Built together in Christ
“Let us be built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Today we continue with part 2 of our 7 part sermon series in Ephesians: Discovering who we are in Christ. As I suggested last week, feel free to follow along in your bibles, or the bulletin leaflet, or in the Ephesians parallel text booklet we made as a handout.
Let’s start today, as we explore most of Chapter 2, by taking the title of our series, “Discovering who we are in Christ,” and look at the passage we just read from Ephesians to answer that question. What do we discover about ourselves from this passage? What do we discover about Christ Jesus?
As we quickly look through our passage, these are things I see:
We have been saved through faith, we didn’t have to earn it.
We are created in Christ Jesus for good works
We who have been far away from God have been brought near to God by Jesus’ blood. We are one humanity in Christ.
Because Jesus is our Peace.
We are not strangers or foreigners to God or each other, we are citizens of God’s kingdom and family members in God’s household.
Because Jesus breaks down the dividing wall between us.
We are being built as a holy temple for God’s spirit,
We have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit.
And We have God dwelling inside us.
So we are saved, created for good, a unified family, built together into a temple for God. Christ is our unifier, our peace, our “wall-knocker-downer,” our “temple-builder-upper”, and the Spirit who dwells within us.
Those are pretty powerful affirmations. Amen? Amen!
But let’s unpack those a bit more, because there’s quite a bit of what I like to call “Christianese” language in this text, which is not always clear to our contemporary ears. As some of you know, I used to be a high school French and English teacher, and having a grasp of the vocabulary is central to learning how to be fluent. So it is with our faith. We will explore some of the key words and concepts Paul uses or implies here, and then seek to apply them to our own lives.
Let’s start with the words Grace and Salvation. Verses 8-10 talk about our salvation through grace. I added these verses to the appointed lectionary text because they are some of the most powerful verses in scripture.
Verses 8-9 essentially say, “By grace you have been saved through faith. It’s a gift, not the results of works.”
Grace is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, especially in the bible. People are sometimes fuzzy in its meaning. Grace, especially God’s Grace, can simply be defined as undeserved favor, or an unmerited free gift. Paul is saying to the Ephesians, and us, that the salvation we have received in Jesus Christ is a gift from God, not something we earned through our own work. We receive this gift simply by having faith in Jesus. When we say that someone gave us some grace, it means they accepted us, or what we did with good-will, more than we deserve. Grace means divine kindness, goodwill, gift, mercy.
So we are saved by grace. So there’s another Christianese word – Salvation. What does it mean to be saved. We say things like, “Jesus saves. Have you been saved?”
What does it mean to have salvation?
By grace we have been saved… saved from what?
Quite a bit actually!
We are saved from the consequences of our sin. Sin being defined as whatever separates us from God, those things done and left undone that divide us from God and one another. We are saved from the spiritual death that comes from that broken relationship with God. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are also saved from our own death… We will die physically, but we are assured eternal life with God.
The word “to save” in Greek is the same word, or same root word as the word as to Heal, or be made whole.
So beyond being rescued or redeemed, like being saved from drowning with a life-saver, we are saved, and make whole, and healed emotionally and spiritually by our relationship with God in Christ.
I like the phrase that is often used about the different “tenses” of salvation. I have been saved…… I am being saved….. I will be saved.
Past tense - I have been saved by what Jesus did on the Cross 2000 years ago. By his death and resurrection, I can be forgiven of my sin.
This is Justification – being made right with God.
Present tense - I am being saved by God’s ongoing work in my life, making me more and more Christlike, and bringing wholeness and health to places where I may be still in need of healing and fixing. We all know we are on a journey. We are not perfected yet. We still have work to do.
This is Sanctification – being made Holy. We do not receive our salvation through works, but good works are part of how we exhibit our sanctification.
And finally, Future tense - I will be saved and someday join all the saints around the heavenly throne when my days on earth are done. At that point, I will be beyond the struggles of earthly life.
This is Glorification – being completely reunited with God enjoying the bliss of heaven.
I have been saved – justification.
I am being saved – sanctification.
I will be saved – glorification.
We’re getting quite the vocabulary lesson today, aren’t we?
Our passage then moves into using terms that aren’t really Christianese, it’s just that we don’t tend to use in our normal conversations.
Paul contrasts the circumcised and the uncircumcised.
TMI Paul! Too much information! Why should we care what a man’s “nether regions” look like? These are not categories that we typically use to divide ourselves today. Besides, it leaves a whole half of the population, us women, out of the picture.
But of course, culturally, in 1st century Palestine, it was a big deal. The sign of circumcision was an outward sign that the Jews had set themselves aside for God… marked as a holy people. Greeks, or gentiles were not typically circumcised. Besides this physical manifestation there were other differences that distinguished Jews and Gentiles. Jews kept themselves apart sharing meals or visiting homes of Gentiles because of religious beliefs, food restrictions, and other practices that that divided the ritually clean from the ritually unclean.
Paul’s point here and for the rest of this chapter is that what had once been separated by culture and even the precepts of Jewish law is now brought together in Christ. Even those who had once been enemies and adversaries can come together in God. Everyone has been far from God because of sin, but through the blood of Christ, all are brought near to God and to each other. Jesus is the one who brings this peace because he died for all of humanity, not just the Jews. We may divide ourselves by Gentile and Jew as much any longer, but we still live in a world where there are too many divisions. But despite our differences we can find unity in Christ.
In the rest of this passage, Paul uses some wonderful building imagery. It’s like a home reconstruction project. Jesus tears down walls of division and builds instead a temple, a big open space concept where all can be together.
The Message version translates verses 19-22 this way: “God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.”
I see this tearing down and building up process part of that “Sanctification” phase of our salvation. We are being saved as we tear down walls that divide us, and find ways to build an expansive space in our lives where we can meet God and connect with others, even others who might be very different from us.
We’ve talked about a lot of Christian-ese words today as part of this passage of Ephesians. Salvation, Grace, Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, Unification, Edification!
When I used to be a language teacher and I would have my students learn a whole list of vocabulary words, I often gave them the homework of putting these words into their own sentences. So maybe I will leave us with homework along those lines. You don’t actually have to write your own sentences using those words, but maybe you can think about your own answers to these questions using these concepts.
Have you received the grace, the gift, of salvation through Jesus?
Have you really accepted that you no longer have to be far from God?
Do you know that there’s nothing you’ve done so bad that can keep you away, and there’s no good deed you can do that will earn you a place?
You just need to accept that Jesus has done it for you. You belong to God.
Once you have received salvation through grace,
How is Jesus saving you now?
Where do you most want to pray for Christ’s healing and wholeness for yourself and for our world?
How might Jesus want to sanctify you… make you more holy, and more Christ like?
You might need to explore what dividing walls have built up between yourself and any other person or group. You might have placed those walls there, or they may be there simply because of cultural bias and upbringing.
How might Jesus want to bring Peace to those places of hostility or enmity in your life, or in the wider world?
How is God using you to build his Holy Temple?
How are you joining with others to build on the foundation of our ancestors in Christ to help make space in this world where the spirit of God’s peace and the power of God’s presence can be experienced by yourself and others.
In short, what is your place in building the church, the community of God?
I know…I know… If had been a student in one of my language classes you’d be complaining right now that I haven’t asked you to do simple vocabulary sentences for homework, but rather lengthy essay questions!
But don’t worry, it’s not a test, it’s more like a prayer journal. And just like our education continues beyond our school days, the building of God’s temple in us and through us continues beyond our baptism.
Let us embrace our ongoing salvation as we continue to be built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Amen.