00:00:00:03 – 00:00:22:37
Clint Loveall
All right. Well, thanks for being with us on Tuesday. As we continue through Ephesians and as we find ourselves at the end of the second chapter, a really nice, statement of some Christian ideas here. So we’ll jump in just a couple of verses. We’re in 19 and, we’ll just read to the end of the chapter.

00:00:22:42 – 00:00:50:24
Clint Loveall
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone in him. The whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

00:00:50:29 – 00:01:21:38
Clint Loveall
This is the culmination of this section we’ve been in, where Paul has been talking to the Ephesians about their oneness in Christ, their starting place as Jew or Gentile, and how in Jesus that distinction goes away, and that they are now being transformed, being brought into a new reality that encompasses all people and you know, Michael, I think these verses are the kind of things that Christians can read by.

00:01:21:43 – 00:01:50:22
Clint Loveall
And they sound good, they’re nice, it’s well-written, but I think sometimes these are the things we take for granted. This language, you are no longer strangers and aliens. You are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Sometimes I think we get accustomed to. Or maybe we get overly familiar with the idea that we used to be one thing, and Christ has made us another thing.

00:01:50:27 – 00:02:19:03
Clint Loveall
And and we should revisit that idea every now and then just to be odd again by it, to be grateful for it to be. Rejoice over it. We used to be strangers and aliens, but here Paul says Christ’s work and this is wonderful language. We are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. That that’s beautiful language.

00:02:19:08 – 00:02:39:25
Clint Loveall
It’s a beautiful concept and one that I think, again, we should return to as kind of the foundation for not only our identity but for our our thankfulness and for our, just realization of of what we proclaim that God has done for us.

00:02:39:30 – 00:03:11:51
Michael Gewecke
Well, Clint, the reality of citizenship is actually quite, tumultuous idea throughout the history of the church. I think that we maybe missed that a little bit. But historically, the idea of being part of this kingdom being part and, having citizenship in a, kingdom that’s other than the kingdoms of this world, you know, in other letters, we get this language of, principalities and powers.

00:03:11:51 – 00:03:35:22
Michael Gewecke
And so there’s this fight against between the, the power of God, which establishes this new way of being in the world. This way that moves us from a status of alien into, status of being knit even into the household of God himself. That that is a radical transformation of our human understanding of where we are located in the world.

00:03:35:27 – 00:04:01:04
Michael Gewecke
And, Christians have always existed throughout our entire time in the midst of different nations, different, some are Romans or Italians, and today you have some who are, Christians in the Congo and Christians in the United States. Right. You have your worldly citizenship. But what is in mind here is a kind of unification which would be otherwise unimaginable.

00:04:01:04 – 00:04:26:29
Michael Gewecke
And you might remember here that we were just talking about this dividing wall in verse 14 that is been struck down, that is no longer doing the work of keeping us apart. And so what is the outcome of that? Well, the outcome is now we are a new people. We once were aliens in various places, and now together we are even members of the household of God.

00:04:26:31 – 00:04:54:21
Michael Gewecke
This is our new identity. And this new identity does confer benefit. The benefit, of course, being that we are in Christ and so since we’re in Christ, we are rooted deeply in that forever relationship with God. But then if you keep looking down the road, it also brings with it a kind of responsibility. Because when the dividing wall comes down, when we become members of the household of God, now we’re called to dwell together in that household.

00:04:54:21 – 00:05:05:33
Michael Gewecke
Well, and that becomes the task. The driving task of the Christian life is to learn through discipleship, to live together humbly in a way that reflects our citizenship.

00:05:05:38 – 00:05:36:09
Clint Loveall
And I know that sometimes that language can be uncomfortable, because I think sometimes the church has tried to use it coercively to produce, you know, kind of guilt and maybe even manipulation. But but again, I think there’s just something profound about returning to this idea that God has brought you into his household, that you were once a stranger, that you were once an alien, whether you were Jew or Gentile, you were outside of God’s righteousness.

00:05:36:14 – 00:06:07:48
Clint Loveall
And Paul says, and what Christ has done has made a way for you to be in you now are a part of the household of God. And that’s a beautiful message. And then he goes on to, to sort of describe that, that household is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So, on the ground level, what it what it rests upon is the work of those who have gone before us, the righteous before us, with Christ himself at the cornerstone.

00:06:07:48 – 00:06:53:34
Clint Loveall
And, you probably know this, but in the ancient world, cornerstones are very important because lacking some of the tools to do straight lines, the best stone, the the the most reliable and trustworthy stone was used to set the dimensions of the rest of the building. And that’s that’s really the idea here. Relatively simple, that Jesus sets the tone for the church, that Jesus sets the line for this household built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who themselves are built in line with Jesus Christ in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

00:06:53:34 – 00:07:14:49
Clint Loveall
And I think this is also very compelling language, Michael, because when we hear the word temple, we think of bricks, we think of mortar, stones and wood and planks and the various ways that but we think of a place, a physical structure. And that’s not what Paul is doing here. And that’s not what he means.

00:07:14:54 – 00:07:45:12
Michael Gewecke
Well, yeah, the operative verb there changes everything. We have very clearly grows into a holy temple. Growing is not a thing that temples do. Temples sit, temples are there, they’re reliable. They last through time. And if something happens to them, we rebuild them. Well, a growing thing is a living thing. And ultimately, when we are knit together, when we stand upon this firm foundation, we’re going to find ourselves bound together in a living, breathing organism.

00:07:45:12 – 00:08:06:58
Michael Gewecke
We’re part of the body of Christ. This image, Clint, we could take too far. And that has happened in the history of the world. But I think we can also not take it seriously enough. I think that we can miss that being part of the church does not mean that you are part of a clearly defined building, that once you’re inside of it, you know you’re inside of it.

00:08:07:01 – 00:08:37:37
Michael Gewecke
When you’re outside of it, you know that it it’s a living thing. It has all of the frailties of humans reflected in its midst. It is a beautiful thing, but it is always changing and ebbing and flowing and and the growing language really matters here. And so I think one thing worth remembering is that as the church does live and grow, it doesn’t do so without any foundation, without any thing holding it as an anchor.

00:08:37:44 – 00:09:13:04
Michael Gewecke
Very clearly, Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. And we have the apostles and we have the prophets, and they provide for us a kind of direction and a kind of boundary and a kind of, basically they grant us an opportunity to see what the limits of that household are, and that makes it safe to grow within it, to be the kinds of people who, in this time and place, seek to return to that foundation and to learn from and to grow, that others might find themselves also compelled to be with us inside this household.

00:09:13:04 – 00:09:43:03
Michael Gewecke
I, I think there’s a messiness to Paul’s understanding of the church that we don’t always see. Clint and this this text, I think, helps us to get under the hood of it a little bit. That church, by its definition, is full of humans. And so everything that comes with humans you will find in the church and the amazing promise of the faith is that Jesus Christ has chosen humans and that Jesus Christ has provided for us the foundation upon which we will discover new kinds of relationship.

00:09:43:03 – 00:09:49:23
Michael Gewecke
And that that growing together is Christ at work. And it creates this thing that we call church.

00:09:49:28 – 00:10:17:49
Clint Loveall
I, I really love what Paul’s done here. If you follow it through, Christ is the cornerstone. Christ is the the anchor. Christ is the guiding premise that everything is built on the guiding force, the guiding reality that everything else is aligned to. And then we have the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the witness of those who saw Jesus, the witness of those who spoke empowered by the Holy Spirit.

00:10:17:54 – 00:10:48:58
Clint Loveall
And in him in Christ. The whole structure is joined together and it grows. So what do we see in the church? We see joined and grows. We see the two things that the church is called to do, to come together and to expand. And then finally, we get this wonderful, this wonderful verse at the end in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

00:10:49:03 – 00:11:20:29
Clint Loveall
And again, when we hear something like dwelling place, our mind goes to church buildings. That’s not at all the image here. The images of a people, the people of Christ, built together, standing on the witness, standing on what has been passed down to them by the apostles and prophets all knit together, all hinging upon and guided by Christ, held together by the spirit to make a dwelling place for God.

00:11:20:29 – 00:11:46:57
Clint Loveall
And, if you consider that we started this passage with this idea of Jews and Gentiles and kind of who’s in and who’s out, the idea that just in a few short paragraphs, Paul has taken us to the idea of a universal church where each member is built into it for the purpose of growth and unity in Jesus Christ, who makes it all possible.

00:11:46:57 – 00:12:09:04
Clint Loveall
This is this is just again, I, I’m I know I say this often and I don’t want to just repeat myself for no reason, but when you slow down and you read what Paul writes, you begin to see how carefully and how beautifully he’s put these things together and how much we can gain from them if if we take time to listen.

00:12:09:09 – 00:12:42:16
Michael Gewecke
I think that one of the unifying features of this text is the way that it places us in God’s hands throughout the whole start. And you have to note that Ephesians we we start at the beginning of this study noting how very quickly, I mean, the very beginning of this book is to give Jesus Christ first place is to say that he’s the starting word and everything that follows from that, then will will come as a result of what he has done.

00:12:42:21 – 00:13:09:58
Michael Gewecke
That is the astonishing part of this text, is that it demands that we take seriously that we are called to be a unified body, not because we’ve strived to do that, because we’ve planned and calculated and came up with a strategy that was effective. Though lots and lots of people give thought and time to that. No, the reason that we have unity is because our identity is rooted in one household.

00:13:10:03 – 00:13:33:00
Michael Gewecke
And for all of the years of the church in which we’ve had schisms and different denominations and different ways of talking of the faith. At the end of the day, if you peel all of that back, there is one Christ and Clint. Occasionally you will hear someone you know talk with some pride about their sort of family of the faith.

00:13:33:05 – 00:14:03:18
Michael Gewecke
One needs to practice a lot of humility and recognize that ultimately, everything that’s good in whatever tradition we have comes from Jesus Christ. That we’re knit together not because we have all of the right theology, and because we do it exactly the way that Jesus wants us to do it. It’s because of grace. It’s because of the Savior Himself, who has accommodated himself for us and invited us to lay beside the stuff that we make big, so that we can be integrated into the thing that he is doing.

00:14:03:28 – 00:14:29:15
Michael Gewecke
And make no mistake about it, this holy temple, this set apart, growing and living organism is not a function of human effort. It’s a function of Jesus Christ’s grace. And all of us would do well, I think, to return to that with some gratitude and say, no matter, what we are experiencing today, no matter how close or far we feel from that work, God is faithful to the work.

00:14:29:15 – 00:14:39:18
Michael Gewecke
And because God is faithful and all of this comes because of Christ’s effort, then therefore all that we have to do is to receive it and to do our part, to nurture it and to grow it.

00:14:39:23 – 00:15:23:35
Clint Loveall
It’s been a while back, but you and I unpacked the idea, I think, in this sermon, a couple of years ago, that the call of the church is unity versus uniformity. In other words, we are to be one in Christ, which doesn’t mean we have all things in common, which doesn’t mean we agree on everything. And I think just even this very rudimentary snapshot of the early church, imagine those who gather in Christ, some of them are circumcised and proudly Jewish for generations and have been, insistent and intentional and passionate about keeping the law.

00:15:23:40 – 00:16:02:06
Clint Loveall
Some of them were Gentiles who in the recent past had been in pagan temples. Some of them were nothing. Some of them still believed that eating the wrong food was a was an act of disobedience, and some of them didn’t care about that at all. And yet here in this ragtag group of people who don’t see everything the same and who don’t have the same shared experience, Paul says, because of what Jesus Christ has done, you are one and you all have a place in the building which is in the building made in and through Jesus Christ.

00:16:02:06 – 00:16:18:02
Clint Loveall
You all have a place in the family of faith. The walls that divide us have been torn down, and Christ has made you one. That that message, I think, is timeless. Michael, there’s never been a generation of the church that doesn’t need to hear that.

00:16:18:07 – 00:16:57:19
Michael Gewecke
Well, and Clint, you don’t need to linger here much longer, but it’s just worth seeing at the end of this text into a dwelling place for God. If only we took that more seriously. If only we really thought that the way that we live in Christian community is a reflection of where God is living in the world. Man, I know that if I had that front of mind more often, there would be a lot of things I would not say at all in the midst of a Christian community, there’s a lot of actions and practices that, quite frankly, I would do with more thoughtfulness and more quickness to forgive.

00:16:57:19 – 00:17:21:43
Michael Gewecke
And we sometimes get caught in the motion as if this thing that we’re living out in Christian community is a thing that’s common, but it’s not. It’s sacred because God has chosen to show up in the middle of it. God is dwelling in us. That’s an astonishing statement. And if we really take it seriously, I think that has in it some encouragement.

00:17:21:43 – 00:17:42:10
Michael Gewecke
Yes, because that’s an astonishing reality. But I would also say that’s convicting, because it would remind us that if God was in the room and we knew it, and we’re mindful of it, there’s a lot of things that we would do very differently, and we would do well to take that seriously. As we’re seeking to live out the faith with one another, God is dwelling in and with us.

00:17:42:10 – 00:17:43:40
Michael Gewecke
That’s astonishing.

00:17:43:40 – 00:17:44:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s a good word.

00:17:44:58 – 00:17:56:31
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us. If you found this video, study helpful, give it a like it helps others find it as they are studying it themselves. And do subscribe so you don’t miss future studies like it. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

00:17:56:36 – 00:17:57:16
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.