by: Free Bible Ministry, Inc. and open.bible, licensed under CC BY ND Published:
2THE KINGDOM NEW TESTAMENT: A CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATION by N.T. WRIGHT. Copyright (c) 2011 by Nicholas Thomas Wright. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
3W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Eph 2:10.
4Matthew 5:17
The True Temple
Once excluded and far from God’s promises, we have been brought near through Christ. Having established that believers are alive together with Christ in Ephesians 2: 4–10, the dividing wall of hostility has been torn down, uniting those once separated into one family. Through Him, we gain access to the Father by the same Spirit, becoming part of God’s household. Built on the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone, we are joined together to form the temple of the Lord—a dwelling place for God through His Spirit.
Ephesians 2:11-22: The Law and The Temple
11 So you who are “foreigners” humanly speaking, called “uncircumcised” by those who are “circumcised” (which is only a procedure carried out by human beings), you need to remember 12 that once you had no relationship to Christ. You were barred as foreigners from being citizens of Israel, strangers to the agreement (covenant) God had promised. You had no hope and you lived in the world without God. 13 But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once a long way off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 Christ is our peace. Through his body* he made the two into one, and broke down the separating wall of hostility that divided us, 15 freeing us from the law with its requirements and regulations. He did this so he could create in himself one new person out of the two and so make peace, 16 and completely reconcile both of them to God through the cross as if they were just one body, having destroyed our hostility towards each other.
17 He came and shared the good news of peace with those of you who were far away, and those who were nearby, 18 because through him we both gain access to the Father through the same Spirit. 19 That means you’re no longer strangers and foreigners; you are fellow citizens of God’s people and belong to God’s family 20 that’s being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together, growing to form a holy temple for the Lord. 22 You too are being built together in him as a place for God to live by the Spirit.1Structure of Ephesians 2 11 – 22
Overview
Paul brings the temple into play. It is dismissed at our peril. The Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple in Jerusalem are as important today as ever. It is a representation on earth of God’s dwelling place in heaven. Its design has all the features that represent Eden. When in the Temple, you were actually in Eden. A place where heaven and earth intersect and overlap. In heaven, whilst here on earth. It is critical to our understanding of being in The Christ.
Christ’s body is the incarnation of the new Temple. If you are in Christ, you are his body and thus literally the new Temple, God’s dwelling place. We are in the new kingdom. Living in heaven and on earth. We are called to be a place of heaven on earth. This is a high and dangerous calling.
Individuals do not exist in the body of the anointed one (Messiah). We must all work together, as seen in the first churches in Acts, sharing together, for the kingdom as equals. Jews must accept the Gentiles, and Gentiles must leave behind the old forms of worship.
Now and Then – Revisited
Now and Then – Then
11 So you who are “foreigners” humanly-speaking, called “uncircumcised” by those who are “circumcised” (which is only a procedure carried out by human beings), you need to remember
“So
Or
“So then,”
Note the then and now contrast. Paul begins a before-and-after comparison. What it was before joining the body of Christ, before being in “The Temple” and after becoming the body, we become “The New Temple”.
“… you who are ‘foreigners’ (Gentiles, AKA the Nations) humanly-speaking, called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who are ‘circumcised’ (Jews) (which is only a procedure carried out by human beings)“
That is, before you became a member of Christ’s body, you were not part of God’s community.
The term “uncircumcised” was, at the time, used by the Jews as a derogatory term to say that the Gentiles were lesser people and at the same time, Paul unambiguously acknowledges the special relationship that the Jews had with God. But he goes on to say:
“which is only a procedure carried out by human beings”
The Kingdom New Testament puts it much better, I think:
“circumcision, of course, being something done by human hands to human flesh.” 2
Paul is not saying that circumcision has no value. On the contrary, he points out that circumcision was what helped bring about the community that the Gentiles are now aspiring to. But he is making clear that those who see themselves as superior, because they are circumcised, are making it into something dangerously close to being idolatrous, “something done by human hands to human flesh.” Echoing the language used by ancient Israel about idols in Isaiah and the Psalms.
Now and Then – Once Upon A Time
“… remember 12 that once you had no relationship to Christ. You were barred as foreigners from being citizens of Israel, strangers to the agreement (covenant) God had promised. You had no hope, and you lived in the world without God.”
Living as Christians means being part of God’s community, bound by its covenants and promises (Gen. 12 – the promises, 15 – covenant, 17 – covenant). Paul has a very strong sense of that. But Gentiles were previously unable to experience that kind of corporate living.
Now and Then – Community
The importance of community in Paul’s theology is not to be underestimated. He believes community is central to the nature of being in the body of Christ. We see the ideal of such a community in Acts (2:42-47). Being “in Him”, we are not individuals but a community. This is not to say that we should all live together under one roof; however, we should be constantly working towards finding an expression of what community means in our culture and daily lives.
Being incorporated into the Covenant community means being incorporated into the Exodus Covenant in particular, yet not just that Covenant, but all of them, going back to Genesis. All these Covenants are complete in Jesus; thus, all believers are recipients of and participants in the associated promises.
The Community of the body of Christ is not Marxist. There is no forced equality. There is a hierarchy. Jesus is its head and King (a monarchy that is a unity; it has no parallel to compare it with). We serve at His pleasure. Yet He is also our brother, whose throne we share. It is a community in which egalitarianism, hierarchy, and servitude coexist in Him.
Community of Hope
‘You had no hope’
Hope was a big issue in the ancient world. There was often little chance of self-improvement, and advancement was quite restricted. The social status you were born with was usually the status you had for your entire life.
Even if you manage to rise in social ranks, you are always considered to be what you were. A slave could be a free slave, but they were always a slave. A worker could become a manager, but they were always a worker. A merchant could make a fortune, but they were always a merchant. You were what you were born as, and unless something exceptional happened, like being adopted into an influential family or joining (maybe even forced into) the military, any chance of changing that was hopeless.
Being without hope is devastating. It is a void that can only be filled by hope. However, trying to fill one’s hopelessness with falsities only compounds a sense of helplessness, potentially leading to despair.
Cosmic Hope
The hope we are talking about here is a cosmic hope for all creation. The Gentile world throughout history, right up until relatively modern times, didn’t have that. Being in Christ breaks that mould. Even though the true concept of being the body of Christ has often been corrupted through history, its true nature always breaks out. It has and continues to offer hope of not being “Just” but being “More”. The body of Christ is the basis of all freedom-loving constitutions and societies, and everything else is a pale imitation.
Now and Then – Atheism
‘…and you lived in the world without God’
Because the Gentile gods didn’t genuinely care about their worshipers, they had no god on whom they could lay their hopes and cares, let alone share their joys. Thus, not only did they have no hope, but they had no god in whom to put their hopes.
The word used here, translated as “no god”, is the Greek word from which we get the English word, Atheist. In light of what Paul says in Ephesians 2:2 about the “powers of the air”, it is worth noting that he is not saying that these gods don’t exist; this is a reinterpretation in modern times. Paul would say that the images they worshipped are powerless even compared to humans, who are the images of our God. He is saying that the gods that the statues represent either don’t care or benefit their worshipers, that they only show any favour to their worshipers on a whim or are malevolent to them just because they can.
Atheists and The Image of God
Humans were always intended to be the living, breathing and governing images of God. In Christ, we finally get to fulfil that role. The irony of having an idol to worship is that it grieves God not just because it represents lesser beings over and above Him, thus insulting Him, but we also insult and diminish ourselves. Idols imply that an inanimate object is more important and potent than the living, breathing, governing, Royal image of the one true God of all and above all.
This is a very different understanding of Atheism as it is understood today. Christians were referred to as Atheists in the first century because they did not believe in one God, but the multiple idols that were commonly worshipped. It was not because they didn’t believe in any god.
Atheism & Affluent Society
Isn’t it interesting that even today, it is a rarity to find a true atheist in a non-affluent society? One where there is little hope of escaping one’s status or lot in life. Of course, one could argue that it is a rarity to find a true atheist in any society, as most don’t believe there is no god, but rather they are just angry at God or want to reinterpret god in a way that suits them. But it is rarer, if at all, in a non-affluent society.
Atheism – World Without God
“…and you lived in the world without God.”
As The Kingdom New Testament puts it, “and you were stranded in the world.”
Paul addresses the accusation of Christians being atheists by reversing it and saying that it is the Gentiles who were the real atheists. They were stranded in a world where they denied the only God that could give them any real prospect of providing genuine hope; they had nowhere to turn. The world is a very hostile place if you have no hope.
Atheism – New Kingdom Values & Humanism
Today, few have the hope that only God can provide through Jesus Christ (Christ is not a surname but a title meaning the anointed one). As a fan of Star Trek, I know that humanists, for example, hold to a view of hope. Except they want it to be without God. The problem is that without Christianity, there would be no humanism, let alone a concept of egalitarianism. Humanists, no matter how hard they object to it, have and always will be a mere shadow of the New Kingdom people. Those who are truly motivated by the spirit (as distinct from those who claim the name of Christ but don’t live by it). You cannot have a new kingdom without new kingdom values.
Now and Then – Now
13. “But now,”
Here is the now of the now and then. A great moment has arrived. Something monumental has happened by which the world is a different place, and the people of God are a different people.
“…in Christ Jesus, you who were once a long way off have been brought near”
Now, something very special has happened. Now the Gentiles, those that were far off, are brought close; they are brought into the covenant family, not just an add-on, but as an integrated part. They are no longer separate but part of the community. Now, there is real hope. They are now the same as those who are circumcised. They are not second-class citizens.
Now and Then in The Blood
“by the blood of Christ”
Leviticus [17:14] declares that blood signifies life. Everything decays or dies. Corruption fills it, and God rejects corruption and sin. Blood represents life and actively counters sin and decay. In Jesus’ case, His blood truly overcomes both. The book of Leviticus prescribes numerous rituals for this reason. Paul, therefore, proclaims with gusto, “Yes, even you, who once lived far away, now God has brought you near!”
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God Working
But then look at what he says in verse 13. “Just in case you think that this is all about you when you are working, it’s God who’s working in you, both your willingness and desire to work it out and in your actual working it out.”
This is exactly what he said in 1 Corinthians. 15:10, “I worked harder than all of them. But, it was not me doing it, but it was…” Paul saying me, but not me. Do it, but not you. You, but not you. And in Paul’s mind, this isn’t a contradiction.
Peace – Then and Now
14. “Christ is our peace”
In that, peace has been brokered between the two divided parties. A peace that is for the benefit of all. Watch this Bible Project Video on Peace.
Peace Then – Leviticus 3
In Leviticus chapter 3, there is an offering often translated as a “peace” offering, and one of its functions was a fellowship offering or thank offering. It was an offering you would bring when you wanted to spend time with God and His priests to express gratitude for all that He had done for you. It was messy and bloody and required a significant literal sacrifice on the offer’s part in that it involved the ritual slaughter of a valuable animal. However, it was the only way to have fellowship with God and say thank you. It was also only available to the Jews.
Peace Now
Paul is saying that access to God now not only bypasses this type of sacrifice, but it is open to both Jews and non-Jews alike. He implies the ‘priesthood of believers’ fulfilled the role that the people of Israel were supposed to fulfil (Exodus 19:3-6), as the need for a specialist sacred barbecue to have as a sacred time of fellowship with God and His priests has been eliminated.
Peace – Unity and Diversity
“He has made the two to be one.” – Bound in Him.
We have to understand that the peace Paul is talking about here is not about creating uniformity. Just like no single brick in a wall is the same as any other. Peace or Shalom is about unity in diversity, just as our Father God is three distinct persons in one.
“He has pulled down the barrier, the dividing wall, that turns us into enemies of each other.”
There used to be a barrier in the temple that had a sign on it that said ‘no Gentiles beyond this point on pain of death’.
“He has done this in his flesh,”
Paul is not simply referring directly to this barrier in the Temple. He is using it to refer to the barrier of the Torah. There is little doubt that he would have had the barrier in the Temple in mind as a very real symbol of the separation of Jews and the Gentiles. It is also no less symbolic of the separation of all humans from God. But all barriers have now been removed. Jesus has taken them away with his death, with his body being pulled apart, we are put together.
The Tearing of The Curtain
I see no doubt that Paul links more than the temple barrier separating Jew and Gentile. Matthew 27:51 records the tearing of the temple curtain, showing that God destroyed the barrier of the holy of holies. God’s removal of this barrier first opened the way for all Jews to communicate directly with Him. Paul now declares that God has also abolished the barrier for Gentiles. God grants all believers access to the holy of holies.
The tearing of the curtain in Matthew happened dramatically, showing it was no trivial event. God accomplished this through sacrifice and great power. The holy of holies still demands reverence, never a lighthearted approach. Almighty God’s seat rests there, and Leviticus 10:1-2 shows unworthy priests dying before Him. We must approach this place with awe and humility.
Peace Abolishing The Law Yes / No?
15 “freeing us from the law with its requirements and regulations”.
People often confuse Jesus fulfilling the Law with Paul speaking about the Law being abolished.
The Law (The Torah) still holds abundant wisdom. Jesus affirmed this in Matthew 5:17 when he declared that he came not to abolish the Law.
Many Christians fail to recognise that the Old Testament law focuses on love. Yet the Law itself declares this truth. A concordance search for the word “love” confirms it. God designed the Law to show people how to love their neighbour. When the church lives in the Spirit, it fulfils the Law.
For example, Leviticus 19:18 commands, “You shall not seek vengeance, and you shall not harbour a grudge against your fellow citizens; and you shall love your neighbour like yourself; I am Yahweh.” Similarly, Zechariah 8:17 commands, “Do not devise evil in your hearts against your neighbour, and do not love a false oath, because all these are things I hate,” declares Yahweh.
God originally gave the Law to specify what constituted love, thus keeping his people holy and separate from non-Jewish nations. Now that he calls all nations to himself, this separation has ended.
The Law once created a barrier between Gentiles and God. Through Jesus, God abolished that barrier.
Peace in Context – The Law (The Torah) In Paul’s Theology
The Torah Was Intended To Bless All Nations
There is no implication in Paul’s theology that the Law is bad or evil. From the beginning, God intended to bless all nations, choosing Israel as His means by which that would happen. Had they succeeded, there would not have been hostility between the nations, but they would have come together and basically said, “Here’s God.”
There are moments and glimpses of that within the story of Israel itself. Solomon, for example, when the Queen of Sheba comes, and she says, “God is among you.” (2 Chronicles 9:5-9, 1 Kings 10:6-9). But these become the exception rather than the rule. And so since they failed, Jesus comes now to do what Israel couldn’t, reconciling all nations together, bringing unity and saying that “this is God. Here He is.”
The Torah and How It Created Enmity
So, how does that Torah create a barrier or enmity?
Underneath that question is the whole theology of Romans 7. It’s sin or falling short of the standards that is hijacking the divine command, which creates death and hostility. So it’s the power’s distortion of the good thing.
God uses that distortion as a tool to put the magnifying glass on the real problem. It’s not humans per se. Humans are capable of ruling the world together with God if only we’re not enslaved by our own hands to the powers and our lusts and so on. And that echoes Genesis 3:15 in that, to kill the enmity, is another way of saying to crush the head of the snake.
God Does The Ultimate Judo
Think of the whole book of Genesis. What does Joseph say to his brothers towards the end of the book, in Genesis 50:19? “You conceived of all of this for evil.” God does the ultimate Judo by going with the flow until the perfect opportunity is set up. He can take human evil and, through Jesus, turn the energy back in on itself so that evil destroys itself and God can move forward with His plan for good.
Certainly! Here’s a combined version that brings together the clarity and richness of both alternatives:
Genesis 3:15 reveals that the serpent loses its power to strike and kill, and that power becomes the very means of its defeat.
This key theme runs throughout Genesis: God speaks to the darkness, declaring, “You’re contained. Now, even you will serve My purpose—to bring light instead of leaving the world in darkness.”
The Torah is Given to Israel
Reading about hostility and the language that Paul is using, is taking us back to God giving the Torah to Israel right before getting into the promised land. The military instructions that come with the Torah are prohibitions against making alliances with the nations that are all around. We can see the hostility right there, not as a war against them personally, but as a boundary line to keep them on the right track and their purpose as a holy nation.
It begins with Exodus 19 when Israel arrives at the foot of the mountain. God’s invitation to the people is to ascend the mountain. All of the people were to ascend the mountain, but they first had to wait three days. He creates a barrier. “Wait three days. On the third day, ascend the mountain,” which is all patterned after Abraham travelling, waiting three days, ascending Mount Mariah. But that’s a whole other thing.
God shows up in the smoking cloud and so on, and the people don’t want to go. The people stood back and shuddered with fear. And so the barrier remains. Then they say, “Moses, you go up, for we are afraid.” And so they push Moses to go up on their behalf. That’s the first hint in the story of the giving of the Law that everything’s not well on Mount Sinai.
The Torah Ends Up as A Contractual Relationship
Moses goes up to Mount Sinai and gets the Ten Commandments. And there in the very next narrative block is that of Israel breaking the two commands that they didn’t go to receive personally. Had they all ascended the mountain, they would have known not to make idols. They would not have been in a position to mess up, would have been irrelevant. The Law was ineffective from the start because Israel didn’t want to be in the covenantal relationship that generates love and obedience.
The Laws (The Torah) ended up being a contractual relationship instead of an intimate covenant relationship. Right from the very beginning, the story is telling you these Laws could be the gift of life, just like the tree of life. But that snake convinces me that I desire the thing that God told me is going to kill me. It was supposed to be a marriage and it ended with a prenup.
Loving The Laws of The Torah
Paul agrees with the poets of Psalm 19 and 119. They love the Laws of the Torah and think they reveal God’s wisdom and justice. Loving to read them and ponder them. Paul is not saying, “Nobody should ever follow The Laws of The Torah, and that ethnic Jews should disown The Torah whatsoever.” Absolutely not. He kept kosher in many situations.
What Paul is battling against is the exaltation of those commands to be the thing that defines the covenant family of God. Paul views the Laws of the Torah as wisdom literature, a source of divine wisdom. But he views the entry requirement into the covenant family, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, as nothing that you do, but something you receive through trust as a gift.
The Torah and Paul, Misunderstood by A Lot of People
It’s nuanced, and you can see why Paul was hard to understand on this point, and why it was such a charged issue. The moment Israelites heard him say anything nuanced about the Law, they would write him off.
It’s very similar to other religiously charged issues that can be difficult to talk about civilly. You say the trigger words, but you don’t say those code words, and the radar goes up.
A lot of people, even those close to Paul, unfortunately misunderstood him. That misunderstanding continues today. But Paul tried to unify, not to say that Judaism is bad and cold. He emphasised that the Torah expresses God’s wisdom. Through the Spirit, it still speaks to us today.
The Torah and Messianic Jews
Even today, well-meaning Gentile Christians constantly try to evangelise Messianic Jews (Jews who believe in Jesus as the Christ). They ask, “Why do you eat kosher? Why would you do that?” hoping to help them understand they have the freedom not to follow those practices.
The question itself fails to take into account that within Judaism, there are hundreds of sects, just like in Western Christianity. What one group calls kosher may be different from someone who is keeping Halakha, which is a stricter kosher or some of the Hasidic, the ultra-orthodox.
Add to this, Jews will have had varying exposure to Christians. Even to the point of Paul’s name. Paul is his Roman name. Saul, שָׁאוּל, is the name he is known by in Judaism, as it is his Hebrew name, creating a potential deep mistrust towards Paul.
The Laws And Being The Temple
However, Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He kept the Torah, and yet he was a believer. For him, salvation came from what Yeshua (Jesus) did at the cross. If you can marry those two things together, it makes beautiful synergy.
For example, if we are a microcosm of the temple, might it not be good to understand the laws of the temple? It doesn’t mean we have to do them the way they were in the past. But understanding them seems to be a thing that would be useful.
It is not and has never been about Jews keeping kosher. It is about breaking down the barrier between those who keep kosher and those who do not. Eating Kosher does not bring salvation, but the practice of it under the new covenant is not sin. In contrast to imposing it as a path to salvation.
The Torah is About Righteousness and Love
Everything in God’s Word is about keeping the Torah. Everything is about righteousness and justice. It’s about how we treat our walk with God and how we treat one another. And if there’s hostility, we’re not doing the Torah correctly. It ought to bring us to a deeper worship and a deeper relationship with our fellow brethren and with Him.
When Jesus is asked, “What’s the Torah about?” Paul echoes the master.
Jesus says it is about loving God and loving your neighbour. He does not make that up. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 from the Old Testament, His Bible. All the commands divide between our relationship with each other and our relationship with God.
The Torah – Abolished in Romans and Ephesians?
This brings us back to Romans 8. Notice what he says, “The new humanity doesn’t do away with The Law. Rather, it creates people who can actually live by the just requirements of it.”
That line surprises a lot of people. It’s like, “Really? I thought Paul’s anti-law.” But if you thought that, you fundamentally misunderstood Paul. The Torah is good and leads to life. And with supercharged new humanity by the Spirit, we can truly fulfil its original calling.
Ephesians 2:14. The English Standard Version says, “For he, himself, is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man.” It sounds a little different to Romans 8 in what Jesus says, “I did not come to abolish the law.”
The Meaning of One Abolish
The ESV translates the word Katargeó as “abolish.” Katargeó means you release from power something that holds authority and direct command over you. You take that thing down from its position of authoritative command. Paul used this same word when he said, “The rulers of this age crucified the Lord.” He says they become idle and lose their power. You do not destroy them, nor do you declare them inherently bad. You strip them of the power that defines your identity.
Peace Making One From Two – One New Humanity
“He did this so he could create in himself one new person out of the two and so make peace,”
The Law was there to keep the people of Israel holy as best it could, but also had the effect of keeping the Gentiles separate.
Now, Jesus resolves that paradox, “so making peace.” He fuses the two distinct people groups into one. Two groups of failed humans become one new person in Him. Genius intended this from the beginning: one human body, the body of Jesus.
New Human
This is what it means to be a new human. God’s will and my will merge. It is God and I. Not to the exclusion of each other, but to the full union of each other. Paul has a category for thinking about God and me becoming one in Christ, so that it’s me and not me at the same time.
Jesus uses the metaphor of the vine when He says in John.15:1-17, “You’re the one who needs to produce the fruit, but of course, it’s not your fruit because you’re abiding in the vine”
Reconciliation
16. and completely reconcile both of them to God through the cross as if they were just one body”
If Paul were to come back and visit our churches today, he would be horrified at how we have colluded with division.
What does being reconciled mean?
Forgiveness does not equal reconciliation, and forgetting does not equal reconciliation either. Reconciliation means coming together. You may still disagree, yet choose to work together on what you both accept and strive to understand each other. You follow the path toward a meeting of minds and actively seek a way to unite two ways that would normally remain mutually exclusive. In Hosea 3:1-4, God shows that He always desired this. God calls Hosea to join with an adulterer, uniting the rejected with the accepted.
Peace – The Coming of – The Death of Enmity
“having destroyed our hostility towards each other.”
Jesus’ death ends “enmity 2.” We can no longer say, “the devil made me do it.” God brings all supernatural influences to heal until the day of the Lord destroys them. Therefore, if we are in Christ, we alone bear responsibility for our disunity.
17 “He came and shared the good news of peace with those of you who were far away, and those who were nearby,”
Peace may not be easy. Jew and Gentile must play a part in reconciliation. Still, through Jesus, peace is now within reach. Spiritually, there are no barriers to drawing close to each other or God. That is Good News!
We even see it in the strange reference in Luke 23:12, where, after Jesus’ death, Herod and Pilate become friends. Not necessarily Christians, but it highlights that something has happened. The world has changed.
Peace and Sacred Space – Leviticus 1 & 2
Believers gave thanks to God under the Levitical law by bringing an offering, sometimes called a peace offering (see above – Peace Then Leviticus 3). Now, Paul says we no longer need to do that. Jesus has already fulfilled our “thankfulness duty” to God.
Leviticus 1 and 2 describe the system of burnt offerings that allowed people to access God. These offerings did not address sin, even though translations often suggest otherwise. Instead, people used them to say, “I want to spend some time with God, but I don’t want Him to kill me.” They recognised God’s holiness made His presence dangerous and sought to appear acceptable to Him. In a much smaller way, we still do this when we bring a gift to someone’s home after a dinner invitation, though we are unlikely to face harm if we get it wrong.
The whole of the Levitical law is to show just how other God is. And the sacrifices only cover contamination and the avoidance of contamination of the sacred space when someone approaches God. Intentional moral sins resulted in expulsion from the community, if you were lucky, but were just as likely to lead to death.
Jesus Listeners Shocked
What shocked Jesus’ listeners most was that he moved the goal posts by saying many sins in Leviticus, dealt with by sacrifices, logically amounted to moral sins punishable by death (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7).
The horror of this was that there was no escape from expulsion from God and his community, no matter how vigilant and virtuous you were in your religious practices. And he would not have been the only one exposing this. Salvation was only ever through faith. The Law only stopped things from getting worse.
How much of a release and an apocalypse was the death of Jesus to the Jews then? Whilst the sacrifices only covered non-moral sins, and there was no relief from the burden of moral sins, and many of those logically were mortal sins, the death of Jesus covered it all.
Shalom – Peace
When Paul says, “and peace, too, for those who were close at hand”, he is saying we have peace on every level. The Jew also now enjoys peace because they no longer need an animal sacrifice to enter and be in God’s presence.
Now all of us can fit together in peace and be a part of building a community, a tree of life, a vine, a temple where God and His glory can dwell. But not just dwell. Dwell and grow, and not just grow but develop and not just develop but build out together.
This is true, Shalom. It is what it is all about. Peace is everywhere!
See The Bible Project Video On Shalom Peace Above.
Sacred Space Now Open
18. “… because through him we both gain access to the Father through the same Spirit.”
God freely gives the Gentiles access to His sacred space without risk. The Gospel brings us into God’s very presence and unites people who were once divided. Jesus removes the division between heaven and earth. He unites Jew and Gentile as one. This uniting brings hope to the whole world that we, too, can live in peace.
19. “That means you’re no longer strangers and foreigners; you are fellow citizens of God’s people and belong to God’s family”
Everything has now reversed. We have moved to the opposite state from where we were. We now live in a state of peace instead of a state of enmity.
The Temple
20 “… that’s being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus (The King) as the cornerstone.“
Paul uses this metaphor differently elsewhere, but in this instance, he uses it to bring to mind Jesus’ own reference to Psalm 119, where He refers to Himself as being the cornerstone.
21 “In Him the whole building is joined together, growing to form a Holy Temple for the Lord.”
The image transforms once again from a building to a living thing that grows. It must live because renewed resources make it up. People live and grow as communities. They unite as one, in one sense becoming a tree or vine, as John 15 describes, and in another sense becoming the temple fitted together. This story shows how people grow into the temple because living, growing new humans make it up. It grows into something where heaven and earth become one.
22 “You, too, are being built together in him as a place for God to live by the Spirit“.
Here’s your passage rewritten fully in active voice:
Paul sees this as central to the gospel. God builds living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human temples from human lives and communities. He tells you that God builds you, too, together with others, into a dwelling for His Spirit.
Temple Language
We had temple language long before the current verse. “bringing them near by the blood(v13), for example. That was the whole purpose of the Peace offering in Leviticus. To bring the two parties, God and the person making the offering, together.
Paul uses competing Metaphors to try and explain what has happened. As in:
You were foreigners and immigrants, now you’re citizens. But not just citizens, you’re members of a household, like brother and sister. You’re not just brother and sister, you’re also rocks and stones. Except the foundation is the prophets and apostles, with Messiah Jesus as the Cornerstone in whom the whole thing fits together. As it joins together, it grows. This is tree imagery, so this Temple is also the tree of life.
This community is a living, breathing, growing tree of life temple-household. Jews and the nations are a new humanity.
The Shekhinah
Consider this living, breathing, growing tree of life temple-household is growing into a dwelling place of God‘s Spirit. The Shekinah is, in later Jewish tradition, the tent of prayer. The Glory of God.
God creates a space where heaven and earth unite, and He fills it with His presence. The beachhead, the vanguard of it, is the incarnate God-man, the Messiah himself. He becomes that which finally bonds heaven and earth eternally. His people receive anointing through Him to live as The Temple and as The Branches abiding in The Vine.
In chapter 1, verse 23, we see, “The church is his body; it is the fullness of the one who fills all in all.”Now the building-tree is a body, His body, that is, “the fullness of the one who fills all in all”. This assembly of people is now a physical body. The expression of Jesus Himself. They are the filled-up thing of the one who fills the new creation with his presence.
Paul, as indeed do all the apostles, uses all kinds of different metaphors. But they’re all trying to get at one thing. The life of heaven invading earth begins with Jesus.
Together we become a dwelling place for His Shekhinah!
Something To Think About:
Unity in The World
The world, the hippie movement, and humanism have tried to unite many times, but only those in Christ actually carry it off.
Holy Ground
Where is Holy ground? Sure, the Bible teaches us God is everywhere, but Holy Ground marks his presence more specifically.
Paul writes that God is specifically present within each believer. In other words, every believer is a sacred space.
God dwelt in the temple. Today, He remains present wherever believers gather as a group; those gatherings form the temple, the holy ground. The Bible states that God’s people, together, make up His temple. Together we form God’s holy ground, the special place where His Spirit resides. When believers gather, we sanctify the spiritual ground amid the powers of darkness.
Questions:
- What implications does being The Temple have for any congregation meeting for a church service?
- How do people in your world express hopelessness?
- How do you express hope in your world?
- How does the tearing of the Temple curtain at Jesus’ death affect your worship?
- What does community look like in your congregation?
- In light of this understanding of Atheism (above), how do we relate to our local atheist?
- In Light of verse 18, does this mean we don’t need to be respectful of the awesomeness of God?
- Should we express our awe of God? And if so
- How should we express our awe of God?
- What might it look like for believers in our day to live in that unity that God has created in Christ?
- Paul proclaims “peace” to the world through Christ. What might it look like for you to be a bearer of peace to a world in turmoil?
- If we were to take this imperative seriously, how would we pray for and work towards unity together?
- What would some of the practical and peace-loving ways of making this a reality be?
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1English: Free Bible Version Provided by: Free Bible Ministry, Inc. and open.bible, licensed under CC BY ND Published:
2THE KINGDOM NEW TESTAMENT: A CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATION by N.T. WRIGHT. Copyright (c) 2011 by Nicholas Thomas Wright. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
3W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Eph 2:10.
4Matthew 5:17
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