Ephesians - Lesson 17

There's so many massive practical applications here. So I just want to give a few of them and then stop for some questions. The first thing I want to say is that, firstly, what Paul is describing here is unlike anything in our American Western culture.

This is not the same thing as the black-white divide in the Jim Crow era. It's not that at all. But the reason why there's Jew and Gentile separation has nothing to do with race or racism in Paul's letter.

It was a theological issue anchored in the redemptive promises of God that revolve around these promises to do something in the Messiah. And until the Messiah came, there was a temporary time period where the law would mark off God's people and separate those who were not God's people. But when Christ comes, that temporary period is over.

So this is not what we would call modern-day racism here. That's the first thing we need to understand practically. But secondly, I do think there are some practical applications about how we should live this out related to those issues, but also related to all sorts of issues.

The race issue or the political issue or a variety of different reasons for which we may divide. Here's the good news of the gospel that Christians in Christ Jesus, they share. They share in the same sociological blessings.

They're part of the same family as those who share different ethnic identities. As I've said before, that a person who is not an African-American black man is still my kinsman according to the flesh, but he's not my Christian brother unless he's saved. But a white person or a brown person who is not an African-American man who is a Christian is my brother in Christ.

Now hear this very carefully. It is very important and good and right to love our ethnic heritages. I love my ethnic heritage.

I have all kinds of diverse ethnic flavors, I call them, in my background. I'm an African-American man that has a diversity of ethnic groups, a part of my ethnic lineage. And there are things about African-American culture that I love, some of the jazz and the food and all these other different kinds of things and the fellowships and the singing that comes from the best of the black church tradition that are singing robust theological songs about sovereignty that flowed out of a context wherein many of my black brothers and sisters, according to the flesh, they experience hardship and suffering because of the color of their skin.

And when I'm in black churches and I hear these saints sing these robust hymns, I am moved to God in ways that I'm not moved to worship God in other contexts because of the source from which these songs are coming from a history and a tradition wherein there has been a connection with suffering. It's good and right and beautiful to love the beautiful things about our ethnic heritages, our cultural heritages. It's okay as a Christian to celebrate American holidays.

That's good and that's fine. No one should be ashamed of their ethnic culture, their ethnic heritage, as long as those cultural experiences and narratives are not contrary to the gospel. When you give your life to Jesus, you are transformed, but you're not erased in terms of your ethnic identity.

You do not all of a sudden become non-ethnic in Christ, but you become a transformed whatever you are in Christ so that we begin to live our lives through the lens of what God has done for us, that our eyes are seeing now more brightly the redemptive promises of God. So I know how to love my African-American kinsmen according to the flesh in a good way, even if they're not Christians. And I know how to enjoy those beautiful ethnic connections in a good way, but there's something eternally meaningful about the union I share with someone who might not share my ethnic heritage, but shares with me union in Christ.

So Paul is not saying to me, Jarvis, in Christ, stop being a black man. How would I do that? Just like he's not saying to Jews, stop being Jews, but he's saying in Christ, here's what happens, that in Christ Jesus, I'm transformed so that my family got a lot bigger the day that I got saved. There are brothers and sisters that I have throughout the world that I'll never meet until heaven.

Maybe tongue and tribe and people and nations. That's one thing I want us to think about. It also relates then to how then do we live practically as Christians, as part of the same family with people who don't share our ethnic distinction? Because we need to understand this as well.

It's not as simple as, well, if you have the same color of skin, then you're just going to get along better. That's not true. There are real cultural differences.

I am an African-American man from Eastern Kentucky. My mother-in-law is an Hispanic black woman from Nicaragua. She's darker than I am, but we would both be considered by some to be black, but she and I do not share the same cultural experiences.

She's from a Spanish context. I'm not. Same is true for those who might be a part of my ethnic heritage who are in the States.

I'm a middle-class black man with a PhD. I have more things in common with people with PhDs than people who don't have PhDs. I'm a New Testament professor, so when I get together with people with PhDs, whether they're black or whether they're white or whether they're Hispanic or whether they're Asian, there are just things that we nerd out about that I wouldn't talk about with people who don't have PhDs in New Testament who might share my ethnic heritage.

The beauty of what Paul says, he replies to that reality that in Christ Jesus, I am part of the same family with brothers and sisters who don't share the same vocation, who don't share the same pleasures in life, who don't have the same level of experiences, who don't have the same level of education, poor Christians, rich Christians, middle-class Christians, but the gospel is much bigger than we ever thought because it brings together all of these massively different people in Christ Jesus who are different but share in this massive, massive family. So then we thirdly must fight to pursue, pursue people and the power of the Spirit to invite as many people as we can into this family regardless of what they look or sound like. So it's not my position that I'm only called to share the gospel with people who look like me.

That is not my position. I am called as a Christian to share the gospel with anybody who will listen to me. Now I do believe it's true that God calls people to go to a particular people at a particular time in a particular history.

He called Paul to go to the Gentiles. I'm not denying localized, focused, missiological work. I'm not denying that.

What I'm saying is, is that our posture as Christians ought not to be that, well, let's just let those people worry about reaching those people when God brings those people into our lives. And just so that you know, we are all someone's those people. Everybody is someone else's those people.

So whoever those people are, we are those people. So the good news of the gospel is that we have been enlisted into this family, the Retongan tribe and people and nation to live in pursuit of this gospel unity. One of the privileges, privileges that I have as a professor at my seminary is to teach students from all over the world.

And they're going to go back to countries and nations that are indigenous to them and reach people that I'll never be able to reach, I'll never be able to see. And my posture ought not to be when I teach these precious students, well, I need to bring in a professor who can perhaps be more relevant to their context. And I won't talk about this stuff with them.

I'll just talk about this stuff with people who are like me and let somebody else talk to them about whatever they need to know, or not talk to them at all about what they need to know. My posture ought not to be that. My posture ought to be, I want to try to contextualize as best as I can with their help in the classroom, asking them questions about how does this apply to this context? How would you take this to your context? How would you take this to your context? And then we think together as we wrestle with the scriptures about how to apply the Bible in different ways to our lives and how the Bible would apply and be understood in contexts that are different from our lives.

And that too is part of what Paul is saying here is that this message of the gospel is going to be taken to tongues and tribes and peoples and nations. And we ought to lean into that and accommodate as best as we can to educate ourselves as to how we can make it as accessible as possible to as many diverse people as possible, because the gospel is the one equalizer between Jews and Gentiles in Christ. There's other things that I could say about how to apply this.

Another one would be this applies to political issues. When we get saved, we come to faith in Jesus. And there are people who love Jesus who have different political perspectives.

I have my strong, very conservative perspective, but I'm a brother of someone who loves Jesus who might disagree with my perspective. So the question I got to ask myself then is this, I have to wrestle with this. How do I love and pursue unity with someone with whom I share perhaps some different political perspectives? Yes, I want to compel them to my perspective because I think it's right.

But when they reject my perspective, how do I say, you know what? What triumphs this conversation here is the union we share with Christ. So what can we lean in together about the gospel and choose to agree to disagree on other things that are not as important? It's hard to do that, but the gospel brings Jews and Gentiles together, people who are different together. I also apply it in terms of theological differences.

I have strong theological convictions about certain things. And even though I might not be able to go to church with you because we have different theological perspectives on different things, it doesn't mean that I can't share meaningful kinship with you in Christ. So I'm a Baptist and I'm a Southern Baptist.

And so I believe in, for example, baptism by immersion. And I believe that baptism by immersion precedes the Lord's Supper. That's my conviction.

But those who don't share that view, who would be a part of a different theological tradition that believes in the gospel are still my brothers and sisters in Jesus, with whom I can have meaningful fellowship and worship. And how then do I pursue this unity in Christ with those with whom I might share theological differences that do not undercut the gospel? So what Paul is saying here, if we believe it, it's risky business because it requires us to recognize that more than anything else in this world, the most important thing is what God has done for us in Christ. And when God redeems some from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation, he makes us a part of his family.

And like any family, there's disagreement. There's dysfunction. There's hostility.

And we need wisdom to discern how to pursue unity when those realities exist. But here's the point I want you to hear is that the gospel moves us in Christ toward people who don't share necessarily the same things, the same enjoyments, the same ethnic group that we share, moves us toward them. And it challenges us to think creatively about how not that we can all make our churches multiethnic.

No, I wrote a book about why you should never do that. It's not about every church being multiethnic. Some churches would never be multiethnic.

They should not be multiethnic. That's not the point. But the love other believers, regardless of ethnic group, regardless of denomination, regardless of socioeconomic standing, so that in Christ Jesus, we find ourselves living out the very thing for which Jesus is praying in John 17.

Now, I want to say one more thing about this. There are a lot of one more. This is the sermon that will never end.

When the preacher keeps saying, in closing, in closing, but 30 minutes later, he's still talking. Jesus prays in John 17 for unity. And I believe that every prayer of God that Jesus prays, God will answer.

And one way he answers that is, is through the death and the resurrection and the inclusion of Jews and Gentiles in this one new family. So I think the call of the gospel invites us to lean into that. So let me apply it this way.

Regardless of where we all go to church, we have people in our churches who are not like us. It doesn't matter what your church is. Your church has people from the same ethnic group.

There are people in that church who have something in their life that is different from you. And so then the question becomes is not, how can I run from those people to get closer to other people who are more like me? The question is, how can we live out in pursuit of this one new humanity in the here and now by loving the people that God has placed in our congregations, in our workplace, where we can demonstrate and manifest such love? I wrote a book called Redemptive Kingdom Diversity, A Biblical Theology of the People of God, in which I make it very clear that diversity is never the goal of God's vision. Redemption is.

And in that book, I also emphasize that the diversity that God talks about is every tongue and tribe and people and nation, and also make the point that in Christ Jesus, it has always been God's redemptive plan to save some from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. And it does not mean that every church is going to have a representation of that. It's just not, that's not what you have in the Bible.

What you have in the Bible is, is that what matters more to God than anything is being redeemed in Christ. And those from every tongue and tribe and people and nation who receive, who receive this redemption through the gospel are fitting into the redemptive plan that God has always had before the foundation of the world. And so the invitation I want to give you is not only to read my book, and you should, Redemptive Kingdom Diversity, A Biblical Theology of the People of God, but it's to lean in by the power of the Spirit to God's redemptive vision to reconcile Jews and Gentiles into one new humanity.

Jewish evangelism should be a priority for Christians. I don't do this enough, but we should pray for, for the salvation of the Jews, that God would help them to see that Jesus is their Jewish Messiah, and that God would help us as Christian Gentiles to see that we are grafted in as strangers into their promises, and may we compel them to come on in and receive what God promised them through their Messiah, Jesus. And may we guard our hearts practically from arrogance and pride, and guard our hearts from anti-Semitic thinking about the Jewish people and recognize that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation for the Jew first and also for the Greek, and honor our Jewish Messiah, Jesus, by praying for and loving our Jews, Jewish kinsmen who do not believe the gospel.

Questions? I have more I could say, but I probably should stop. Why? Because it's 210. Maybe I could say more during this conversation here.

Well, maybe you'll talk about more of this in chapter four, but when you think about the differences that the Gentiles and Jews faced as they were starting out in this process of grafting together and being part of the same congregation, and even thinking about what their different temple experiences were with people in Ephesus who grew up going to the temple of Artemis, and Jewish people going to a synagogue or to something like that, or maybe making the trek to Jerusalem, that they were dealing with some major differences there, and how important it is for us. We may see the differences that we face as pretty big, but you were talking about how important it is to lean in to those things and to value the people around us and find common ground and then have conversations about things that make us unique and how that helps us in our relationship with the Lord, in our relationship with our congregation. Yes.

Yeah, I'm thankful that you brought up the temple of Artemis because in my brain, thinking about Paul's Jewish context, I'm prioritizing the Jewish temple and how important that was for the Jews. But I think for them, the Ephesians to whom Paul wrote, the language of temple would probably evoke in their minds the temple of Artemis. And the kind of thing he's describing about Jews and Gentiles and Christ being the temple of God, I don't think they have any categories for that as I think about the temple of Artemis there, where technically in one sense, the goddess Artemis is not in that temple.

It's not dwelling in the temple or dwelling in the hearts of people. There are images and busts perhaps and statues of the goddess, but what Paul is describing is I think perhaps cutting both ways. One, he's emphasizing that the temple that forbade Gentiles from entering so far is now something that Jews and Gentiles and Christ become.

And then likewise, the temple that they would be aware of related to Artemis is transcended by this new temple in Christ by the spirit as the spirit and dwells Jews and Gentiles in Christ and Gentiles who were saved out of that paganism where that temple was honored and Jews who were saved within the context of living a Jewish way of life where there was a temple, recognizing that both of these important symbols representing two different gods are now realized ultimately in the one and true Messiah, Jesus, who lives in our hearts by the spirit and we become the place in which God dwells. And that is powerful. That is massive, I think, in their cultural context.

And how do you bring, I mean, think about this. How do you bring pagans from a Gentile way of life whose very religion included contradictory to the Christian gospel as a normal pattern of life? There was sexual sin and certain Gentile cults were a part of the worship experience, idolatry, of course, part of the worship experience, drunkenness, part of the of the of the worship experience for some of these Gentile Gentile cults. And you come out of that.

You imagine Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in Ephesus worshiping together in the same local assembly. That had to be a massive mess. And then we get hints at this when we when we see in Acts 15, the brothers go down to Antioch and they say, hey, unless these Gentiles are circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they cannot be saved.

So we have these these challenges that emerge because of these ethnic distinctions that are real in our in our context. We we I think we fail to forget that there's no challenge in terms of difference that the gospel can't radically break into and do a work. It doesn't mean everything is going to be perfect and harmonious.

I don't believe I don't believe in Hallmark Christianity. The Christian gospel messes up people's lives in the best way possible. But sometimes the the way the gospel messes up their lives has massive social consequences.

And and there could be there could be some hardship and some hurt because of that. But when I say in the best way possible, I mean that it it gives a perspective of the kingdom versus of the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of the principalities and powers, powers of the air. So then in Christ Jesus, we we have to lean into the reality that the gospel might want to do something about what we think is is too different to be transformed.

Now, let me clarify that and say that there are some differences that because of which I can never be unified with somebody. There's certain theological differences. So someone who rejects key integral things about the Christian gospel, I would say that's not a Christian and therefore Christian unity there.

There are certain things that the Bible teaches about what marriage is, for example, what a man and a woman are, for example, that it's not a matter of perspective on that point. Oh, you disagree. I disagree.

No, let's just get along. No, no, no. There's there's some real separation that will be there in terms of with whom I can have real familial kinship in Christ.

Doesn't mean I can't be a loving neighbor to someone who disagrees my view of marriage. It just means that I can't operate as though that view is consistent with the Christian gospel. That's my point.

But the larger point I'm trying to make is, is that the Christian gospel has the ability to take different tongues and tribes and peoples and nations and makes us and will make us into one family. But that doesn't mean we're all going to just get along like one happy family all the time. I'm not emphasizing that.

And it doesn't mean we can all go to church together either. Sometimes there are real and I think they're valid cultural reasons why one ought not to go to a certain church. I don't think that's that's sinful at all to say, you know what, just culturally, I just don't connect with that congregation.

So probably that is wise. It would be unwise for me to to be a pastor at a congregation that had a different sort of cultural experience of Christianity, like I'm reformed. I'm I'm a five point Calvinist, and that's a core part of my identity.

I'm not mad about it, but that's a core part of how I view God in life is intricately, intricately connected to my reformed theology. So it would be a disaster waiting to happen for me to pastor a free will Baptist church. Culturally, we're just too different, even if we share the same ethnic identity.

Does that make sense? Because when I talk about culture, by the way, it's not just about ethnic. I don't think culture is always ethnic. Culture could also be just certain values.

There's an ethnic piece to culture, but culture could also be values, beliefs, things that are meaningful and important. But there's also theological culture, you know, worship culture. I I love I I'm I'm 40.

I love the pipe organ. I love it. I love the I love singing hymns.

Oh, hell, the power of Jesus name with the pipe organ going really loud. I love that. I love that.

I cut my teeth on that brand of Christianity when I first got saved. And I love that. And I feel something when I'm in a context where we're singing these old hymns with traditional style.

But I could also be in a congregation where I move my hips a bit, you know, whereas my my son doesn't like the old traditional, you know, pipe or he likes to be where he can move his hips a bit. It's a cultural thing, you see. And so it's OK to recognize cultural differences may be too thick.

But the question is, do I hate because of those differences? Do I recognize the value of different styles of worship as long as they're honoring God and the content is good, even if the way in which that worship is expressed doesn't fit my particular cultural preference? And that has nothing necessarily to do with ethnic identity. It's just cultural, you see. Yeah.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So part of what it seems to me the gospel does to me, and this is hard, this is so hard for me. It's not easy.

But one thing the gospel does, I think, is it cause it causes us to ask ourselves, is this is this a cultural preference that I have, which may be good, or is this a a theological issue? And if it's a cultural preference, what are some ways that I can show the unity of the body, the the the one new humanity in Christ without compromising my conscience, but by building up the body? Let me say it this way. There's a famous economist that talks about tradeoffs that we need to make and not not compromises in terms of compromising your your convictions, but trade tradeoffs. What what can we trade off for the for the for the better good of the economy? So I try to apply that to to my how I think about my walk with the Lord.

Like what are some ways that I can make the appropriate tradeoffs, not compromises, not not compromises in theological conviction, but tradeoff of some of my preferences in a way that will help build up the body so that I can be part of something that is beautiful and bigger than what I what I am and represent. That's not easy for me because what I think are preferences are pretty important to me. But I think the gospel pushes us to ask ourselves, are there is there anything in my preference toolkit that can trade off for the sake of leaning into this one new humanity and and this how what are the appropriate ways in which I can trade that off? It might not mean we can be members of the same church, but it might mean we can partner in other ways for gospel ministry.

Yeah, I was thinking of different kinds of applications and one that came to my mind was one of the most frustrating things when I was pastoring and that is tribes in the church, the family tribes. And I found, you know, I'm I'm an Anderson. No, I'm a Johnson.

You know, I'm a McDougal. And it's like I found those tribes to be nearly impenetrable. Yeah, because they saw themselves and everyone else was outside their little group.

And, you know, I would watch people come into the church that weren't part of the tribes. No one would talk to. No one would welcome them.

No one would invite them over for dinner because they weren't part of the tribe. Yes, that's so good. Yeah.

Do I have the freedom to linger as long as I like about with this Q&A time? Because I have a lot I want to say about this. But Ephesians is not only about this, but we've been sort of anticipating this because he's now really in the body of the letter here, like boots on the ground. What does this look like practically? So I think in the American context, we have for understandable reasons, we've only thought about distinctions in terms of racial distinctions.

And we we we tend to view everything through that prism, whereas I don't think the Bible does. I think the Bible thinks about the human race. We're all human beings.

And then the Bible has what we would call as a category for ethnicity. But it seems to me that I'd be quite honest with you. I've been a Christian for for twenty nine years at this point in my life.

And in my experience. Perhaps a greater challenge, and at least in the American context, in my experience, my spaces have been like the economic challenges. I'm from eastern Kentucky, poor Appalachia.

And I went to a congregation that loved me so much. I just I get teared up when I think about how much they love me and poured into me. And I was the first African-American member of this church to join.

I don't say that in order to to to make that an issue, but it's just given the context of where I grew up and the history of that church. So that the church, the love that they showed me transformed my life. And and there were saints in that community that had that they had.

They were some of them were well to do. And here's what was striking. I never knew this until somebody said this.

There were there were poor whites in the community who would not come to the church because they didn't have, in their view, the appropriate, appropriate economic standing to go to this majority white Southern Baptist church. And I didn't come from any means, but I felt no tension for economic reasons. I didn't have I went to the church and they loved me and and I felt no economic disparity, even though there was.

So my point is saying that is, is that I think the economic thing is a challenge. You can have a a person from the same ethnicity who has who has a different economic context, a different academic context, who does not have very much in common with someone from the same ethnicity that has a different economic or different academic background. And that's a very real distinction related to the tribal thing.

And then also the tribal thing. I'm an Anderson or I'm a I'm a Smith. You know, these tribal wars in in some of my students from a place like India or or certain African countries, they they bring up like these tribal issues.

My cousin's husband, he's a Christian. He was a Muslim and converted to Christianity. He's he's from an African context.

And he said, you know, it's tribal stuff in Africa. It's not color of skin, obviously, it's tribal stuff. And I have no categories for how massively challenging that would be for someone who is from different tribes in terms of this reconciliation.

I experienced this when I was involved in a ministry once where someone was helping me understand we were trying to reach out to a certain Asian context. And the person was trying to help me understand that this particular Asian context had these different sort of tribal things that went on within. And and and so when it turned when it came to when they converted, it's not as simple as, oh, this person is is from this particular ethnic context.

And so he's going to be able to reach out or help us reach out to these other folks. Although there are these massive differences in terms of like tribal things. And the gospel can work in ways that can bring those folks together into this one new humanity.

Again, it doesn't mean everybody's going to go to church together, but it does mean that we're all part of the family of God in Christ. And it does mean that we're brothers and sisters in Christ. And it also means if we do find ourselves in the same local assemblies, we've got to work really hard to try to understand each other, to figure out how we can love each other well, because it's not as simple as, well, we're Christians and so let's just all live happily ever after.

Nothing in life works that way. It's a it's a hard, painful, but joyful walk with the Lord by the spirit to to try to love our brothers and sisters in ways that are not natural because there are just so many differences. When I I've said this before, but I'm from eastern Kentucky and I've been away long enough where they sort of view me as an outsider now.

So I still think I have, you can hear it, an accent that comes out. But when I am around people from eastern Kentucky, they'll make fun of the way I talk now. And but there are things about me when I go to visit family or I'm reconnected with friends from my childhood.

There are certain eastern Kentucky things that come out that don't come out when I'm around the people that I'm around most of the time in my job or or where I live. And and my wife is from Costa Rica and she has she has no idea what's being said sometimes by by those of us who are just talking eastern Kentucky to each other. And that can be a real challenges in terms of trying to find a place to break into the conversation or fit into the conversation because there are these cultural and even linguistic differences.

But I feel the same way when my wife is talking to her mother who doesn't speak any English. She only speaks Spanish. That is, my wife speaks English, but my mother-in-law only speaks Spanish.

Then I have no idea what's happening in that conversation. Everything I say to my mother-in-law, I have to say it through a translator or my wife would translate and her mother-in-law has to say things through my wife would translate translate for me. And that makes things.

Oh, hard and complicated. But my mother-in-law who only speaks Spanish and I who only can speak English, we have this beautiful unity in Christ that is sweet. And that's only because of the gospel.

Because we share something that breaks in to this clear, real and even good difference, namely language.