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The spiritual naturalization of the apostle (Ephesians 2:19-22)
Ephesians 2:19-22
2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).
Paul, both as a spiritual counsellor and as a student of the law, came to a solid judicial and spiritual conclusion following his specialized discussion. He not only preached about important points in the life of faith, but also gave a helpful document into the hands of his co-workers. With it they would be able to instruct their house churches of their newly attained rights and spiritual duties.
To the Jewish Christians he said: you are no longer merely foreign guests and tolerated aliens in the Roman province of Asia, but rather, you have received full rights of citizenship with the saints in heaven and on earth. He taught the Gentile Christians that they were no longer just “foreigners” in the synagogues of the Jews, present only to turn on the lights when evening came or to sit quietly as “hearers only” during the discussions that followed. Rather, they had been accepted for all time and eternity into the family of God, as those made saints through the blood and Spirit of Christ.
In addition to these judicial promises, the apostle made it clear to both sides that they had not been appointed to push through their own philosophies and democratic rights. Rather, they were to spiritually grow under the framework of the earlier prophets and the apostle who had come among them. All other ideas remain foreign bodies in a church and have no duration. Much more, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the sustaining foundation in every true church. He is the precise cornerstone and the crowning summary of all words, deeds and prayers. “In Him” alone we possess duration and power.
At the same time, the church is not only the family of God, but also the temple in which the Holy Spirit lives and works. This spiritual construction will never be completed and has not yet been finalized in all details. In every generation the construction of this temple further advances in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the process the individual stones are exactly set in place and affixed to each other. Only then will it not collapse in an earthquake and be able to withstand the driving rains.
A mystery of this holy temple rests in the fact that its growth happens in the Lord. In itself the construction does not even exist, but only in and with the Creator, Judge and Saviour, who dwells and works in every one of these “living stones”. In Ephesus it was important that Gentile and Jewish Christians, fitted firmly together and quickened in the Lord, came to represent the dwelling place of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The entire fullness of deity also desires to indwell and work in other churches (Col. 2:9-10).
Whoever takes the time today to contemplate what his church should look like and how it can be enlivened, will need to return to the principles of the letter to the Ephesians. Otherwise he will be building his house on sand. Whoever is of the opinion that prayer dances and rituals from India or exercises from Buddhism can spiritually enliven his church errs greatly, not knowing the true antichristian spirits of these religions. In view of the living God, wherever sin is not recognized and confessed, and where the blood of Jesus Christ is not proclaimed to be the only means for the cleansing of the conscience, superficiality is bound to be rampant, along with a falsely imagined tranquillity and an unbiblical deception (Acts 2:38-40).
Prayer: Father in heaven, we worship You, for you have torn down the separating wall between Jewish and Gentile Christians, through the sacrificial death of Your beloved Son. As a result we have received, as a gift, access into Your presence. Through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, You build us into Your house, into Your holy temple and into Your family. We are nobodies while You are everything! Let our people come to repentance so that many might be revived, and that they might then live for You, love You, and praise You. Amen.
Questions:
- What is it that separates superficial thinking Jewish and Gentile Christians until today?
- How did Jesus bind these two groups together?