This week's Discussion Guide is included at the bottom of this page.

Given the prominent role racism towards blacks and other people of color played in American history, it’s no surprise that the dominant conversation in U.S. history about people forming barriers between one another and hating one another has mostly centered on race. However, it turns out that racism is a rather new way of forming divisions and justifying aggression.

Throughout most of human history, and still today in most places around the world, ethnicity has been the most prominent basis for cultural isolation, rivalries, prejudices, and hatred. Ethnicity is way more complex than race. For instance, the average westerner likely imagines places like India, which has over a billion people living in it, to be essentially divided up between the Hindu’s and Muslim’s. Most people would assume that the power struggles, cultural clashes, prejudices, and suspicions that create divisiveness in communities are basically driven by how people align with those two religions. However, if you look a little deeper than the typical news headline of something coming out of India, you will find out that the vast majority of the conflict within that nation is driven by ethnicity, of which there are anywhere between 2,000 and 2,500 different ethnic groups!

One of the worst examples in my lifetime of ethnic violence occurred in 1994 in Rwanda. Some estimate that up to one million Tutsi tribe members were killed by the Hutu tribe, all of whom were black African Rwandan’s. Ethnic hatred, not race or even nationality, was at the root of the evil. I would venture to say that 99% of Westerners could not tell you a single difference between Hutu and Tutsi, yet, historically, to the Hutu and Tutsi, there could be no greater division than what they see between them. That’s just one of an extremely long list of horrifying testimonies in history that point to the extreme nature of the depravity of man as manifested through how human beings have divided themselves ethnically.

Why is this important to what we are studying in Ephesians today? Well, imagine if, after the genocide came to an end in Rwanda, you went on a mission trip and led a Tutsi tribe member to Jesus. As you discipled him, you naturally taught him the great commission, which commands us to engage every ethnic group with the Gospel. Can you imagine the serious internal emotional collision that command would have on a Tusti tribe member who heard he needed to love his Hutu neighbor as Christ loved him and in so doing, build a sincere relationship with him that serves as a the natural platform for him to intentionally share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him and lead him to be a disciple of Christ. That, as a part of that command, if his Hutu neighbor repents and believes in Jesus, that man from the tribe who mercilessly killed millions of people from his Tutsi tribe would now be a brother forever, and he was to treat him as such right now! If you can’t understand at least on some small level how big a deal that is, you may be seriously void of basic human empathy!

But here’s where Ephesians comes into play in this conversation. The cause of the division between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, as well as every other reason mankind comes up with to divide himself, is a very specific matter that the New Testament says the Gospel destroys! It's addressed throughout the New Testament, and it's certainly already been pointed to in Ephesians, but now Paul is going to begin fleshing it out on a much deeper level.

Flesh what out? That IN CHRIST we have all been made one with God and all who are in Him! Christ didn’t make us one with God and one another in some abstract, administrative box check way, but in every real way possible. In Christ, people from every ethnic group on the planet, something sin and Satan have taken advantage of to encourage people to separate themselves from one another, have now been made the most important and most sincerely unified family in all of creation—God’s family!

Paul will address this subject in various ways throughout the rest of this letter, but the passage we reach today teaches us some core components of the doctrine of the family of God.

Ephesians 2:11-3:6 teaches us three important components of the doctrine of the Family of God.

The first component, Ephesians 2:11-3:6, teaches us about the doctrine of the Family of God is that,

1. The Gentiles (non-Jews) were ALIENATED from God and His family. (2:11-12)

11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called "the uncircumcision" by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands--

Notice “the uncircumcision” is in parentheses. This was to highlight that this title was not a title of applause but of mockery and contempt. The Jews saw non-Jews (Gentiles) as second-class citizens in the world, as being beneath them. To the Jews, one of the most blatant anathemas of the Gentiles was that they were not circumcised. But what’s the big deal about that? Why would that matter to the Jews?

Circumcision was first instituted with the Jewish people when God changed Abram’s name to Abraham and, in so doing, further clarified the covenant he was making with Abraham (Genesis 17). It was a Covenant that clearly made specific promises to specific descendants of Abraham (not all!), but not as the end purpose. The stated end purpose was that every ethnic group on the planet would be blessed by what God did through Abraham’s descendants. God’s purpose wasn’t to create a nation of physical descendants of Abraham, but to do something through those descendants that would make a way for people from every tribe and tongue to come to faith in Him. The exclusivity wasn’t permanent; rather, it was meant to make it very clear and obvious to the world where to look, what to look for, and, most importantly, WHO to look for and believe in—Jesus! (Genesis 12:3; 22:18; 26:4, Galatians 3:8-9)

Centuries after Abraham, the Jewish people spent 40 years wandering around in the wilderness with no home, right after they had spent the previous 400 years as captives in Egypt. Interestingly, during those 40 years, none of the men had been circumcised. Their fathers had refused to trust God and follow Him into the promised land, so God made them wander around for 40 years until they all died off. Given their lack of faith to trust God to give them the land He promised, it’s not shocking that they also didn’t follow through with the covenantal act that demonstrated they belonged to God and trusted in His promises—circumcision. Therefore, before launching the campaign to conquer the land, Joshua led the people to restore their faith in the Lord by obeying God in the very thing God had commanded them to do as a symbol of their faithful obedience—circumcision. From that point on, circumcision became a key part of what it meant to be a Jewish man; however, it unfortunately became something to the Jewish people that God never commanded. As they did with so many things, their identity went from being in God and thus obeying His commandments with circumcision, sabbath laws, sacrifices, etc., out of faith, to having their identity in circumcision, sabbath laws, sacrifices, etc. They then felt entitled to look down on those who didn’t do these things, and thus the phrase, “the uncircumcision.” It was a term that pointed to the fact that they saw Gentiles as inferior people!

Now, Paul puts that subject on hold to clarify somethings. And this is really important. The Jews WERE God’s chosen people. The covenant God made with Abraham made that clear, but then it became even clearer when God gave Moses the law. The Mosaic law created an even bigger wall of separation between the Jewish people and the gentile world, mostly because every time you turn around, the Jewish people wanted to abandon God and run to the world. However, in creating a wall that contained the Jewish people, it also kept out non-Jews, and this is what Paul describes after the “em dash.”

12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Despite the sarcasm and the obvious arrogance of looking down on Gentiles, the fact is that they were alienated from God and the people of God, and the Mosaic law made that way clearer. Verse 12 lists four ways they were separated:

“remember that you were at that time separated from Christ”

It's not just the period between Christ’s resurrection and the Gospel's arrival in Ephesus that he’s speaking of, but rather their general position as Gentiles prior to Christ, which left them completely separated from any connection to the promise of the Messiah! Over the millennia, some Gentiles certainly came to faith in God and embraced the hope of a future messiah, but, all in all, the Gentile world had nothing within it, religiously or culturally, that turned their hearts toward these expectations.

“To understand the above most clearly, we should know that the word “Christ” is the English spelling of the Greek word christos (χριστος), which in turn is the translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah. The word “Christ” here is not to be taken in its Christian sense, but in its Jewish one. The point is not that these Ephesians were without Christ as Saviour, but as Gentiles, they had no covenant connection with Him as the Jews had with Him as Messiah.”

“alienated from the commonwealth of Israel”

“The term politeia (πολιτεια) (commonwealth) has two main senses—a state or commonwealth, and citizenship or the rights of a citizen. The first of these is most in harmony with the theocratic term ‘the Israel,’ and so it is understood by most. These Ephesians, therefore, had no part in the theocracy, the o.t. constitution under which God made Himself known to the Jew and entered into relation with him.”

“and strangers to the covenants of promise,”

“The third thing true of them was that they were “strangers from the covenants of promise.” The definite article is in the Greek text. It is, “strangers from the covenants of the promise.” Expositors comments: “The word xenos (ξενος) (strangers), which has the particular meaning of one who is not a member of a state or city, is used here in a general sense of foreign to a thing, having no share in it. The diathēkai (διαθηκαι) (covenants) are the covenants with Abraham and the patriarchs. It is obviously the covenants of Messianic significance that are in view. That the Mosaic Law or the Sinaitic Covenant is not in view seems to follow from the mention of the promises; for that covenant was not distinctively of the promise, but is described by Paul as coming in after it and provisionally (Gal. 3:17–19). The ‘promise’ is the one distinctively so-called, the great Messianic promise given the Hebrew people.”

“having no hope and without God in the world”

“The fourth and fifth Gentile disabilities are starkly stated: having no hope and without God in the world. They were ‘hopeless’ because, although God had planned and promised to include them one day, they did not know it, and therefore had no hope to sustain them. And they were ‘godless’ (atheoi) because, although God had revealed himself to all mankind in nature and therefore had not left himself without witness, yet they suppressed the truth they knew and turned instead to idolatry. It was no exaggeration, therefore, to describe the ancient non-Jewish world as ‘hopeless’ and ‘godless.”

The second component, Ephesians 2:11-3:6, teaches us about the doctrine of the Family of God is that,

2. Christ ABOLISHED the Old Covenant System that kept Gentiles out. (2:13-17)

The nature of the Covenant God made with Abraham isolated the Jewish people in a very clear way, but NOTHING like the Mosaic Law that was added because of the faithlessness of the Jewish people to follow God into the promise He made to Abraham. In so doing, the Mosaic Law made it literally illegal for non-Jews to be one with Jews. But that was a method to accomplish a purpose and not of itself the purpose, therefore, Paul wrote,

13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility

Paul previously pointed to the Jews believing their circumcision as what made them God’s people, which was an absolutely ridiculous thing to do! God made them God’s people, not a knife! However, circumcision was a required demonstration of it, and without being circumcised, the Mosaic Law didn’t allow a person to be a part of the family or access the blessing of the Covenant.

“But now in Christ Jesus” transitions us away from the requirement in the Mosaic law of the blood a man that was shed when his foreskin was cut away as a rite of passage to be accepted by the family of God, to the cutting of Christ, that is, the shed blood of Jesus on the cross that gives us the right, and does so to a far greater and perfect extent, to be God’s family! Furthermore, the bloodshed in circumcision was symbolic, but Christ’s blood was NOT. His blood actually paid the penalty of our sin that left Jews and Gentiles alike under the eternal damnation of God!

The subject is dealt with all over the New Testament, let me quickly show one passage that puts it all together,

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-16)

Christ’s death brought everything the Mosaic Law set up to an end. The Mosaic Law was never God’s plan, but rather his method to make the way for, and point to the one who was His plan—Jesus. Therefore, Paul then writes,

15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

Now, be sure, in the Mosaic Law/Old Covenant, and in every moment prior to that, salvation was still by Grace through faith. It’s never NOT been salvation by grace through faith (Romans 4)!

In addition, God’s moral and ethical standards existed prior to the Mosaic Law. God didn’t invent moral Law with Moses, and most importantly, He especially didn’t just up and decide with Moses that mankind now had to live in submission to Him, do what He said do and not do what He said not to do! God has always been God, and thus humanity has always been called to live in submission to Him. As such, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that the moral and ethical standards that God has for mankind have been and always will be standards for us to live by. God didn’t send Christ to die so that we could have the right to rebel against Him and live in sin, but rather to give us freedom from the curse and power of sin over us so that we could walk in actual fellowship and obedience to Him and in fellowship with one another as God created mankind to do; so we could actually walk in HIS righteousness!

So, what did Christ abolish? He abolished the “law of commandments EXPRESSED in ordinances.” Christ didn’t abolish God’s moral and ethical standards, but rather the arrangement of those standards within a system of ordinances.

The Mosaic Law set up a system of ordinances, that is, mandated practices that were to be done specifically when, where, and how God mandated every little detail. The failure to precisely participate in these ordinances was a breach of the Law of the Covenant, which meant not having the right to the blessings contained in it. Furthermore, the Law itself was set up so that only Jews could fully participate in all the ordinances, meaning that only Jews had full access to the blessings of the covenant and full acceptance in the family.

Now, understand, the practices didn’t save them from hell, but they were mandatory means for experiencing the covenant blessings God promised to Israel. The covenant God made with Israel through Moses wasn’t a promise of eternal life, but a promise of prosperity and success as a nation on the land God specifically gave them until the promised one came and established a new covenant that did give us salvation and eternal life!

In addition, practicing the ordinances didn’t allow them to disobey other commandments (i.e., don’t worship false gods), but not practicing the ordinances still brought judgment rather than blessing.

Furthermore, if you disobeyed moral and ethical laws, you couldn’t practice the ordinances that gave you access to the favor of God and God’s people, that is, until you followed other ordinances that renewed your right to participate in the primary ones and thus the marriage between God’s moral and ethical standards as expressed through ordinances.

But, Paul is teaching us that when Jesus died, He ABOLISHED the entire system of accessing God’s favor and the acceptance of God’s family through ordinances. Jesus abolished the entire system and created something entirely new, the thing that the Old Testament prophets prophesied of, which we call the New Covenant. It was what God had promised all along. It was the purpose of everything God did with Israel through the Mosaic Covenant. In this new covenant, the right to access and experience the blessing of the covenant (God’s eternal life and full rights and full acceptance by the people of God!) is not associated with a system of ordinances at all; that system was abolished, meaning not only the ordinances but also the system that needed them! In this system, the promised blessings and the right to experience them have nothing whatsoever to do with our actions but the one action of the one man, Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection! Nothing else!

We are reconciled to God through Christ and nothing else! We all violate the moral and ethical standards required to be one with God and experience His life, and there has never been, nor is there now, any ordinance that gives the right to be one with Him. It is in Christ and Christ alone that we get to have the full favor of God; of being His fully favored sons and daughters! Therefore, Jew and Gentile alike stand EQAUL before God because they were all brought into the same fully favored relationship with Him by the same thing—the death and resurrection of Jesus!

This then makes the third component, Ephesians 2:11-3:6, teach us about the doctrine of the Family of God, complete common sense!

3. Christ created a FAMILY with zero divisions. (2:18-3:6)

18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

The “both” are Gentiles and Jews.

As we learned in Ephesians 2:1-10, the work of Christ gives us the right to be God’s children, and it’s the Spirit of God who brings us into that experience. We do not experience God’s life or access it through religious practices of any kind, but by His grace through faith, which means living in submission to the Spirit of God who now empowers and leads all who repent and believe in Jesus into an abiding relationship with God!

As a result, Paul then says to the Gentiles who used to be strangers from God and his family,

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,

“Paul resorts to three familiar models of the church, which are developed in many other passages of Scripture. He pictures the new Jew-Gentile community as God’s kingdom, God’s family, and God’s temple. a. God’s kingdom (verse 19a) … Although he does not develop the metaphor, he appears to be alluding to citizenship of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is neither a territorial jurisdiction nor even a spiritual structure. God’s kingdom is God himself ruling his people, and bestowing upon them all the privileges and responsibilities which his rule implies. To this new international God-ruled community, which had replaced the Old Testament national theocracy, Gentiles and Jews belonged on equal terms. … b. God’s family (verse 19b) The metaphor changes and becomes more intimate: you are … members of the household of God. A kingdom is one thing; a household or family is another. And in Christ Jews and Gentiles find themselves more than fellow citizens under his rule; they are together children in his family. … ”

20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

“… c. God’s temple (verses 20–22) Paul comes now to his third picture. Essentially the church is a community of people. Nevertheless, it may be likened in a number of respects to a building, and especially to the temple. The temple in Jerusalem—first Solomon’s, then Zerubbabel’s, then Herod’s—had for nearly a thousand years been the focal point of Israel’s identity as the people of God. Now there was a new people; would there be a new temple, as Jesus had hinted? The new people was not a new nation but a new humanity, international and worldwide. A geographically localized centre would therefore not be appropriate for it. What then could be its temple, its focus of unity? Here in verses 20–22 Paul elaborates his vision of the new temple in greater detail than elsewhere; it will repay careful study. As he develops his image, he refers to the foundation and cornerstone of the building, the structure as a whole and its individual stones, its cohesion and growth, its present function and (at least implicitly) its future destiny. … Since apostles and prophets were both groups with a teaching role, it seems clear that what constitutes the church’s foundation is neither their person nor their office but their instruction. Moreover, we are to think of them as inspired teachers, organs of divine revelation, bearers of divine authority. The word ‘apostles’ here cannot therefore be a generic term for missionaries or church planters or bishops or other church leaders; instead it must denote that small and special group whom Jesus chose, called and authorized to teach in his name, and who were eyewitnesses of his resurrection, consisting of the Twelve plus Paul and James and perhaps one or two others. What they taught they expected the church to believe and preserve, what they commanded they expected the church to obey. The word ‘prophets’ also indicates inspired teachers to whom the word of God came and who conveyed that word to others faithfully. The couplet ‘apostles and prophets’ may bring together the Old Testament (prophets) and New Testament (apostles) as the basis of the church’s teaching. But the inverted order of the words (not ‘prophets and apostles’ but ‘apostles and prophets’) suggests that probably New Testament prophets are meant. If so, their bracketing with the apostles as the church’s foundation is significant. The reference must again be to a small group of inspired teachers, associated with the apostles, who together bore witness to Christ and whose teaching was derived from revelation (3:5) and was foundational. In practical terms this means that the church is built on the New Testament Scriptures. They are the church’s foundation documents. And just as a foundation cannot be tampered with once it has been laid and the superstructure is being built upon it, so the New Testament foundation of the church is inviolable and cannot be changed by any additions, subtractions or modifications offered by teachers who claim to be apostles or prophets today. The church stands or falls by its loyal dependence on the foundation truths which God revealed to his apostles and prophets, and which are now preserved in the New Testament Scriptures. The cornerstone is also of crucial importance to a building. It is itself part of and essential to the foundation; it helps to hold the building steady, and it also sets it and keeps it in line. The temple in Jerusalem had massive cornerstones. Armitage Robinson mentions one ancient monolith excavated from the southern wall of the temple which measured 38 feet 9 inches (about 12 metres) in length. The chief cornerstone of the new temple is Christ Jesus himself. Elsewhere he is also the foundation stone. But here Paul has particularly in mind the function of Jesus Christ in holding the growing temple together as a unity. For he is the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows … The unity and growth of the church are coupled, and Jesus Christ is the secret of both. … The Jerusalem temple was an exclusively Jewish edifice, as we have seen, which all Gentiles were forbidden to enter. But now Gentiles are not only admitted; they are themselves constituent parts of the temple of God. And since one of the cornerstone’s functions was to bind two walls together, it may be that Paul is using this imagery to set Christ forth as the key to Jewish-Gentile solidarity. What is the purpose of the new temple? In principle, it is the same as the purpose of the old, namely to be a dwelling place of God (verse 22). Of course spiritually-minded Israelites knew that God did not dwell in man-made temples and that the whole universe could not contain his infinite being. Nevertheless, he promised to manifest his glory (the shekinah) in the temple’s inner sanctuary, in order to symbolize the truth that he dwelt among his people. The new temple, however, is neither a material building, nor a national shrine, nor has it a localized site. It is a spiritual building (God’s household) and an international community (embracing Gentiles as well as Jews), and it has a worldwide spread (wherever God’s people are to be found). This is where God dwells. He is not tied to holy buildings but to holy people, to his own new society. To them he has pledged himself by a solemn covenant. He lives in them, individually and as a community.4 What, then, has replaced the shekinah glory in the temple, as the symbol of God’s presence and the means of its manifestation? Paul answers the question here. The church is both a holy temple in the Lord (meaning, as always in the New Testament when not otherwise stated, ‘the Lord Jesus’) and a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Once more the Holy Trinity claims our attention. For God dwells in his people as his temple ‘in the Lord’ and ‘in the Spirit’, or through his Son and by his Spirit. As Paul was dictating his letter, there stood in Ephesus the magnificent marble temple of Artemis (‘great is Diana of the Ephesians’), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and in whose inner shrine there was a statue of the goddess. At the same time in Jerusalem there stood the Jewish temple built by Herod the Great, barricading itself against the Gentiles, and now also against God, whose shekinah glory it had housed in its inner sanctuary for centuries, but whose glory as revealed in its Messiah it had sought to extinguish. Two temples, one pagan and the other Jewish, each designed by its devotees as a divine residence, but both empty of the living God. For now there is a new temple, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. It is his new society, his redeemed people scattered throughout the inhabited world. They are his home on earth. They will also be his home in heaven. For the building is not yet complete. It grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Only after the creation of the new heaven and the new earth will the voice from the throne declare with emphatic finality: ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.’”

1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles-- 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

“When Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison in Rome awaiting trial before Nero, waiting for the Jewish prosecutors to come with their bleak faces and their malicious charges. … When we are undergoing hardship, unpopularity or material loss for the sake of Christian principles, we may regard ourselves either as victims or as the champions of Christ. Paul is our example; he regarded himself not as the prisoner of Nero but as the prisoner of Christ.”

In Acts, we see the supernatural conversion of Saul (Paul) to Christ and the commission to bring the mystery of how God reconciles anybody to the Father to the Gentiles. The irony in that is incredible because Saul was the protector of Jewish ethnicity! He was a hero of Jewish culture because he was the great defender of it, which is why he was out to destroy any testimony that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. There was no way a proud defender of Jewish culture could accept a messiah from Nazareth who broke sabbath laws, turned the tables over in the temple, insulted the religious leaders of Israel, all while telling people to pay their taxes to Rome and never once using His influence to get rid of the Romans! It was a complete offense to Saul! But after being confronted by Christ Himself, Paul not only trusted in Jesus to be the Messiah, but also, because He believed Jesus to be the eternal Messiah, the eternal Son of God, Saul (Paul) consequently full heartedly and with total willingness did what Christ told Him to do—bring the Gospel to the people Paul once did everything possible to keep the Jews from ever being in fellowship with!

Although we see prophecies in the Old Testament that God would bless people of every tribe through the promised Messiah, no one really understood what they meant. It was very much a mystery until Jesus made it bluntly clear with the command to go make disciples of every ethnic group (Matthew 28:18-20) and to live in as much unity with every one of those disciples as He has with the Father (John 17)!

But Paul wasn’t the only one preaching this, because he was certainly by no means the only one Jesus revealed it to. Therefore, he writes,

4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

“as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” - This is not to take away from the role of the OT prophets in the redemptive story, but to point to the specific revelation and vital clarity revealed by the NT apostles and prophets that the OT prophets did not see nor could even understand before the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Looking back to the OT through the lens of the NT allows us to see the promise of the union of Jew and Gentile. But in the context of the OT prophets, their focus was on the Jewish people and that God would unify them in faithful submission to Him from the heart.

The mystery isn’t that Gentiles and Jews are made one, but that they are so in CHRIST! The Messiah wasn’t just for Jews, but for people from every ethnic group. The promise to Abraham was true and fulfilled in Christ. Through the Jews, every nation in the world would be blessed. The Messiah that came through the Jewish people was the savior for all. As such,

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:28-29)

Challenge:

1. Does your relationship with people in the church look like family, is it becoming like family, or is there no chance of becoming like family because you won’t engage with anybody like family or accept how they are trying to do it with you?

Whether it’s the physical trials some in our church are going through or the deep spiritual trials some are going through, this church is so awesome at rallying around one another when things go crazy. But God didn’t make us family just for a crisis; He made us family forever!

2. Do your relationships reflect the ethnic diversity at your workplace and in your neighborhood/community?

We are not called to participate in racial reconciliation; we are called to be ambassadors of Gospel reconciliation. The Great Commission commands us to cross ethnic lines and build real relationships, whereby we lead people not to follow Jesus somewhere else, but to follow Jesus with us as family! The unity of the Gospel is not in ourselves, our nation, our culture, or in our ethnicity, but in someone and something greater than all of that—Jesus and His Kingdom! Any attempt to be one with anybody outside of Christ is a failed effort! Sin separates us from God and each other, and the one who frees us from sin is Jesus!! Only Jesus can bring us together as one!

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Discussion Guide | The Family of God

Have you ever seen or experienced the tearing down of walls that separated differing groups of people, even family?

The Gentiles (non-Jews) were alienated from God and His family. (2:11-12)

• • Have group members define and describe what it might look like to be:

    • • separated from Christ
    • • alienated from “Israel”/no chance of citizenship (be careful to convey that this is citizenship into God’s family)
    • • no share in the promises
    • • no hope and without God

• • Can you think of anyone or any group of people around you that might remotely fit into this description?

Christ abolished the Old Covenant System that kept Gentiles out. (2:13-17)

• • Have someone (or a few people) personalize Ephesians 2:13

• • What are common ‘blocks’ that build the dividing wall of hostility?

• • What are some things you’ve/we’ve made ‘laws’ that could be abolished in order for people to better see Christ?

• • What are some steps in reconciling any wrongs or any broken relationships?

Christ created a family with zero divisions. (2:18-3:6)

• • Think of someone that you have a big enough problem with that you would not share the Gospel with them?

Challenge:

• • Does your relationship with people in the church look like family, is it becoming like family, or is there no chance of becoming like family because you won’t engage with anybody like family or accept how they are trying to do it with you?

• • Do your relationships reflect the ethnic diversity at your workplace and in your neighborhood/community?