Ephesians 2

Order of Service

• Prayer of Invocation
• Sermon
• Closing Prayer

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Sermon Title: The Alienated and the Reconciled

Scripture: Ephesians 2:11-22

I. The Spiritual Biography of the Gentile: Three Phases

A. Overview drawn from John Stott and James Montgomery Boice

1. Alienation — the Gentile's former state before Christ (Ephesians 2:11-12)
2. Reconciliation — Christ's death creates one new man (Ephesians 2:13-18)
3. Incorporation — Gentiles become full members of God's household (Ephesians 2:19-22)

B. Timeline markers in the text signal each phase

1. At one time (v. 11) — the alienated community
2. But now (v. 13) — the peacemaking work of Christ
3. So then (v. 19) — the portrait of God's new society

II. The Alienated Humanity — The Gentile's Former State (Ephesians 2:11-12)

A. The double alienation: from God and from Israel

1. The Jew-Gentile schism was one of the deepest social divisions in the ancient world
2. Jewish contempt for Gentiles illustrated by William Barclay: intermarriage treated as equivalent to death; Gentiles excluded from Jewish worship and community life

B. The dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14)

1. A reference to the literal barrier wall in Herod's temple separating the Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts
2. Inscriptions on the wall warned Gentiles of execution for trespass; one such stone is preserved in a museum in Istanbul
3. Paul himself nearly lost his life over this wall, accused of bringing Trophimus the Ephesian into the temple (Acts 21)

C. Paul's name-calling language in verse 11 signals the superficiality of ethnic religion

1. Circumcision is a matter of the heart, not the flesh — cf. Romans 2:28-29

D. Five Gentile disabilities listed in Ephesians 2:12

1. Separated from Christ — no share in the blessings of being in Christ described in chapters 1–2
2. Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel — Israel was a theocracy; salvation was from the Jews (John 4:22); Gentile believers such as Ruth and Naaman illustrate that incorporation into Israel was required
   • Ruth: Your people shall be my people, and your God my God — she became part of Israel before Naomi's God became her God
   • Naaman: washed in the Jordan and was cleansed; requested two mule-loads of Israelite soil on which to worship (2 Kings 5)
3. Strangers to the covenants of promise — excluded from the Abrahamic covenant and its extensions (Genesis 12:1-3); unbelievers read the promises of Scripture as if in a foreign language
4. Having no hope — the deeper one contemplates life without Christ, the more pessimistic one becomes
5. Without God in the world — God is the source of every good thing (James 1:17); the gods of Greece, Rome, and the surrounding nations could not satisfy the hunger of the human heart

III. The Command to Remember

A. Paul uses the verb remember twice in verses 11–12

1. We must never forget what we were before God's grace found us
2. Remembering our alienation magnifies the greatness of God's grace
3. It equips us to share the gospel with those still living in alienation and enmity

IV. Preview: Christ the Peacemaker (Ephesians 2:13-18) (to be continued)

A. Christ converts enmity into reconciliation

1. Ephesians 2:14 — He himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility
2. Ephesians 2:16 — He might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility

B. God's goal: one new humanity, the church, built from Jew and Gentile together