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GOOD FENCES MAKE BAD CHRISTIANS #1

LIFE IN A LOST PARALLEL UNIVERSE

In the Taliban world, there were Allah's true people — and then all the rest. Christians, too, have often operated within a split screen: US — the saved. And THEM — the lost. All of a sudden, the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2, the great divide, the Two Universes, are obliterated.

There's a wonderful letter in the vaults of the Christian Church, coming from the pen of John Calvin clear back in the year 1552. He was writing in response to a letter from Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, so you can picture the medieval setting in your mind. Back 450 years ago things were much as they still are today, with deep and divisive church splits. One faction of the faith not getting along — or even speaking — with five others. And the great reformer, Calvin, had this in his quill-pen reply:

"Doubtless it must be counted among the greatest misfortunes of our century that churches are thus separated from each other . . . and that the holy communion of the members of Christ, which many confess with their mouth, is only sincerely sought after by few. . . . From this it follows that the members being so scattered, the body of the church lies bleeding." And now notice how John Calvin responds to his own painful metaphor: "This affects me so deeply," he wrote back to the archbishop, "that, if anybody could see that I might be of any use, I should not hesitate to cross ten seas for this business, if that were needful."

He was writing about reformation, of course . . . and we notice with sorrow that reformation and unity were not able to walk together hand in hand. Just for interest's sake, let me share the rest of his letter:

"Indeed, if learned men were to seek a solid and carefully devised agreement ACCORDING TO THE RULE OF SCRIPTURE, an agreement by which the separated churches should unite with each other, I think that for my part I ought not to spare any trouble or dangers."

In other words, he writes, if our theological divisions could be resolved, not by falling back on tradition or the opinions of men and priests and popes, but by appealing strictly to "the rule of Scripture" — the Bible and the Bible only, as we say — he, John Calvin, was willing to cross ten oceans in order to make it happen. The fissures and the fractures in the Body of Christ were agony to him, as they ought to be to any son or daughter of the living God. But they could only be fixed, he believed, by the glue of biblical truth. Not by swords or spears or the infallible words coming from Rome.

Calvin's letter, by the way, is included in an incredible book entitled The Contemporary Christian, by John Stott. He goes on to discuss how he feels churches ought to seek unity of purpose, and also emphasizes that only the Bible's clear truths can be the safe platform for ecumenical discussions.

We're still here in the book of Ephesians, and beginning a second week of radio study in chapter two of Paul's epistle. This passage actually divides up nicely into a Part One and a Part Two, and we were so inspired all last week to focus on the balance between grace, which is the source of our salvation, and good works, which is the result of it. But now beginning with verse eleven, the NIV sections the second half into a treatise they entitle "One in Christ." And Paul launches into a very plain description of how mankind was sharply divided into two separate universes. There in the first century A.D., you definitely had the "haves" and the "have-nots." Listen:

"Remember that formerly you who were Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised' by those who call themselves ‘THE circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world."

There you have it. Jews. And Gentiles. The Chosen People, and the UN-chosen rejects. The shining city on a hilltop, and the slums over across the river. In the world Paul lived in, it couldn't be more clear. You were either in or out, depending on if you had a passport with Abraham's signature on the front page.

One of the commentaries we dug into to get additional insights provided details about the Greek word for "without God." As in: "[You Gentiles] were without hope and without God in the world." It comes from atheoi, and the scholars tell us:

"From which our word ‘atheist' is derived." Then they add: "However, the Greek word in the present context perhaps signifies no more than ‘not knowing God.' This is the ultimate in misery and loss."

So the prevailing attitude among Jews was that these barriers were absolute and unbreakable. They knew God, and no one else did — or ever could. In his Tyndale New Testament Commentary, Dr. Francis Foulkes writes:

"The covenants brought Israel into a special relationship of grace with God, and so to the hope of a deliverance and future glory that would be there. But up till this time the Gentiles had not been included within these covenants. So they stood as a people with no hope. In fact they were not only without the hope that Israel had, but they were without any real hope AT ALL."

Listen to how Dr. Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, The Message, paints the bleak picture of separation:

"It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing about that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large."

The Gentile world Paul was writing to had no concept of eternal life. No heaven. No paradise. No mansion in God's kingdom. No resurrection. C. S. Lewis, who began life as a sad and sullen little atheist, used to live a dreary life in England's worst boarding schools. He and a school chum at Chartres summed up their future life as follows:

"Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die."

And this was the lot in life of the Gentile. Birth, life, and death. Dr. Foulkes comments further in his study of Ephesians 2:

"By and large the Gentiles had to live in the world lives limited by the things of the world, and had to face the trials and sorrows and perplexities of the world without the knowledge of God to interpret the whole."

Back during the height of the recent military action in Afghanistan — Operation Enduring Freedom — did you ever try to imagine being a small, hungry child, or even a struggling man or woman living there in Kabul or Kandahar? The whole world ganging up on you. Smart bombs hitting your village, with the signatures of many nations on the missiles. Your average income is $178 a year, life expectancy 46 years, infant mortality 257 deaths per 1000 births. Your whole life dictated by wars and terrorism. What's more — in fact, much more — you know that people living Out There, across the borders and over the seas, experience the abundant joy and peace of Christian grace. Freedom of religion and liberty of conscience . . . while you are living under the yoke of the Taliban. Maybe that's just a 21st-century picture of how the people Paul was writing to knew all about "have's" and "have nots."

And Ephesians 2 now begins to describe how the jagged terrain of "two universes" is about to be healed. "Us and Them" is coming to an end. Where there were barriers, now there are to be bridges. But going back to that poignant letter from John Calvin: HOW? How is this to be accomplished? Where is there something, or Someone, with the will and wisdom to bring lasting peace? And will it be peace based on something noble and right, or the kind of orderly "peace" brought to the country of Afghanistan by the Taliban? People behaved while Mullah Omar was in charge, because he would cut off your head if you didn't. So does the gospel of Jesus Christ, described here in Ephesians 2, bring "enduring freedom" or just a new kind of totalitarianism?

Well, friend, the message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ Himself brings the peace. "He Himself IS our peace," Paul writes in verse 14, and we want to study this week how this happens. How does Jesus Christ make your enemy your friend? How does His blood take someone who was once far away from you and bring them near? And how does His truth, which so often seems to divide — to the sorrow of Calvin and all faithful believers — how does it . . . or how CAN it become a bridge instead of a barrier?

We want to humbly study all of that. But the message of Ephesians 2 is clear. We can live by it and experience oneness, or we can turn away and live behind the manmade barriers of selfishness and doctrinal error. And in our daily lives, it's true there too. The presence of Jesus Christ in my life and in your life can truly mean the end to grudges and hatred and spiritual division . . . but only if we play by the rules of the faith Christ came to offer us. "Forgive as you are forgiven," He told us. "Love your enemy." And as Calvin once observed:

"It must be admitted that a life is properly formed when and only when it is yielded to God."

A cake only turns out right . . . if you follow the recipe.